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Straight From My Art – Mandala Patterns on Wood
This one was a complete and total labour of love. As part of furnishing our home, I was looking around for designs and inspiration. I wanted a shoe rack that was a comfortable bench with small airy cupboards under the bench to store shoes. I wanted to turn the bench…
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Straight From My Art – My Attempts at Rock Paintings
In our travels over the years I have developed an annoying habit. Annoying for my husband, not me. Everywhere we went, I would collect small rocks at the beach or during long drives. It was my way of quite literally taking a piece of the country I was visiting back…
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Straight From My Art – When One Sun Meets Another
Sun zentangles have been a personal fascination for me and I’ve always wanted to attempt one that is themed on either the sun or the sunflower. To my delight, I found an amazing idea on Pinterest that combined both these into one beautiful zentangle. The level of detail and the…
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Straight from My Art – Half and Half Mandala
I first came across this design when I wrote a poem a couple of years back titled “The Volcano on the Inside”. My neice who has her own art blog lol was working on this particular design and let me use it as the image for the poem as it…
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Straight From My Art – Workshop 5 – Delft Square Zentangle
With my sisters getting more and more comfortable with zentangling and art, I knew I had to up the ante and find something that would be challenging as well as different from the kind of patterns we’d been working on up until that point. Pinterest came to the rescue yet…
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Straight From My Art – Bride Zentangle
A few months back there was a trend of bridal zentangles on Pinterest. With the intricate jewellery that an Indian bride wears, it is the perfect medium to get into a detailed design of repetitive patterns. I came across this beautiful bride sketch on Pinterest. However I wanted to make…
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Straight From My Art – Workshop 4 – Peacock Zentangle
Soon after our butterfly zentangle, my sister Bala came across this video on YouTube and wanted to attempt the peacock zentangle. It was intricate and had a lot of detail and we all welcomed the challenge! We started working on this one in early April and finished closer to the…
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Straight From My Art – Workshop 3 – Butterfly Zentangle
It’s nearly three months since I have posted anything here. The last one and a half months have been about coping with a few changes in our day-to-day life that happened all at once and came with its own adjustment and settling period. After our mandala and lotus zentangle workshops,…
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Straight From My Art – Zentangle of My Mind
When I finished this one, I felt like my brain was on the paper. With everything going on back home and the many many people I’m worried for, some days my mind and thoughts feel exactly like the pattern I produced on paper. Mine and probably most of us right…
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How I Caught the Book Bug from Appa
I came across a post yesterday on social media which said it was World Book Day and that the theme of the year was “share a story”. I am an avid reader of books. In fact my day isn’t done unless I’ve read something. I will literally not be able…
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Why Appa Takes Full Credit for my Typing Speed
It was the early 90s. Computers and IT as a career had just begun to make an appearance in the Indian career scene. I was pursuing a degree in Commerce and it seemed to make perfect sense at the time to sign up for a computer course if for no…
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Straight From My Art – Workshop 2 – Lotus Mandala
Our second family zentangle workshop included all four of my sisters, two neices and a cousin sister. It was an absolutely amazing workshop spread over two of our weekly calls. The first week we drew the basic shape. Some of us coloured the lotus in addition to outlining our pencil…
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Blood Diamond
Authors note: Published on World Kidney Day! I was born in 2010. Or you could say I was re-born in 2010. This new lease of life was possible only because of my sister Lakshmi. But I am getting ahead of myself, overwhelmed with emotion as I am, just putting pen…
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Choose to Challenge
Often people around us, no matter what their gender, get away with a lot simply because we choose to be quiet and submit to the judgement, the taunts, the injustice, the discrimination, the constant reminders of bias… I can go on and on. I wonder what would happen if every…
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Straight From my Art – Peacock Zentangle
My next favorite in the animal/bird kingdom after the elephant is the peacock. It is an artist’s dream this one. The riot of colours and the intricate design of the feather woven from Mother Nature’s hands make it a perfect subject for anyone wanting to work on a colourful subject.…
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Covimusings Special Edition – A Valentine’s Day with Three
“Happy Valentine’s Day honey” he whispered in her ear, eager for his voice and wishes to be the first thing that fell on her ears as she woke up to this most special day in the year. It had been a very challenging last month. Both Sara and Raj had…
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CoviMusings – He’s Back!
I sat there, nearly rubbing my eyes in disbelief. He looked a little surprised too, to find himself standing in front of me after nearly a year. I felt a tear welling up from the inside but caught myself in time. Even I could see how ridiculous that would look.…
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Straight From my Art – Workshop 1 – My First Mandala Workshop
I have been inundating everyone with samples of my artwork more than usual since the pandemic hit. As I’ve mentioned before, zentangling and drawing mandalas have been a great stress buster since the past few months and I’ve immensely enjoyed working on these. One of my sisters suggested I conduct…
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Straight From my Art – Zentangle of Flowers
My neice recently posted a new drawing titled “Perspective” on her art blog. I absolutely loved her work and wanted to attempt it myself. Click here to see the original work that inspired my creation. While she went greyscale, I opted for colour. I decided to choose vibrant red, pink…
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Straight From my Art – Elephant Zentangle
One of the first things I attempted (over ambitiously) when I first discovered zentangles was that of an elephant. I soon realized I’d bitten more than I could chew and abandoned the project in favour of simpler patterns to begin with. Over the years my confidence improved but I’d completely…