After doing all those sea and water paintings, felt like doing a traditional landscape. So here is one with mountains and evergreens and a dramatic sky.

Going on an African Safari is something that I find myself yearning for so many times, especially when I read about stories in that setting or watch a movie or even happen to pass by a documentary that someone else is watching. Maybe, some day! Till then, here’s what I think the sunset would look like.

It is that time of the year when you see these birds everywhere in our garden. They look so cute when they are puffed up and are chirping loudly – almost seems like they have an attitude. Wanted to see if I could capture it on paper. They are so restless that they do not sit in one place for long, so an on location painting would not be possible for an amateur like me. So I went home, and painted this from a reference image.

We took a family vacation to the hills of Satpuda for some leopard spotting. That is the time when we passed an eagle sitting patiently on a branch so many times. It wasn’t moving at all, just patiently waiting for the right moment to get its prey. And when it did finally take off, it was so graceful and swift. Birds of prey have something really majestic about them. This is not the same species of eagle that we saw, but of all the eagles, I think this one fascinates me the most.

We went to this café called the German Bakery. Inside, an artist had painted minimalist owls on the wall. Each one had a different expression. Owls are birds with very different faces and even in cartoons, they can put across quite a few expressions. Though I haven’t yet figured out how to present something in a minimalist form, I tried making a monochrome owl – this is as minimalist as I can get, at the moment!

My uncle posted a video on Facebook where he had visited a lodge in Texas and there was this blue jay that was angrily screeching at the guests, probably not happy that its peace and quiet was being disrupted! There are no blue jays where we live, but that bird looked so interesting. Just one colour on it – blue. After a week I realized I was still thinking about it. So I painted this from a reference image of the web as his video was not clear enough for me.