We had been to this river bank recently, and as we sat and watched the river flowing tranquilly , thousands of yellow chrysanthemum petals started flowing along with the waters. They were flowers with which puja had been performed in the temple way upstream. Looking at them reminded me of a spiritual experience that I had had (a little more than a year back) after coming out of the Sivalayam in the Kanaka Durga temple (it sits on top of a hill and is an important temple here). I was gazing at this river in the same way and the Sacred Fig tree had spread out its vast canopy under which I was standing. This tree, which lives for hundreds of years has a religious significance and is found near many temples. What I cannot convey in words, the bliss that I had experienced that evening, and along with it the assurance of it coming into this earthly life is what I wish to convey through this painting…
These two snaps are of the opposite bank.
I took a paper the same size as that of my watercolor sheet and fixed the main limbs and branches of the tree accurately. I then started placing humming birds and basically played around sketching flower shapes etc. to let my muse flow.
I then transferred the main lines on to the watercolor sheet and drew the morning glories, rhododendron onto the sheet directly, the fuschias were a temptation that I couldn’t resist adding to an otherwise complete composition. I don’t know if I will keep them. Hummingbirds’ feathers show beautiful metallic iridescence, i.e the colors change according to the angle from which they are viewed. They hover in the air by flapping their wings rapidly and can even fly backwards. They have long thin bills and bifurcated tongues adapted to feeding on nectar from long tubular flowers. They like to drink from all of these flowers that I mentioned but they especially like the bright pink, red to orange range of colors. They are found only in the Americas, not over here, but I did name this Paradise, didnt I?
Photo Credits: Thanks Char for the reference of morning glories, Andy for the Fuschia. Rhododendron, Mary of mooseyscountrygarden.com has let me use her photos. For the ‘Othello Roses’ and ‘Pale blue Iris’ , I had taken refs from her site and she had liked them and said she wanted to take print outs of the paintings and hang them on her office wall, and I said she could.
For the humming birds, thanks to the public domain images of DLS, and Deb, Aleks, Aries of wetcanvas.com.
Watercolor Journal 