The Wonders of Travel

I was amazed to see what Ludhiana could do in my recent trip there for a friends wedding. The fashionable Punjabi women make the most of what is available in seemingly plenty out there - huge pools of talent. Embroidery, dyeing, incredible tailors and a sea of beautiful fabric to choose from as well as gorgeous borders and laces and the list simply never ends ! 

I decided I wanted to get a skirt made - in two days and it happened! I bought a white ''dyeable'' crepe

material and walked across the street to see the guy do this to get me the exact colour that I was looking for.

nothing less. I wanted to share this incredible process with you !

 Wanted to take these back home with me. A mouth watering collection of coloured powders (dyes)

He then adds the colours with great flair into this pot of boiling water

A few minutes later - voila! My gorgeous now bright orange fabric emerges!

And all the water goes down a drain. I shudder to think of the chemical pollution there. 

 Incredible to watch, and I wish I had my own personal dyeing place here as well. I would go crazy and dye all my things ! 

photo credit : Harleen Johar

That would be me, in Punjabi garb :)

Have a great week folks ! much love.

Starbursts

Its been soo long since I last sat in front of my laptop. Since then, Ive had an incredible trip to Bikaner,and a very hectic move to Chennai ( which still goes on)  I shall share more about my trip in my next post - need to collect my thoughts :)

But for now, I want to share yet another sin from my series. Wrath. Consumed by its own fury, bigger than itself, and bursting with sheer power. Wrath is greater than a sin, its greater than the ego, It becomes unselfish in its extreme emotion. Somebody once asked me why so many of my characters in this series are skeletal. When I close my eyes and imagine the force of the character, most of the time its no longer human. Its what remains.

The creative juices are really flowing now, after being soaked in music and yes, sufi wisdom :) And thank you everyone for the awesome response to Skinny Scribbles! That was really heartening.
Another piece of good news, my Deadly Ego series has been bought :D by Hidesign nonethless. Its going to adorn the walls of its Flagship store which houses beautiful art pieces ! yay :)

The Fragmented Soul

I have talked about how I would love to live in my subconcious world.and free myself from reality. But like I said earlier, it's not an easy task. To awaken all your senses, and achieve that sense of peace one needs to be freed from one's own ego. The ego ties you down to society and our reality as we know it. And once you are free from your ego, you reach your soul and connect with who you really are which would be beautiful. But we all have our egos firmly ingrained, and what is the ego made of? I figure, the seven deadly sins we are all so familiar with are pretty much the vices that make up our ego and obsession with self. 

So I decide to put a character to each of these seven sins. The first one I've done is Envy.

Envy tears apart the soul leaving only fragments behind in fiery emotion. I see the ruthless vulture,

the enormity of the sea as part of the energy forces that would exist in a creature called envy. 

I feel like a large chunk of my energy and emotion has gone into this piece, I hope it does something for you. Would love to hear your thoughts - both on the subject and the illustration.

This work by amrita is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.