Plein air water colour painting in my travel sketch book

"I have no talents. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein

One morning at West Sikkim, it rained heavily and the mountains and valleys as seen from the balcony of our homestay, suddenly started disappearing in the mist and clouds. The view was heavenly and I felt the sudden urge to capture the beauty unfolding before my eyes in my sketch book. And I did precisely that. Using my two round brushes and a palette I created my small "Plein air painting". It took me not more than ten minutes to create this small artwork and it felt really good.

Dante Alghieri said "Nature is the art of God." and I believe every word of the quote. I am grateful as an artist to be inspired by nature's beauty which in turn helps me create my art and keeps me busy and happy.

Monsoon in the valley

Water colour Plein air study work in my sketch book

Size 4" X 5"

When I am travelling I carry with me the following,

Two round sable hair brushes

Small 4" X 5" sketch book

( Cartridge sheets )

My water colour palette
with Camlin water colour artist's water colour paints

Carrying a travel kit such as above always helps. I get to paint when there is an opportunity. Moreover the kit is not very bulky and the sketch book has cartridge sheets in it which can also be used for pencil drawings and sketches. These sketch books are easily available these days in stationery shops.

Sketch books are fun. They play a very significant role in learning process. I use them all the time. It has now become a habit. I have a sketch book for every different medium and my collection is growing.

Thanks a lot for visiting my blog and do visit my INSTAGRAM account to browse through my paintings.

Road to Spiti - a water colour painting

After having done couple of small water colour landscapes, I finally decided to take a leap and create a bigger painting.

The subject that I chose is a scene from Himachal, with mountains on either side and a road that curved and vanished in the distance. It was also time to test my new Winsor and Newton mop brush , which I had picked up couple of months back in order to create larger washes on the sky. The other brushes that I use are sable hair brushes from Himalaya Stationery.

Road to Spiti

Water colour painting on handmade paper

Size 10.5"X 14"

As an artist it gets difficult to control one's temptation to buy new art stationery. Everytime I visit an art shop I land up buying more than my CHECK LIST items. On one such occasion I had picked up the Winsor and Newton mop brush and a few other sable hair brushes from Himalaya. I had it in mind to use it some day and when I finally used all these brushes for the above painting it made me happy. Happy because I finally put them to use. Given below is the image of the four main brushes used in the above painting.

The brush at the top is mop brush from Winsor and Newton ( I paid Rs 1000/- for this brush and its worth all the money ) and the remaining brushes are manufactured by

Himalaya Stationery.