book project

last summers a few of us got together & spent time at the Crafts Museum,
the textile collection also product collections here are vast, inspiring & never ending

 the idea was to learn & doucment Indian motif vocabulary...

...maybe a book, maybe a story tale, maybe some other intellectual product, etc.

Ishanee took birds - Peacoc, parrot, etc. owls, egale, etc, did also show up occasionally
I took up beasts of burden - elephant, horse, camel & some random ones like deer, that show up often in artworks

So craft museum displays these two really LARGE pannels in Kalamkari roughly 8'X 25 to 30'long
they are enormus!
it is a shiva story, with a central shiva dedication
could also be the story of Ramayana

following are hand sketches (that took forever) of the elephant activities in the pannel 

happy elephant fetches water & lotus from pond

loved the happy expression in the eyes here

offering to shiva

war scene - at work with master/lord
loved the arrows in the background

& the anger(?) focus in the eyes here


another great reference was Textile Arts of India, Kokyo Hatanaka
the following image is said to be the oldest exsiting kalamkari fragment, the number of fauna in it is vast - deer, rabbit, pig (?), parrot & some two other birds