Last year during the Ganpati festival in September, my niece came across this ornate and intricate drawing of our beloved Lord Ganpati in all His glory. She attempted it to coincide with the festival last year and inspired all of us to try our hand as well on this. My cousin Goma finished this early on, but it took me over a year and my sister Lakshmi a few days to finish this drawing.

I’m sharing my niece’s step-by-step pics of her Lord Ganesha below. She chose an approach to start from the outside and then move inwards to the main Ganpati drawing. We all adopted the same approach and absolutely enjoyed working on this one. It is a truly zen experience to work on your favourite God and also get lost in the fine and intricate artwork at the same time. For me personally, this drawing brought a lot of peace and I felt grateful for the opportunity to draw this one.

Here are my neice’s step-by-step pictures leading to the final drawing:

Her final drawing is here:

My cousin Goma finished this next around December last year. This is her version:

I completed mine last week after over a year of trying to find the time and space to catch up to this beautiful drawing. I was super happy with the way it turned out! I did run into one issue though despite multiple attempts. Try as I might, my Ganpati landed up with a fairly big gap at the bottom so I added a seat to compensate for the empty space. Here’s my version:

My sister Lakshmi attempted this next and was done within a week’s time. Here’s her choice of colours, the result of which was yet another vibrant Lord Ganesha:

This one was truly a labour of love for all of us. On completion of this mammoth effort, I came upon a beautiful drawing in Warli style. It is not a style we have attempted thus far, and I picked a fairly simpler one to begin with. It coincides with a special event in our family, and I’m looking forward to attempt this one soon! More on that soon… until next time, here’s to taking the time out to doing what you love.