On the way to Dhankar Monastery

"Nature is not a place to visit. It is home."  GARY SNYDER

Dhankar is situated at a high altitude ( 12744 feet ) in Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh . Reaching Dhankar and viewing the world around literally makes you feel at the top of the world. Painted below is a Commission work in watercolour, of a beautiful scene at Dhankar. It is situated between Tabo and Kaza, two beautiful small towns surrounded by deserted, barren land and mountains.

The air is pure, the wind chilly, the clouds so clearly visible in the sky. There are homestays for tourists which we were unaware of when we visited about more than two years back. Had we known, we would have stayed there for may be two full days soaking in the breathtaking views.

Dhankar, Himachal Pradesh

water colour painting on Fabriano paper

Size 14" X 18"

Not available for sale

For this particular painting I have used Fabriano water colour paper. I purchased the Fabriano water colour pad of 24 sheets some months back as it was on a discount. This paper is cold pressed, 300 gsm and fairly good for landscape works. But for wet on wet paintings I would prefer the Arches.

Fabriano studio water colour paper pad.

Kilim Geoforest - rocks under the water

I had this photograph on my ipad for months and it was in my "TO DO" lists but somehow
this work never got started until last week. After having done the charcoal sketching of
rocks under the water from my Lonavala photograph I finally decided to get started with
this one too.

This close up photograph was taken while we were at the beautiful beach at Kilim Geoforest in Langkawi, Malaysia.The ripples and reflections were a challenge and I am still not very
satisfied but while doing and redoing to get the final result I learnt a lot. One rock on the upper
left was partly above the water and rest of the rocks were submerged and it was important to
observe the directions of ripples as the water movement took place. Also there was lot of
perspective in the diagram to be taken care of. I did this charcoal sketching over a period
of six days and went slow and held my patience.

The submerged rocks

Charcoal sketching on Fabriano paper

Size 5.5" x 7"

Apart from paintings and sketchings I also take out time to design Nameplates for the wall.

You can view my innovative ethnic nameplates on my other BLOG.