Aditi

10 Years

54 Years

UK

“The more I sketched and painted, the more confident I became,” says the talented Aditi, 10, Wolverhampton UK

September 13, 2020

Hey everyone, your friend Sara here! Welcome to my vibrant ‘Art with Sara’ section.

Here I publish the writings of young artists who not only share their beautiful work, but also manage an equally challenging task of ‘expressing their art.’

Ready to get stunned? Today I share the breath-taking work of 10 year old Aditi from Wolverhampton UK.

Aditi lives with her two sisters, is an avid reader, keen artist and has recently used her skills in art to open her own fundraiser for the NHS. She enjoys singing, dancing and playing the piano. Recently, her acrostic poem on ‘coronavirus’ was accepted for publication in the Young Writers’ Write to Unite book, due to be released in September 2020.

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I decided to do Madhubani art to showcase one of the richest art heritage of India. Madhubani painting is practiced in Mithila. This painting is done with a variety of tools, including fingers, twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchsticks and using natural dyes and pigments. It is characterized by its eye-catching geometrical patterns. There is ritual content for particular occasions, such as birth or marriage, and festivals, such as Holi, Surya Shasti, Kali Puja, Upanayana, and Durga Puja.

The paintings were traditionally done on freshly plastered mud walls and floors of huts, but now they are also done on cloth, handmade paper and canvas. Bright colours like red, yellow, blue, green, orange are used for these paintings.

The next paining I share is titled ‘A village in Bengal.’Having been born and brought up in U.K. and with patients hailing from Bengal, I always wondered how the villages of Bengal and India in general would look like. Although I’ve been to India, I’ve only visited Kolkata and never been outside the city. I came across a painting of a quintessential Bengal village by the great Indian artist Gaganendranath Tagore and was inspired to draw my own take of a Bengal village.

A Village in Bengal Art with Sara by Aditi from UK Bookosmia

Durga puja is arguably the most important cultural event every year on a Bengali’s calendar. The whole state stops to celebrate the five days when the goddess Durga along with her four children leaves her husband Shiv’s abode and returns to her maternal home. This picture,Ardhanarishwar, depicts half Durga and half Shiv in perfect balance with each other. It signifies how the masculine and feminine energies are in a perfect balance in this universe and in reality are two sides of the same coin and these energies are inseparable (or the same) from each other.

Ardhanarishwar Durga Shiv Art with Sara by Aditi UK Bookosmia

I have always enjoyed drawing and painting from a young age. During lockdown, we had a lot of time to pursue our extracurricular activities and hobbies and I started out by self- learning various painting and sketching techniques with various media like graphite, charcoal, oil pastels, colour pencils and water colour. I went onto online training and in the last couple of years I also had few sessions of sketching techniques from a teacher.

My dad and granddad paint quite well and particularly my grand dad set me several challenges to do. As with everything, the more I sketched and painted, the more confident I became.

Recently, I set up a fundraiser to sketch or paint for people in return for a small donation which went to NHS. I offered to sketch or paint anything of their choice. This way, I sketched portraits of people from their photographs. Many asked me to draw anything I wished and in these situations, I chose to paint a variety of landscapes with different media as I really enjoy doing landscapes with bright colours. I’ve also sketched animals and birds in various media.

I think drawing a portrait from a photograph is quite hard as it has to look like the real person with the specific features unlike a landscape which can be anything to your imagination. So mistakes are very easy to spot on a portrait. Many a times, during the initial stages I’ve felt that the art work isn’t really turning out well but in the end, it’s not been too bad. There’s always a feeling of happiness and satisfaction on completing any work as it’s your creation.

I think all the pictures have a story to tell. And they’ve taught me a lot, not only about different sketching and painting techniques but I also learnt about the ‘Ardhanarishwar‘ concept and Indian art through my Madhubani painting. My deer painting in particular, reminds me of our forests that are home to so many animals and birds and how important it is to conserve the earth’s greenery for our own survival and maintain nature’s balance.