Nayna Shriyan

Masks in a whole new Avatar

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 14:58:00 +0000

If you know me at all, you know I am crazy about Masks. Recently my father was complaining about not having a proper place to hang up his shirts so they wouldn't get wrinkled. I suggested we could put up some hooks. Then it hit me shy not make the hooks into something decorative. So I America up with some Mask designs

My inspiration were the Tiki masks I figured the Masks would be the decorative element and the youngest would be the actual hooks.

Mask one fresh from being cleaned

Mask 2 fresh from being cleaned

I used bronze for the base & brass for the ears, tounge & other elements. I made four of them unfortunately ended up using only two of them but here they are. I oxidised the bronze base & cleaned & buffed the brass elements.

All four designs done

The two that I ended up using fixed on the wall

Finally my Dad's clothes have a great place to be hung up on !

Aren't they cool, plus as a bonus when the shirts and hangers are not there the Masks look like wall art! :)

Dragonfly box

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 13:45:00 +0000

Dragon fly box
© 2015 Nayna Shriyan
Copper

For as long as I can remember I have been crazy about boxes something about antiqued, carved, vintage boxes that gets me very intrigued, perhaps its just the idea of discovering something exciting inside that fascinates me.

A few months ago I made this box and although I have been meaning to make more, it might be a while before I get the opportunity to do so. Meanwhile here is the dragonfly box! Drop a line if you think of a subject I could use to grace my next box :)

Copper flowers & leaves for a new wall piece

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 15:31:00 +0000

Fold forming has become my newest passion, after having tentatively tried out a few folds, basic line folds etc to create a cuff , I decided I had to be brave enough to try out some of the more complicated folds. So I decided on the start fold, looked pretty and I thought it might be easy enough. Well turned out its not exactly easy but yes it was a lot of fun and my first attempt turned out to be quite nice looking! To begin with I used 24 Gauge copper as recommended in the book on fold forming ,that has pretty much become my bible :) unfortunately I realised I wasn't strong enough when it came to bending the sheet with my bare hands :(

So I bought some 26 ga. & then these were the results

Starfold in 4 by 4 inches

Starfold in 2 x 2 inches

Leaves made in ruffle style with a line fold

The star folds as well as the leaves are all going on a new piece, I am keeping it a secret for now ;) but before you see there is an even more fun piece coming up !! Stay tuned :)

Repurposing Repousse !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 16:12:00 +0000

Having taken to making jewellery , this side of my art seems to be continually in ignore mode, :( sadly so. Well not making apologies or excuses rather here is what I have been doing. I recently took up my pitch pot and realized the pitch had gone brittle again! well, after having gone back and forth about making new pitch or maybe buying some red or green pitch from abroad, I finally decided all the pitch really needed was a good dose of coconut oil and some reheating. So on to my gas stove went my bowl and after about an hours worth of low heat ( never ever let your pitch overflow onto your gas range, its murder to get out !!!) Here is the bowl after a good couple of hours and all the little pimples you see is because of the air escaping after all the boiling . I wish I had gotten an image of the pitch boiling it looked like a witch's cauldron ( boil and bubble!! :D)

So what is the all this pitch hullabaloo about? well its a new project that is completely repousse`

The first stage with the shape outlined and basic relief work

Out of the pitch with some of the detailing done

Finished Rams with hollow pipe rings through the smaller ring in the nose

A Ram masquerades as an innovative cover for a peep hole

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:24:00 +0000

Some habits die hard, especially those of an artist. I have seen a 90 year old artist continue to paint and exhibit after having officially 'retired' about two times both times having a 'My very last show' to announce the retirement. So given that I have shifted to making only jewellry for the past three years this project made me realize that I will never really be able to stay away from proper metalwork. So here is what I am upto these days, now this is an attempt at getting back to metal work though I am not sure how many pieces I will be able to churn out on a regular basis.
This is a piece that really has no official name, its just that the peep hole in our main door has a little chip of sunmica missing on the bottom and I wanted to cover it up with something. So I came up with this

Sketch of a Ram in profile

The peep hole itself would nestle in the round gap in the centre of the horn on the right. The original plan called for having a hinged lid soldered onto the horn so as to completely cover the peep hole when not in use. But as the piece came to completion I realized that the lid would actually hinder any body from actually looking out through it comfortably. So the lid is now tossed. Here is the Ram with the outline tooled out.

Ram with the out line tooled out

Ram with a basic relief worked out. This is after one turn in my pitch bowl.

The final relief done with another round in the pitch bowl. This time I got all the areas worked out or so I thought I had to use my tools outside the bowl again to round out a few of the areas.

All finished with the detailing done and the extra metal cut out along with the space for the peep hole within the curls of the Ram's horn.

All finished !

A portrait in water colours and water colour pencils

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:47:00 +0000

Portrait in water colour pencils and water colours
©2012 Nayna Shriyan

Another portrait commission !!! Well this one was short notice so I had to do some quick thinking and change the medium. Normally an 'oils' only girl I had to switch to colour pencils and surprise surprise I loved it!!!

Started out quite cautiously as I was painfully aware that any mistakes it would be a complete do over. After getting the drawing in place I started out with the lightest pencils and started blocking in areas graduating to the middle and darker tones quite gradually. I realized that it was all about the control and the amount of pressure I was applying to get the correct tonal depth. I also opted out of using a wet brush over the pencils as I really fell in love with the kind of textural effect that I saw coming about from using the pencils over a smooth hand made paper block.

The hair was the result of some very thick water colour and the clothes did get a slight wet brushing to smoothen things out . What do you think should I keep experimenting with pencil colours or stick to my beloved oils?

Seeing Double !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:00:00 +0000

This seems to be a month for commissions first the 'Shivaji' piece and now a double portrait commission My first ever !! :) While most artists must have some method of conducting studies I went with my usual style of jumping right in ! The client had given me free reign with regards to size, medium and just about everything so that made my life much easier ,and here are my progress photos of the painting.

A very first coat just blocking in the major areas( P.S. my family thought it looked eerie! :P)

Both the subjects with the second layer

Almost done with my favorite being the blue silk tie !

I concentrated on just one person at a time, having finished the groom, my sole attention was on the bride. Her face proved to be the most challenging I wanted to get not just her face but also her glowing skin tone and blush correctly

The bride's Sari and jewelry was the most fun I must say and the one element that got done in literally one stroke was the groom's tie!

A portrait with a reverence-Shivaji Maharaj

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:14:00 +0000

Shivaji Maharaj
© 2012 Nayna Shriyan
Copper sheet, copper wire, Black Acrylic

A true first for me, a portrait done in metal !! Yay! Now you might be wondering what am I getting so excited about well, this image here is a likeness of Shivaji Maharaj. For all my fellow Indians, you know who I am speaking about and why I am getting so excited, for all my global friends, this is the portrait of a great leader of our country. Without going into too many details, he was an iconic leader who united the state of Maharashtra and brought the people together by instilling courage and patriotism in them. Someone who was just barely 16 and lead from the front. Tough he lived and ruled a couple of hundred years ago, his philosophies and ideologies are just as relevant today as they were then. For this very reason, I got a little jittery when a client asked me to create something with Shivaji Maharaj ( incidentally Maharaj means King ) as I absolutely did not want to mess this up!.

So I gave the old cogs a good run and came up with this idea, I used piercing as my main technique to cut out portions of the profile and used line tool to bring out some details. The details on his garment are mostly fine copper wires soldered. The backing is a 4mm thick black acrylic sheet. Some stripling adds to the texture in the background. The bonus of course was the client and the person who received this piece as gift falling in love with it! :)

Just a sketchy thought.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:42:00 +0000

Artist (Photo credit: Fernando X. Sanchez)

I was at a local mall this last weekend to pick up some essentials (seems like the easy way these days though I do prefer the old fashioned way of going to a whole bunch of different shops in the old part of my city. As I was sitting around in the lobby of the mall I noticed a small kiosk it had a screen playing an animated sketch taking place in about 1 min. It was one of those sketch-a-portrait vending machines. The kinds that take a picture of you and use some sort of photo altering software to create a simulated sketch. My first thought I must confess was annoyance, was it so easy to replace an artist who puts in years of experience, learning, emotion and hours and hours of practice with a silly vending machine?

I was then reminded of seeing artists sitting on small chairs with tourists and the local public sitting in front of them posing outside one of Mumbai's landmark art gallery The Jehangir Art Gallery. The major difference between these machines and the artist sitting outside the gallery? People queued up to be sketched by the artists and others hovered around to watch the artist creating his/her magic and the vending machine did not have a single person even looking at the short animated clip !
It just warms my heart to realize that the skill and talent of the artist is still valued over a cheap vending machine automated sketch. :)

Flood waters, Hot cups of Chai and some gardening

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 04:07:00 +0000

This week began with a ( I know you are thing 'bang' but no :) flood! Yes that's right my city was well under water these past two days with water logging, train services breaking down, never ending traffic jams and people getting stranded every which way.

Not fun I know but for the few lucky folks like me who don't need to travel for work or any other reason it was fun to stay home and watch the rains and sip hot cups of tea (we call it 'Chai') well we had a lot of fun and here are some pics from my balcony. So what did I do apart from having tea well I spent the time cleaning up my studio coming up with plans of streamlining my enamels ( they are a mess! ) which I will be sharing soon and doing some gardening !

Hope this lil guy does well

You can see my Aloe vera trying to peek into the pic here :)

Functional design.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Should art or rather design should it be purely a visual treat or can it functional. I think good design is so much more interesting when its functional don't you? To be able to actually use that lovely design that you simply fell in love with, to me that's a perfect combination.

While I love creating paintings and enameled panels it gives me a lot of joy when someone picks up my enameled bowl and wonders if they can use it as an ash tray or perhaps could they store their nick-knacks. You have seen some of the bowls I create and there are a lot more on the way, but here are a few other pieces that I create, some are hand painted like this coaster set

Coaster set with yellow fleur
Set of four coasters

Chili key holder in brass and wood.

Some have metal accents on them like this chili design key holder ! isn't it cute just perfect for holding one set of keys if you are like me and like to have all the possible keys in one single key chain :)

Getting nostalgic about pea pods

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 06:52:00 +0000

Pea Pod, Copper, torch fired enamel, pine wood
© 2000 Nayna Shriyan

Last few weeks have been really crazy for me with a two day exhibition featuring my jewellery and some of my metal art work. While trying to decide what to carry and what to leave behind I found this piece of art that I had created while in college. Long before I knew what torch fired enamels meant I was doing it the reason simply being, the only kiln that I was aware of was a huge old fashioned monster of a kiln in my college and whenever I wanted to enamel any small little piece at home it had to be with the aid of my trusty torch ! I also found to my amazement that while I had no idea what fold forming was back in those days, I had 'folded' the copper sheet into a pod ! Looking at this piece also reminded me of being completely fascinated by horse shoe nails and had used them on the sides of the 'pod' to create the tendrils.

Cleaning and photographing this piece made my quite nostalgic for the old days when the simple act of mounting a piece meant a delightful excursion into the market place near Chor bazaar to hunt for packing material ( made of imported pine wood that did not even require cleaning !) and then carefully burning out the knots with my trusty soldering gun :) I intend to put up this piece at an upcoming exhibition next month I really want to find it a good home as compared to just keeping it sitting in my closet, as I believe that art is incomplete until it has had a chance to interact with the world at large, what do you think?

3 Ways to keep cool in the Mumbai summer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 08:14:00 +0000

It is Mid April and officially the hottest summer anybody can remember ! Here in Mumbai, summer means three things, more sun than you need to tan your self to crisp brown, children playing cricket and general noisy games in the street and mangoes!!

Here are Three great ways to deal with the crazy Mid summer blues you might get.

My bird bath

Drink gallons of water, but not from your fridge rather from a Mud pot! Yes I know most of you from the western world might wonder why in the world a mud pot, well here in India, drinking from an earthen ware pot in the summers is very popular. The water stored in the pot cools down considerably as some of the water evaporates through the pot pores. The water also for some strange reason tastes delicious , no kidding ! In fact quite a few shop owners keep a large earthen ware pot outside their stores with a steel glass attached for passers-by to have a little drink. And while you are out buying one for you buy one for the birds as well. I did and have been watching Pigeons, Crows and Mynah birds stop by for a drink all morning ! with the added bonus of a very loud bird song by the Mynah bird ( what more can you ask for ! )
Make clay sculptures , well use this excuse and find some clay at your local potters and play around with the clay, hey you might create some pieces or might not but you will have tons of fun and the clay can get very cold helping you beat the heat!
Buy mangoes and well of course eat them but also make a cooling drink with them. Here's how: Buy a Kg of Raw mangoes ( we call the drink Panna , so you need to get the mangoes for making Panna , your fruit vendor will know) boil them whole till the outer skin goes a dull yellow . Let them cool , then make a little slit and pull out the seed and squeeze out the pulp from the skin as well as the seed. Mash the pulp or better yet run it through the food processor , add at least half a kg of sugar, ground cardamom and some threads of saffron, and your done ! To serve take about two large tablespoons of this pulp add water, ice and mix. Do try this it tastes delicious and an added bonus no preservatives !

Fan page cover pic

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 07:29:00 +0000

Cover photo for Fb fan page
© 2012 Nayna Shriyan

For all my blog readers, here is what my Facebook Fan page cover pic looks like :)

Mirror makeover

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 06:49:00 +0000

A while back we had a 'Vastu' consultant come in and do a check up of our house, and she recommended quite a few changes, most very practical and did not require major upheaval of our household and also did not entail major expenses, so we were quite fine with it. There was however one thing that meant either calling in a carpenter or some good old fashioned DIY, well you know me so DIY is what it meant!

Mirror with the makeover done

The 'thing' as I mentioned earlier was that mirrors could not face open windows as they reflected negative energy inside from the outside.(without going into the debate about whether or not this is possible, let me just give you an account of how me and my friend came up with this great design, its more fun any ways :D)

I first covered the mirror with a very thick coat of wood primer( I found a good sized tin lying in my attic ) Then my friend and I created textures using texturing white and good old wall putty using some palette knives and our hands :D ( Did I mention it was a very fun project !) We didn't actually plan a design but we simply decided to go with some very soothing waves. Most of the textures we created are simple ones. This was left to dry off for 24 hrs. and then, I used two colours in acrylic, a cobalt blue and an aqua green with a tube of white to create tints, There was also some left over crimson red that I used to create the really dark tones that you can see at the top left and bottom right.

After the base colours more textures were added with some contrasting light and dark colours and of course good old metallic golds and bronzes.

Wish I had taken a before pic of the mirrors but here is what graces my room now and the best part I can actually see it from outside the home and our house is on the second floor !!

To set or not to set!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:02:00 +0000

Recently I was looking at all of my enameled panels with a view to checking up on them and cleaning & I found a stack of 10 enameled rounds, that I had worked on more than a year back. Looking at these pieces again, I realized that back then I would have framed them as probably a wall piece on a simple wooden frame. But now with all my jewellery making skills, I am wondering whether I could simply 'set' these as I would set any enameled 'jewel'. Or would it be more interesting to embed them in an oil painting? Or perhaps use them as part of a sculptural piece? Well I guess my thoughts are scattered right now but if anything strikes you do drop a line !

Chor Bazaar!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:46:00 +0000

With a title like this I am sure you are wondering where I am going with this post, well I am taking you on a journey to the most famous flea market of Mumbai! To be honest the tag 'flea market' does not even do justice for an amazing treasure trove like Chor bazaar. What it is a huge area full of lanes and each lane is choc-a-bloc with shops selling anything from, old bike parts, LPs, film and rock band posters( Oh yes they have Elvis and the Beetles too !) antique furniture, lamps, clocks, navigators and compasses from old ships, Sculptures ( I actually saw a pair of larger than life extremely realistic lions in cast bronze!) old coins, telescopes, books, well you get the idea by now :) Oh and lest I forget my all time favorites the old HMV styled Gramophones with large beautifully worked brass speaker and all the old styles of telephones from the hand held earphone variety to the wall mounted style and every bit of wood and brass polished to gleaming perfection!

As you can see from the picture here that pretty much every available space is crammed with simply gorgeous stuff, and if you look closely you can see the shop owner helping out my friend with some tiled wall hooks there.

This shop had the most amazing old sign boards, could make out exactly but I think they were all hand painted check out the red one on the right its for the post office announcing the sale of postal stamps! When was the last time you used a stamp? :P

This little vintage car over here is actually a pan box with storage space on the cab, bonnet and foot board areas, look closely and you will see tiny hinges! Just below the car are some cast brass door knocker, unfortunately could not take better pictures as some of the shop keepers do not approve :(

As you can imagine a place like that there is a good chance for anyone to burn a large hole in their pockets but the only thing I managed to buy apart from some amazing tools was a baby milk bottle! Yup am sure you are wondering why would anyone buy a milk bottle from a flea market well here's why!

For a long time now I would hear from my Dad that when he was a baby he had this milk bottle which was boat shaped and had two openings one on either end with the teats attached on both of them, and how he wished my mom hadn't lost it while moving ( parents !) I kept thinking those were not in production anymore and couldn't be found well guess what I found one ! Have you seen one of these or maybe your parents or aunts used to have one, do drop a line if you have hunted down something for your loved ones like this, both me and my dad would love to hear your story ( we are big on nostalgia here :D)


Baby milk bottle with two teats!

I hope to make another trip soon with my nephew as he is crazy about the old LPs and wants to add to the family collection!
P.S. Do you know apart from antique collectors and interior designers and of course the bargain hunters, who you are most likely to see here, people from the Hindi film and television industry ! Yup this is where they come to source out stuff for all their period dramas, and I have heard from one of the store keepers that recently the staff from the long running show on Sony TV- CID too were there sourcing old fashioned light switches, the toggle kinds ( something that I too will be adding to my collection !)

Foils on oils

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 14:27:00 +0000

In my last post for the year 2011 I had written about starting something interesting which combined both of my passions, oil on canvas and metal work, well I have been thinking about the same for a long time now and have come up with something like this: I intend to paint with brushes as well as palette knives creating abstract paintings in oil on canvas and then incorporate copper pieces in the form of foils and sheets which will be worked upon individually and then treated to different patina processes.

While I am still not entirely sure, as to how I intend to attach the copper pieces to the canvas, I am hoping to incorporate fine copper wire and actually stitch the copper pieces onto the canvas! Well my experiments will be here for all to see in a few days, but for now, here are the two oil on canvas experiments to begin with .
Here's what they look like right now !

P.S. By the time I had the pics clicked for this post I had attached two foil pieces with blue patina on them.Do drop a line and let me know if they are even visible to you! :D

Eight things I am doing to wrap up the last week of this year !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:18:00 +0000

It is the last week of 2011 and the much talked and hyped about 2012 is coming up and today my cook of all people bought the topic up by mentioning how some people were dreading the end of the world. Well I have no idea whether the world is ending or not but here is what I want to do in the last week of this year just to tie up some ends.

Image by henry… via Flickr

Finishing catching up on the gazillion e-books that I have downloaded over the past year ! Well not exactly that number but I am an e-book junkie! ( Hey don't tell me you aren't tempted, when its just a click away from all you can read!! ) Well most of the books I download are either art or jewellery how-tos or marketing how-to for the same. My favorite and currently reading is Seth Godin's 99 Cows .
Cleaning up my computer and backing up the hard disk.This one goes back to #1 once I read all those e-books some I keep for future reference some go on to the recycle bin ( To make room for more e-books of course :)
Making a list of all the lovely people I met, all the amazing things that happened to me in my career as well as personal life just to add that to my gratitude journal ( Hey I wanna attract more of the same cool stuff !!) By the way my list is definitely going to include all you amazing people that take time out to read what I write, look at my art and leave your thoughts here :) So thank you, you are much appreciated!
Making a plan for my jewellery and art business, yup, yup I know art and business are not words that go together but my goal for this coming year is to get my studio to not just support itself but me as well :) Now the reason I am putting this out here is ,I want to get some accountability which hopefully will help me to get things pulled together.
Buy tools and metal, colours etc. Well you know how most common resolutions are ' more work done' well, my problem is I do get work done and even have sketches on the ready usually but I tend to go to the studio all brimming with ideas and realize I am out of a particular gauge of wire or metal or enamel colour, so I intend to avoid that starting January.

Getting my mailing list up dated, I actually have finished with this one (pat on the back :D) and am working on getting my New Year card done on Mail Chimp, this ones for my Jewellery mailers but if you wish you can sign up (its just as fun!)
Figuring out the menu for New Years Eve ! Usually we make some super delicious Indian Style fast food, and voting is still on for this year :D
Coming up with a way to combine my two passions, oil on canvas and metal work! watch this space there is something soooooper exciting coming up and with one New Year's promise to all you sweet folks who continue to drop by and read, although I'll admit I have not been up to speed in posting here lately, and that is to get in one post per week. Do hold me up to it if I do not deliver :P

Well you noticed nowhere have I mentioned New Year's resolutions cause mine usually give up the ghost by march :( So instead I am sticking to daily practices, so what practices are you going to start, do drop a line and let me know, I just might take up your idea as well !

Wishing everybody here a Very Happy New Year and an extremely abundant and bursting with joy kind of year !!

The Indian Art Festival- food for the soul !

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 15:57:00 +0000


Installation by ©Kalpana Shah

Yesterday I spent over three glorious hours at the India Art Festival going on at the Nehru Center Worli,

Mumbai, and what a treat it was ! Art galleries and artists from a good many different parts of the country had participated and what a huge variety of art there was to see everything from paintings, sculptures, photographs, installations and paper cuttings.

Individual artists had traveled from as far as Chennai, Delhi & Kolkotta carrying not only their art works but also giving Mumbaikars an opportunity to talk with them and find out more about their art and their processes. Art galleries had brought along with them not just the contemporary artist's works but also masters such as V. S. Gaitonde & M. F. Hussain ( saw quite a few Hussain originals :) M. V. Dhurandhar, Ara , and some even had prints on sale for that easy on the wallet art craving ! :D

A stall by Studio 3 Mumbai

The one aspect of the art work that completely took me by surprise was the sheer variety of the media used. There was the good old oil on canvas, water colours, acrylics on canvas, pastels, a stunning portrait of a young girl which was in colour pencil on tinted paper ( I had to read the tag beside the portrait twice before I accepted it was pencil on paper, the rendering was unbelievable) Metal repousse, etchings on paper ( oh there were some enterprising students from Sir J.J. School of art making etching prints on paper on the spot as per client request ! ) Paper cuts made using the intricate Kirie technique from Japan and some beautiful Tanjore paintings by Mrs. Swarna Raja a Bengaluru based artist who uses organic as well as inorganic colours on a specially treated lime washed surface to create her work.

The high point for me surely was the installation by artist Jitish Kallat which was a larger than life kerosene stove completed covered every square inch of it in animals taken as is from the very famous friezes found on the walls and facade of the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus ( C.S.T.) formerly known as The Victoria Terminus. Every available space on the stove is covered with these animals and floral motifs found on C.S.T. friezes.The concept being just as animals survive by devouring each other we city dwelling folk too have a similar way of surviving off of each other ( well perhaps a little macabre but hey its true I think !)

Add caption

Detail of the kerosene stove installation,
featuring a monkey

For those from the younger generations a kerosene stove was quite prominently used in most kitchens in Mumbai prior to the arrival of gas and electricity, I have some fond memories of the comforting sound these made as they cooked the daily meal :)

Installation By Valay Shende

By Kalpana Shah

It was truly a fun though tiring afternoon spent at the Indian Art Festival, and although I am sad that I could not listen to any of the ongoing lecture and talk series by prominent art experts, and artists, hopefully I can do so at the next year's event.

Flowers on the road

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:52:00 +0000

A few years ago back when I decided to quit all the crazy designing and teaching jobs I was into -not that they weren't fun but I realized I was not really doing what I was most passionate about and simply had to get back to my easel,in this case my furnace. I started experimenting with enamels on steel & copper panels, with liquid and vitreous enamels. Mostly I was into wet packing a technique where you meticulously pack the enamel that has been moistened with water with the help of s small round brush. but I also experimented with liquid enamels and mostly just tried to get an even coat of the colour ( tough on a newbie these liquid enamels! ) rather than too many textures with them. Recently going through a drawer full of old and unfinished metal pieces I found a whole stack of these and thought I could use them or at any rate finish them so here are the first three in the series. They do not have a common theme running through because to begin with these were just experiments so here they are . I would like to hear ideas on how best to use them. I have a few ideas one was to have them made into box lids, I have some cute pinewood boxes and sell them or gift them. The other idea was by a friend who suggested I use them to create a larger panel which could be turned into a wall clock. Any other ideas ? Would love to hear them do drop a line. :)


One Tree, Enamel on Steel © 2011 Nayna Shriyan

Arow heads fit for cupid!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:07:00 +0000

Arrow heads for my quiver full of arrows sculpture

Will these arrow heads work for Cupid? My arrow heads finally done! Well not complete but here is their look, what do you think? These are the arrow heads and the shafts are going copper pipe with a very interesting joining technique , that I will be posting in detail later on. The body of the quiver too is in its final stages watch this space ( feeling like a tabloid here :P )

Meet Moru and his friends -a journey into WilderIndia

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:27:00 +0000

Join me today as we meet Moru's friends and family :) Creating the characters of the story is generally done solely by the writer, so also with these stories, but the fun for me was to put to paper Sharmila's ideas with regards to their appearances, putting down particular features and aspects to each character that not only made them stand out but also meant that each character's personality was immediately evident. Moru himself had a very prominent feature in that his tail had to be very different from the rest of the peacocks, (okay so I am going to let you get a peek at the cat, not let the cat get out of the proverbial bag completely !!) see Moru is quite shy and keeps his tail shut or rather believes that he simply isn't coordinated enough to be graceful and thus never opens his tail feathers, and that's why his tail had to be shown a little stunted.
The royal family consisted of the King and Queen of peacocks and their look was kept simple but elegant with rich feather colours and the Queen had an adornment of white feather pattern on her body. While creating the individual looks we thought about adding extra elements like a pearl necklace on the Queen and en eye patch on one of the village elders but realized that made the story to gimmicky so instead, one of the evil elders just got a single eye with one permanently shut! One of the judges was fat and short, another one had a crooked neck !


Moru at his 'damce' competition © 2011WilderIndia, illustration © Nayna Shriyan Painting on silk.

In this image you can see the villagers on the top and bottom tiers with the evil elders on the right and oh by the way that tree stump is their round table ! what do you think of that? :)
In the center is the princess from a neighboring clan with our hero trying to dance (but falling flat on his beak !!) . Creating this princess was the most fun, she got long shapely talons nice drop shaped feather patterns and a long graceful beak, long lashes and an orchid to add to her charm, gorgeous isn't she?
With all the excitement about the characters in progress we also wanted to stay true to the style of Pattachitra with their traditional layouts. So we had a different layout for each page that we designed and naturally each one has its own unique border. Or borders got their very own animal so while this one had lady bugs, one had leopards while another one got deers, do look out for each animal as you read the book! An extra treat are the smaller animals featuring on each page, small birds, insects and animals in one instance a surprised frog jumping out of the way ( of who else but our clumsy hero !) Do find out how Moru finally learns to dance :)

Continuing the Quiver saga........

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 12:23:00 +0000

Continuing the quiver saga...

Currently I am completely taken in with the arrows and their designs, keeping in mind that these arrows are not meant to hurt but meant for the viewers to fall in love with them, I decided that they had to be of different shapes and have bright colours. Here they are cut and ready to be enameled and with the first coat of transparent flux fired and the cloisonne wire . I will be revealing the finished pieces complete with all the wires and enamels in place as I want the final design to be a surprise! Of course the quiver itself is not being ignored, here it is with one coat of flux and the armature that will be holding it upright Although I will admit not too much of the electro-forming has stayed in place, I have faith that I can attach it by way of embedding it with the flux. for now this is where we are all fluxed up !!

Continuing the journey through WilderIndia!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:56:00 +0000

The second little cutie pie in the book (WilderIndia) is 'Moru' as you may have guessed Moru is a peacock!! (Mor means peacock in Hindi and Marathi ) A prince at that! now while I do not intend to give out the story here, I will let on this much, the story is quite action packed! Well I think I am done with the exclamation marks :) !!!


© 2011 WilderIndia Illustration © Nayna Shriyan

Before we go on to the amazing characters in this story and the fun we had visualizing and creating each of them, I want to tell you about the unique medium we used. Moru happens to be not just the national bird of my country (India) but also the state bird of the north-eastern state of Orissa and in keeping with the theme of the book, the art style we used is Pattachitra .

Traditionally this art form is practiced in Orissa , with the themes centering around the religious tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata as well as the Dashavatara painted in painstaking detail on specially treated surfaces with vegetable dyes. The surface to be painted upon is firstly prepared by sandwiching layers of cotton cloth (usually old sarees) with an organic glue, which is followed by sun-drying and then hours of hand polishing the hardened sari layers with a smooth stone! After the surface is prepared comes the turn of the colours which are either mineral colours or derieved from processing vegetables ( a good example is their red which is obtained from boiling certain seeds). These colours are then hand mixed ( read index finger till your bone aches!), till the correct consistency is achieved! Now aren't you glad you get to use pre- mixed colours from your favorite art stores :D (Guess the exclamations are back ! )

The one fun fact I really want to share here is their brush, this one is actually hand crafted from a mouse hair !! Yup you read that right a mouse is caught and his fur is harvested to bunch together into a brush ! ( Hopefully the mouse is free to scamper away afterwards ) This comes in specially handy while painting in the finer details like lines of hair and minute designs as the mouse hair is quite stiff and can work out the details beautifully!

While we did not go into as much detailing we did order some authentic Tussar silk from a Pattachitra artist all the way from Orissa and mounted that prior to painting it with silk colours! As you can see from the image the uneven texture of the silk makes for a great backdrop.

Well you just read about some unusual art materials, if you know of any more such do drop a line, I am always interested to learn more about folk art , in the next post I will let you in on some inside details about the characters in the story, stay tuned :)