Going Seedy

One of the many things I’m busy with these days (apart from the regular cooking, cleaning, etc) is attending the art class at the kid’s school every Thursday. The classes are free (Yay!! 🙂 ) and even the supplies are free (Yippee yay!! 😀 ). Needless to say, I haven’t missed a single class since I found out about it. Alas, I have completed only one art-work till now –

Fabric paint on silk

 

Another angle

Its a shame, really, because though I finished the painting in one sitting, it took me two weeks of dilly-dallying to finally put the lace frill around it. In fact, I was quite okay without it anyway, but Senora Miriam wouldn’t listen.

Aaah! Senora Miriam!!

This gutsy old dame is our art teacher, who, incidentally, doesn’t speak a single word of English. Neither does she understand it. So when I said, I didn’t want the lace, she just pulled out a length of it and handed it over. When I insisted, she took the lace from my hand and as if explaining to a child, told me how to stick it around the metal frame. I struggled to find the right words to let her know my true feelings, but Spanish evades me. Other than a casual, “Adios Amigos”, how much do we use it anyway?? Anyhow, another Mexican woman in the class took pity on me and explained to Senora Miriam that I didn’t want the lace. At this, Senora Miriam shot me such a look of of horror, rage , pity and grief, roughly in that order, that by the end of those few nanoseconds I agreed to put two rounds of lace around that damned frame if she wanted! She told me to stick to one.

Finally, after three weeks (or three classes), I was done with the frame. The BF gladly hammered a portable rack in the drawing room to display the fruit of my labor . It sits there pretty 🙂

(The smudges on the painting above and not by me! They are by Senora Miriam 😀 )

After the frame, we started on seed-art, something that is quite a cultural thing in Mexico. I believe people design entire walls by sticking little seeds in patterns. Seed art looks something like this :-

Mexican seed art

(No, I didn’t make that. Obviously. Duh!)

(And No, I don’t intend to. EVER.)

I was pretty piqued at doing something different. I mean, how difficult is it to stick grains on a design base, huh?? We (me and the other Indian moms) hunted for designs on the net and finalized our patterns. On the day of the class, we arrived, all merry and chatty, till we caught sight of the wooden boards awaiting us. What we didn’t expect was that we had to finish boards that were nearly 2 feet by 1 and half feet!! Just looking at the size of the board made us realize what a tough task lay ahead. Immediate rethink was the need of the hour. Google came to the rescue and  threw up a few easy patterns. One of the simplest pattern we found was this :-

My board after I did the outlines with black rice

 

This was the simplest pattern available and I quickly drew the outlines on two other boards as well 🙂 . Sticking the black rice was easy enough (have you ever seen black rice before?? I thought that the grains were dyed black, but it seems they were actually black in color 😐 ) . I just had to follow the pencil pattern on the board. The tough part was filling in the other colors. I started with the clouds above. Split Urad dal was used to fill in the swirls. Moong dal filled up the petals/rays and though I had initially planned on filling in the centre with Moong dal too, the effort required was too much! I used Chana dal because they are larger and easier to stick. I also added a few to the rays to give some ‘effect’.

Clouds and Sun

One look at the sun and the BF declared it the most rotten thing he’d ever seen (no, he didn’t actually say that. But if you can’t read your husband’s expressions after years of living with him, what have you learned in life??!) . So I took a knife and dug out the rays/petals. The rework, I tell you!! Never will I take a short-cut again 😐 . Much glueing later, the board looked something like this  (that is Masoor Dal in the pathway, whole green Moong dal for the watermelon’s peel and white Til seeds for the white parts) :-

The edited sun

I had to colour Urad Dal with red food-coloring to prepare seeds for the watermelon. After weeks of of sticking grains and two vertebrae knocked out of position, I’m at this stage :-

The foreground’s covered. Whew!!

This is what the BF calls my Goodness-I-Can’t-Believe-She-Reached-Here stage. It is also what I lovingly call my Till-Here-No-Further stage. Thats because Senora Miriam (remember? The art matron?) wants my design background to be shaded !! Red, yellow and orange coloured seeds have to be stuck in such a manner that the colours move from red to yellow towards the outside 🙄 . I’m sure it will look beautiful that way. I’m also very sure that this lifetime is too short for me to achieve that.

And hence, the board has been lying around, gathering lint (there’s no ‘dust’ here….just mounds of lint) for the last three weeks.

I need motivation to go on folks. I just can’t seem to gather the passion to finish the last mile (also, the longest!). I also need suggestions. Should I go with the ombre effect that Senora Miriam demands or should I cover the background with something more neutral? I have tried sticking Sabudana, rice and til seeds for the background. They just don’t look good. Is there any other dal or grain that in your opinion would make the foreground stand out?

(Please omit Rajma, Chhole and White Peas. They are just too large and look horrbile :()

Kindly help.

Mucho Gracias.