It feel good to be back in “school” again.  Signed up for a 15 week programme at the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts (VAFA) and enjoying every minute of it.  Chandraguptha Thenuwara is a great teacher, simple, easy to understand explanations and gives access to great depth of knowledge freely.  The effort below is from my first class where I was making an attempt at capturing a still life setting.  An understanding of perspective, foreshortening is amongst the things that I’d hoped I’d pick up on my own over the last two years but I guess this is the easier way!   Plus a class will ensure that I measure instead of just eyeballing the distances, angles and sizes cause that’s one place where I’m messing up! : )

The Life Drawing sessions at Sapumal continue and i hope these Sunday drawings will see some progress based on the inputs I’m getting in the Saturday class.

The photographs were taken during a recent holiday to Bangkok, Siem Reap and Hong Kong. At our first stop we visited the Floating Market a little outside Bangkok. That planted the seed of a theme relating to water. Discovered that at our next stop I would have access to a Floating Village about an hours drive from Siem Reap. Then there was no stopping me and a supportive husband ensured that I visited Sai Kung in Hong Kong for more water related pics.

This selection leans more towards photographs taken in the Floating Market due to the brighter colors that appeal to me. We were also lucky to have visited the Floating Village at a time when some parts of it were not “floating”. And since the water levels were low, the path where it normally flows was being used as a road and we got to see one of the house on stilts under construction! There were children lurking in the water with catapults to catch rats! And in the village we even got to see a pig sty on stilts!

Much to my dismay I’ve had to leave out the temples, rickshaw pullers, fish, street photographs, snake charmers, wooden sculptures and portrait format pics as they wouldn’t fit in with my theme!! !@#$%^^& and of course I’m going to pretend that those were the brilliant pics! : ) I hope to revisit this book to add some titles for the photographs and to rearrange them a bit.

Click here to see the book Life on Water online and just in case : ) you want to read about the one from year before last click here or just see it on issuu.

It’s been great fun and no pressure as SoFoBoMo sets no benchmarks for quality of photographs selected or the design of the book.  I hope seeing my efforts will encourage you to join me for this project next year!!

I missed making a book for SoFoBoMo last year and am determined to put one together this year even if it wont be of the topic I first chose. I have the minimum 3 days of picture taking and now have to come up with a theme, a name and find 35 decent pics for my book!

Life is hurtling along at top speed! I look over my shoulder and I havent a clue where the time went. Net net I haven’t any to paint. Luckily I’m continuing with the Life Drawing Sessions.

I missed two traveling and at the last one the model was a no show. Thanks to another participants insistence we took time to pose for each other. Mostly short poses of 1, 5 and 10 minutes. Turned out to be good fun.

We had our second drawing session with a model at Sapumal earlier today.  It’s been over a month since the last time we met but it looks like the pace will pick up now.  It will be a more regular event and I’m truly looking forward to that.  Took me 5-6 poses to get comfortable again and it was time to leave!  The image above is from the last pose and it’s also the one I like the most.

I was so pleased that today’s session coincided with Drawing Day 2011 as I could participate with these drawings for that too. For all those who missed their reminders online, scribble, sketch and/or draw and put them up for Drawing Day 2011.  It ends tonight.  And for those artists who live in Colombo and are interested in joining our Life Drawing group, get in touch by leaving me a comment here.