KRISHNA WANTED ME TO PAINT HIS TREE

The entrance hallway into my house has a beautiful 2′ high, brass Krishna Murti, on an antique wood-and-brass trunk. For the longest time, I had been wanting to paint a Kadamba Tree behind my Krishna. I had even faux-painted the walls a rustic yellow-ochre colourwash as a background for the tree, which would be in deep greens and earthy siennas and umbers. I just never seemed to manage to get down to it. Why? Blame it on my architectural background…we are Master Procrastinators (at least my generation was!), till we have the deadline staring us in the face!

And so, my Krishna waited patiently for the longest time…

Till one day, very recently, I happened to be chatting to a friend about the Kadamba tree, and he said, “Yes, Krishna wants you to paint His tree now.” That seemed to me, one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard! Krishna wanted Me to paint his tree! Or to put it another way, Krishna Wanted me to paint his tree! Or to put it yet another way, Krishna wanted me to paint his tree! There are a million ways in which i could write the same sentence with different words in italics; any way one looks at it, it’s an honour! And so I did.

The painting and the palette have been kept fairly simple, and a little “folk-arty”, in view of the fact that the tree is meant purely as a backdrop to the idol. The colours are earthy to go with the space, the decor and the theme. The placement of the main trunk and the branches was orchestrated to fit into the space.

God-willing, this, being a very special mural project for me, is going to “evolve” with me over time; it might sprout a few more branches and leaves as the fancy takes me; or start to house a few birds and animals… I don’t know for sure. But one thing that I do know, is that the word “evolve” contains within it, the word “love”.

HOW THE MURAL WAS PAINTED…

The colour palette I had chosen, was basically Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber and Hooker’s Green. I added glaze to give richness and a certain transparency to the colours. Glaze allows the colours to glide smoothly, and allows one to really play with layers of colour…great fun!

With the browns, i loosely sketched the skeletal tree and branches…spreading them around the window, right upto the ceiling. Once I was happy with the layout, I started creating the thicker trunk, which would gradually taper out into thinner branches.

The leaves came next. Even though I wanted a folk-artsy feel, I did want to stick to the basic characteristics of the tree – a heavy, deep green foliage, and a bunch of leaves spreading out from a single node. Cool, shady and majestic, with quaint orangy-red fruit. The leaves were done in hooker’s green and burnt sienna, and I used a round sponge brush loaded with reds, greens, purples, and yellow ochre for the fruit.