If midwinter is getting you down
I'll share some heat from the tropics
Let teak and palms make you feel calm
Enjoy turquoise island hot pics
Bright colours and lights also work as a balm
And look ahead to fun future topics...
...Let the green sea of heaven be a balm for you, found somewhere in the Andaman...
...this is a nest I made before we went away. I felt like January is a time of nesting and thinking about what makes a home. This island cave part of the world in Phang Nga Bay is famous for birds' nests. They make them with saliva...
…you just make your toy theatres with glue and keep your saliva to yourself. Here: https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/product-page/aladdin-paper-toy-theatre - I was inspired by all the teak wood around me to create a special Thai teak edition of my ALADDIN toy theatre. This isn't the official coloured version, which comes out later this year. This is just one I had to make for myself to remember all the beautiful teak wood (my favourite kind of wood). It's an 'exotic' wood for me since it doesn't grow anywhere I'm familiar with but in Thailand it's everywhere...
Get your ALADDIN paper toy theatre here
...this was my temporary Thai studio, on the floor. Reading the Mahabharata (I've got lots of thoughts to share about that, perhaps later in classes) and painting my toy theatre in tropical sunlight. I brought both serious adult and fun kid art materials with me...
...here are some serious adult Chinese ink sticks with a playful circus theme...
...the circus is a big part of my Margins research and my TALES series aiming to paint all walks of life in miniatures and the 1001 Nights. Here's how it currently looks, a work in progress...
…I decided that the background was not a separate scene (those will be coloured with Thai colours) but a part of the 'wooden' teak theatre. I also brought along some glow-in-the-dark paint with me...
...and the stars in the sky really do glow in the dark. The paint works! Below are the fan tabs I created to hold up the little characters, in variations on a teak theme...
Buy ALADDIN
More brushes and beautiful tools here
...all painted with my Water brush, which is the recommended brush for my toy theatres. You can also use the Rocks and Clouds brushes, but the main one would be the Water brush as there is not much detail to paint - it's all already done for you. More brushes and tools: https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/shop
and here's the link to my Make a Carpet Page e-course. Once downloaded it's yours to keep forever: https://vaishaliprazmaricarpetpage.thinkific.com/courses/make-a-carpet-page or purchase some easy-watching, relaxing painting films...
Watch painting films
Instructions to follow to make your own Carpet Page here
Book classes
...above is Jam Jao the Woodcarver. Yes, it does sound a bit like Jam Jar. Doesn't he look like a Burmese Elvis? He was our favourite person that we met and saw over several days. When he got text message in Burmese on his phone I loved to see them. That curly Burmese script I have only ever seen at the British Library in manuscripts but here as a living language. Why are there Burmese from Myanmar in Thailand? In South-East Asia, Thailand is the rich country. I don't mind communicating with broken English, Google Translate and mostly hand gestures and smiles. We learned: "Hello" in Burmese = Mingala-ba. "Hello" in Thai is Sawatdee-kha. I was so grateful to him for letting my kids sit with him. Craftspeople are the best people.
The eldest sat and watched, then Jam Jao casually passed him some tools and a teak elephant to work on (!). NB: This would never happen in the EU or anywhere that has some regard for health and safety. I let my kids freely carve with our friend JJ as I wanted them to develop a love for and relationship to the (teak) wood, which the eldest clearly fell in love with too, on his own. He felt like it made him different to his parents. "Mama, I don't want to do leather or painting, I want to do something that's never been done in our family". A boy and a master, casually sitting on the floor and carving wood, silently communing and teaching and learning through touch and gesture alone. This was one of the most beautiful parts of our trip. Real tools, real work. The next piece Jam Jao gave to C was a real commission he had to undertake himself - I loved how he didn't dumb it down, he simply gave him a real job, knowing he could easily correct all the dodgy bits later. C is also getting to proper apprenticeship age - so expect fewer shots of him as he gets older.
Of course the younger has to copy everything C does. So K is also carving. And chiselled himself too, and needed a plaster. I didn't mind - it wasn't serious, it's part of learning and I was there supervising. It reminded K of his limits. It made me realise how one must be calm while doing a craft - less chance of accidents. If you are in the right mind, you will experience flow. C stayed and carved with a focus that is rare in him. Which means it is something he loves. It's a long journey to mastery, though, and you carve yourself (ie shape your personality and soul) at the same time as you carve the wood. Any craftsperson will know what I mean. It shapes you.
I'm glad they got to experience this real 'work' and I continued our homeschooling while they were away from their schools. They saw a Thai island school - imagine having a view of islands while you work! Imagine all the balls you'd lose to the sea in this playground! Imagine all the things you can create yourself in your own paintings: https://www.vaishaliprazmariteaching.com/book-online...
...Introducing the CHARACTERS classes: A new series of truly characterful classes and our first creative painting class. Using the ‘Aladdin’ character as an Everyman/Everywoman/Everyperson stem-cell figure from which our characters will sprout, we will create our very own characters in these monthly classes. ‘Aladdin’ is our baseline figure and although traditionally male, feel free to flout the rules - the theatre and pantomime regularly do. The TALES series deals with stock characters that are a kind of shorthand for the viewer. These classes are different. The TALES stock types deal with recognised categories; we design characters who don’t easily fit into boxes. We make real, interesting personages and create guises and disguises that beguile. We take the idea of the Guild processions and Tarot archetypes to represent 1000 faces and different strata of society, as if our character is in a play, the game of life, the veiled illusion that is the theatre of the world.
There will be time in each class to brainstorm ideas, research, play, draw and paint our character. You can borrow bits from other miniatures you like and graft them onto your figure. You can add accessories related to their interests. You can add hats. You can add fun shoes. You can put things in their pockets...Each character is different and unpredictable, so the cover image above is for a baseline reference only. The tiny character is a little pop-up inspirational mascot jinn sprite. In class we'll use our own ideas, imagination and the internet to flesh out our folk. I conceived this idea by imagining Aladdin in a desert (he goes to the desert in my ALADDIN toy theatre). What if this Aladdin-of-the-sands could stand in for everybody? What if he could be anyone? Starting from scratch - from the desert - we can ‘populate’ our Aladdins with all kinds of roles. There is something exciting about going ex nihilo to anywhere. We are free to form our characters however we like. This is an 11-part series for 2024 (shortened from 1001, or 1000 faces operas). Coming up are healers, wanderers, artists, mystics, thieves…
There is also a chance to take the Elements series if you missed it before. I can't remember the last time I officially ran all of them in a row so now is a good chance (since I remembered to do it!). There is also a medieval heart-shaped or cordiform book in conjunction with Patrik, whose website I have been meaning to do but just forgot. I do eventually get round to most things I have to do, just in a different time frame than I intend. So generally best to catch me or classes when they come around.
C is on Instagram, for some reason! Doing his kung fu. He is also famous as a couple of restaurants in north London. He was thrilled to see his name in lights. K was thrilled to have a Thai massage. I was thrilled that they didn't have any qualms about massaging a toddler, neither did they check if he had pre-existing medical conditions, etc etc. They just asked him if he wanted it, he nodded, and off he went. Simple!
The monthly meeting will not be in Thailand, but online. We can always meet across time zones!The monthly meeting link is also over at the Forum, which now is a real hub of information and you just need to scroll around or use the Search tool to find information. It's sorted into broad categories too. The Zoom link is via the Forum https://www.miniaturepaintingforum.com or here's the direct link:
FEBRUARY MEETING
Vaishali Prazmari is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Vaishali Prazmari's Miniature Monthly Meeting
Time: 20 February, 2024 at 6pm London time
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85028962021?pwd=U0Fxa010d0pZUXFYWXlvVElhMFQ0UT09
MeetingID: 850 2896 2021
Passcode: 556781 ...
...We saw a circus earlier in January, as my teacher was in it. Look at their balance! It's also a craft in itself, or as they call it, circus arts.
This is how they make sure kids are quiet on long-haul flights: plug in and play. We have a rule when we travel: no iPad. (Even at the airport we saw some families with their kids already pre-drugged up/plugged-in to iPads and headphones.) I'd brought lots of sticker books and other activities for the kids as we usually do on short-haul flights but nothing, nothing competes with having your own on-demand movies on your own private TV screen and personal child headphones. There is no competition. In fact most people were plugged in during the flight - I took this photo while waiting for the loo and everyone is in their own private world of movies. I did watch a couple but then slept. I really loved tracking the plane on the inflight digital map we had, in real time. There is a thrill I get when we cross time zones and different countries - we flew over the Caspian Sea and loved that. We also flew over the Andaman Sea and I silently prayed to keep flying, because of all places in the world you do not want to land over the Andaman and Nicobar islands. They likely have some of the most beautiful island landscapes in the world, but if you wash ashore on the Sentinel islands you likely won't come back. As much as I am for human relationships and contact, they don't want to see you and you probably don't want to see them either. They don't like fishermen nor missionaries (obviously) and they don't like us, so we'll leave them to enjoy their likely stunning island home for themselves.
actually don't love Thai food - many people do and I can understand why, it's got all the flavours and has noodles as well as rice - I don't love sweet and sour. I just like sour! (And sweet as dessert.) What I do love about Thai food: I love having noodle soup for breakfast. It's not heavy, it's actually light and refreshing. I also like tom yum soup. They were very generous with mushrooms, and cashew nuts in their curries, in a way that Thai restaurants in London are not...
...We found a shack where we could have £1.23 lunches. Whoohoo! We also found a Mama Shop. And a frog at midnight, and lots of evening geckos that would disappear if you tried to get too close. We saw James Bond Island - Koh Tapu in Thai - Thai legend has it that an angry fisherman didn't catch any fish but repeatedly got a nail in his net instead. He sliced the nail in half and one of the halves leapt into the sea to become Koh Tapu. This is probably one of the most iconic images of Thailand. It's also in the Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun. Geologically speaking, it's a karst tower and these limestone rock formations are what I live for... they are just so glorious and like a Chinese mountain painting brought to life, then submerged halfway into the sea. The kids enjoyed seeing the caves and islands as the high point of their trip too...
...on a single island-hopping day I took 377 photos as visual research, mostly of islands and water. My mother politely requested me to stop sending her pictures of islands and water. Don't worry, here I've edited them heavily for you so you can just enjoy the medley of colours, green, blue and turquoise, and forms of the lovely little islands popping out of the sea. They'll make their way into future paintings. I really intently studied how rocks 'work' and how they manage to look so scraggly. They are huggable islands mostly uninhabited. Look at the reddish coloured rocks: can you see the head of a seahorse? And then a mermaid? This is according to Thai fishermen. I see it too - everyone anthropomorphises rocks. There is a camel in Cornwall. The world is full of anthropomorphic rocks. (This is also the basis of my Rocks class as clearly I'm not alone.) Some islands do in fact have residents: here is a floating village built by a Muslim population likely from Indonesia (they don't speak Thai, according to our guide, they speak Bahasa, an Indonesian language). That mosque with the gold domes is striking against the karst tower backdrop; it's sure to wind its way into a painting in future. Nobody knows why they decided to settle here. My theory is they chose to stop here because they liked the view. Who wouldn't? I reckon they chose a good spot.
We talked to some boys on the island who knew enough English to say their names and ages. The kids were happy they were the same ages, there really is something in that - from different corners of the globe yet having lived the same amount of time on this planet. I was really happy that kids are mischievous everywhere. I am sometimes worried that my kids are the wild ones in a given situation; these boys were sitting on the floor and supposed to be eating their lunch of rice. But one of the boys was really concentrating hard on picking up the rice with his fingers and pouring it over his friend's head. And then they burst into giggles.
K started learning to swim of his own accord in the sea. Both boys are marvelling at how their feet sink into the sand with the tide and then they are messing around in a Muay Thai boxing studio. Not shown here, but eventually K got bored of the boxing gloves on his little hands and started wearing them as shoes and walking around like a duck and laughing his head off.
And then they were little speleologists - again, no restrictions on entering sea caves for kids, I just was told to carry K when the water was too high for him to wade through. There was no lifeguard at all either. Brilliant that they don't exclude kids, and basically leave it up to the parents to supervise. I found this throughout our travels in Thailand, and it's the first time I've taken the kids to Asia. Even stopping over in Singapore, I was a bit surprised that, unlike at Heathrow, there was no 'fast-track lane' for families and babies. Their attitude can be summed up as: Your kids, your fault. :-) They really do love kids. But no special treatment because you've got kids. You're not special. Half the world has kids. True - your kids, your problem. Also, they are kids, not ceramics. I guess I was expecting more help with carrying stuff. But on reflection - why? I wasn't alone, P was there too, so in theory we should be self-sufficient. I am comfortable with the UK special treatment of kids. Then again, that woodcarving they did would never be allowed here. Then again I do like checks to be made, what if kids have allergies, what if, what if... then again, keep it simple, stupid...
...the kids bonded, we all bonded. Here is my beautiful eldest caveboy, seriously loving being in a cave. The cutie pie youngest is hard to photograph as he can't keep still, so this is the best still from a series of 8 shots.
All the flowers and plants were real, I couldn't get over that. In Hong Kong, a lot of them are plastic as it's bad luck in Chinese culture to have dying flowers. So instead they have fake ones which gather dust. (?!!) Frangipanis fall from trees and you can pick them up from the ground. This is a real banana blossom! And orchids thriving outside. They don't need fake flowers, everything is real and cheaper like that probably as this is a real tropical climate. Spot the hornbill too. I'm holding a 'sea apple' that is inedible. Being January, there were a couple of tropical night storms. The fan palms can be used as umbrellas, see how giant they are.
K intently painting his copy of ALADDIN. I was so happy that he asked me for a smaller brush, so I gave him an old Rocks brush. He said he couldn't do the small things with the kid brush I'd given him. Back home the kids also made scrapbooks of our travels - a tradition I'll keep for every trip we make, it's a good memory keeping habit. I thought I would make a regular massage a habit of mine then remembered why I don't - they are painful! This was the 3rd massage of my life. Here combined with a traditional Thai herb treatment - yes, they put fire on my belly. They made another towel into a ring shape around my navel and put a herb paste in it. Then draped a wet towel across all of it, which you see, and poured alcohol over it and then set it on fire. I was asked: "Madam, do you want your eyes open or closed?" ... "Open, please!!! [you are setting fire to a towel less than an inch away from me so... yes, I'd like to see what's going on!!]. I also had a dunk in a sand bath, actually a Japanese seed bath which was heated. Patrik declined both of these but I am quite intrepid. It's the circus attitude. There is a certain amount of trust you have to place in therapists, woodcarvers and each other.
Intrepidly yours,
Vaishali Prazmari
P.S. They knew our kids were coming and warned everyone in advance not to feed them.
