Inspiration has flowed
I'm in toy theatre mode
(Seeing lots in my London abode
But not in my own postcode)
Islands and saris
Lots of little Prazmaris
Chance butterflies in Tottenham Court Road...
...Hokusai-wearing husband is holding a finished painting against a gold, gold, gold frame (more on this in future, I just thought the reflections of the gold were quite autumnal)...
...getting on and cracking down on my toy theatre design too. Here's a rare glimpse of my messy studio but tidy table and my toy theatre designs in progress. I hope I get it done by Christmas, that's the aim I'm working towards, fingers crossed. It's candle season...
…A fiery cloud explosion by artist Martin Wong, shown at Camden Art Centre. He was interested in Tantric painting, Kufic architecture and American counterculture and it all falls into his paintings. He also liked painting different hand positions and Kashi liked copying them. Chinatown, San Francisco and the spiral stairs leading to a mysterious room in Camden Art Centre that I've always wondered about...
...The Book classes are slowly venturing into new and 2.5D territories in preparation for the moveable books coming up in November and beyond, which take us through a history of moveable books from their origins in paper diagrams and charts. Here: https://www.vaishaliprazmariteaching.com We start with simple lift-the-flaps, and also a flipbook, which is like a movie in a book. 2.5D is in between 2D and 3D, and is a term taken from the digital world to mean something that appears to be 3D but is actually made up of 2D photos. What is definitely 2D is the flat and painted carpet page of Islamic manuscripts...
Instructions to follow to make your own Carpet Page here
...What is definitely 3D is the clothed body in a sari. We saw an exhibition at the Design Museum on contemporary saris - 'The Offbeat Sari'. Some women there were wearing fantastic saris (without trainers! With nice shoes!) and I complimented them. I think women like to be complimented by other women most of all. I'd wear the saris in the first couple of images, they just look super cool and not like traditional saris at all (which are gorgeous, if impractical. Then again, the exhibition made the point that women MADE them work, and even climbed mountains in them). A sari is essentially a piece of fabric draped artfully and loaded... something flat and 2D that ends up as 3D. So you could argue: 2.5D! More saris below, and then below, the real reason I dragged people to the Design Museum: my obsession with islands. There was a little show at the top on islands. Turns out there is a Design Museum residency and the theme was sustainability in the British Isles - which has 6000 islands!...
...the designers-in-residence designed typefaces for Gaelic scripts and there was an installation called 1001 Drying Rooms (1001 being my other obsession, clearly not alone) dealing with the problem of drying laundry in a city. In some cities you'd just hang it all out the window. Here it might get caught in the rain. We do also have a lot of pigeons, and there was a brilliant proposal to harvest pigeon poo and create a 'guano line' tube line for London, to work with the pigeons to create fertiliser. It's not a new idea, it's an old idea given a new form, which I love...
…Old ideas given new forms is something I try to teach and paint as well. Designing and painting your own Chess, Backgammon and Snakes and Ladders games are all coming up for October. My dad taught me the basic rules of chess around the age of 4. I’m still not very good at the game but certain moments from that time stick out. What I remember from that time was that he said it was a way for women to be equal to men in a game of strategy, and, indeed, the Queen is the most powerful figure on the board (she wasn’t historically - also they had more pieces, elephants too…) Chess is a game of pure strategy. There is no chance involved, only pure thought. Bozorgmehr famously brings the game of chess from India to Iran in the Shahnameh, as a puzzle-gift from one king to another. The court manages to figure out the rules of the game. Are you good at chess? Or, like me, just enjoy the game for its own sake, for playing? We’ll take inspiration from the various miniature paintings depicting chess between all gender combinations and different kinds of boards and paint our own original Game of Thrones.
My dad also taught me backgammon at around the same time he taught me chess, but I’ve forgotten most of it. Upon deducing the rules of chess, the Persian court then sends the Indian court a puzzle-gift in return - backgammon, which they cannot figure out because of the addition of luck, which is like life itself, and not purely abstract. The plain pieces are not as appealing as the figurative chess, yet the board is beguiling with its long arrows - which we can make into beautiful colours and shapes. They can be arrows, snakes, umbrellas, flowers, feathers, foliage, anything you like.
I don’t remember when I learnt to play Snakes and Ladders. It’s commonly a children’s game in the West. Did you play Snakes and Ladders as a child? The ancient Indian game of Gyan Chaupar, whence Snakes and Ladders is derived, was a dice game designed to instil spiritual truths in the player, freeing them from the bondage of this lower world and gain eventual enlightenment (yes, all in a game!). I’ll explain more about my research into the historic meaning of the game during class. We’ll create our own Snakes and Ladders board on paper, either in the traditional format of 9x8 (72) or 9x9 (84) squares or the 100 squares of popular imagination. A later Mughal version is 100 or 101 squares. (It’s also a great way to teach children to count to 100 - once they can count to 100 then other mathematical operations can be taught.) A figurative grid - a wonderful way to use geometry for play and also contemplative painting. Paint the Game of Life on a page.
Also, a continuation of the Margins series with the rest of the named artists I could find and their portraits, and an unusual class in Chinese lattice screens which we can also cut out, in preparation for future toy theatre paper cutting. All at: https://www.vaishaliprazmariteaching.com ...
Book classes
...Wandering around London you never know what you might find. At Tottenham Court Road station there is an immersive (and yes, this is really immersive, it's all around you, all 4 walls and the ceiling) 'pixel art' experience. We caught the butterflies. It was just so colourful and weird that we had to stop, wait and watch. The premise was that a mad professor went to the Peruvian jungle and found a way to make small butterflies into giant butterflies by feeding them special nectar...
...So he made giant butterflies, and in the next room was his laboratory-conservatory with the giant butterflies occasionally flying up to the glass ceiling and just waiting, waiting...
...Isn't there something slightly disconcerting about a butterfly - and especially a moth - just waiting in silence and looking at you? Watching, and waiting - butterflies are loveliest when they are fluttering by but moths... they are pausing and just silently waiting to take over the world. That's my feeling sometimes. It's not only mine - China Mieville wrote a whole science fiction book about this: Perdido Street Station (brilliant). Perhaps that's why I want to paint moths in motion with my flipbook class above, and not as stills. You can watch something less disconcerting and more peaceful here, calm ASMR painting films:
More brushes and beautiful tools here
...New school season, new brushes! If you need, they're here: https://www.theperfectbrush.co.uk/shop 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:
Monthly Miniature Meeting 24.10.23, 6-7pm London time - all welcome
OCTOBER MEETINGVaishali Prazmari is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Vaishali Prazmari's Monthly Miniature Meeting 24.10.23, 6pm - 7pm London time
Time: Oct 24, 2023 6pm London
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83226777875?pwd=Ny9jVlU1ai8yYS96VjZKT3RmQVFJZz09
Meeting ID: 832 2677 7875Passcode: 032012 ...
...The Prazmari boys are getting longer. One now takes up a whole sofa (and his stuff takes up another one!). One is still delightfully podgy but his chubby hands are quite handy. Paintbrushes, and now screwdrivers too. We are making a bow and arrow from a kit. They still need lots of hand help...
Page control: Pause and download free Geometry of the Page resources here
...What appears by magic and not touched by human hands is the opening of Tower Bridge. This is something the eldest always wanted to see and we timed it well and just caught it. It's an amazing feat of engineering and scheduling if you think about it. The small crowd cheered as the tall boat sailed through. I wonder what would have happened if it didn't make it? "Boo-o-o-o"? If it had scraped its sails on the bottom of the bridge? Fruit thrown at it? Crowds are funny! It's not a million miles away from Shakespeare's Globe, where the audience did just that. Transport as entertainment...
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..Little one loves shiny things and his favourite colours are green and pink. They are good colours. I'm glad I've found out now as it took him a while to have favourites (they may change, of course). Here he is in his self-tie-dyed pink t-shirt, his paints by his side and a shiny new diary, which is wishful thinking from his mama...
Theatrically yours,
Vaishali Prazmari