The Gandiva Bow - Art Journal Layout

Hello crafty friends,

I am back with another art journal layout today.  I was so happy with my previous one which I made of Lord Krishna ( you can check it out here ) that I decided to pick inspiration from one of our epics, The Mahabharath. 

In Mahabharath, one of the central characters is Arjun ( my son is also named as Arjun :) ) and he is a highly skilled warrior. He is an are archer and his archery skills are highly detailed out in the epic. There was no one to better him ( set aside Karna and Ekalavya, who were tricked never to overshadow Arjun ). Setting aside all these, in his own merit he was a great warrior and he received the powerful Gandiva bow from Varuna and the sound of Gandiva is said to have sent fear to the enemies on the other side. 

So here is my take on the Gandiva bow, sketched and painted using pearl colors and fineliners. 

I have used Mudra's Arrow chipzeb to denote the array of arrows that came from the bow. 

I had this stamp from Itsy Bitsy which is a swirly pattern and almost looked like a bow, so did some shadow stamping using Ranger Archival Inks.

By the way, the background is done using Itsy Bitsy Color splashes , Distress oxide inks and some stenciling using icraft stencils. I did the background after painting the Gandiva bow. I thought i was going to ruin it, but somehow made it work by a bit of masking using copy paper.

 

I finished off the bow with some rhinestones and of course, you can't have a bow without the string!. It looks and feels so good in real life. This is what makes art journal so inviting to me. The look, feel, textural elements and connect you have with it, because you are making it for yourself is matchless. 

What is the Gandiva without Arjun's names! Some of his names are written in Hindi. They are Gandivadari Arjun , Partha, Dhananjaya, Vijaya. 

Let me know what you think of this project!

Entering this to the below challenges:

• Mudra Craft Challenge #34:
• My Time to craft
• Crabbie Moments of Craft
• Fusion Card Challenge
• Aud Sentiments

Products used:

• Mudra Chipzeb in Arrows
• Itsy Bitsy Color Splash - Hot Pink
• Itsy Bitsy Color Splash - Tangerine
• Itsy Bitsy Switly Stamp - I believe this set is retired
• Gelly Roll No 10 White
• Ranger Archival Bright Tangelo

Krishna Journal Page

 Hello there people!

Finally i am writing back on my blog after more than 2.5 years. My last post on blog was on Nov 2017! Whaaaaaaaaaaat ????? 

Even though I was very active on my Instagram profile and could not manage both, I always missed the long detail rants that I can have on my blog that I was unable to express on Instagram. 

During this lockdown I have started doing journal pages to start using up my supplies. There are so many artists who have super beautiful and complex journal page layouts, but my style always depends on the mood on the day that I am working. Some days it is grunge, some time it is fun and quirky and sometime it is a take on India, Hinduism, and deities, murals and related stuff. 

This page is a take on cute achukuttan or Krishna, Whenever i feel not in a great mood to craft or sketch, the best thing for me to do is sketch him out. Because however you sketch or whatever mistakes you make, he will always turn out beautiful and charm you and your day!

I prepped the base ( just couple of copy papers folded in 2 and glued together) with gesso and applied acrylic paints with a baby wipe. I did a few stenciling of brick patterns but I really did not like that look and blended over it with distress inks to try and mute it. 

I then free handed Krishna and painted him in yellow and blue. I was thinking what to do with the peacock feather. I did not have one and wasnot sure if would get it right by painting. That is when my eyes fell upon Mudra's chipzeb in paisley pattern which was waiting to be used on my desk. I grabbed a couple and embossed it with Wow Iridium Glitter and added it as his head gear. I love how this turned out!

I love adding sentiments on the my journal pages. So added Om Namo Narayana using a while gel pen on a black cardstock and added it. 

I felt it still lacked some border, so I reached out to the Peek-a-boo designs paisley stamps and picked the small shell stamp. I have had this stampset for a couple of years but never used this particular stamp. How was it so meant to be that Krishna's layout had to have a conch shell border!! Divine intervention or not, it was made for this project. 

Let me know what you think about this project. And hopefully i am more active and blogging again!

Linking this up to the below challenges. 

Mudra Craft Challenge #34:

Products used:

• Mudra Chipzeb - Paisley
• Peek-a-boo designs Motifs stampset
• Fevicryl Hobby Colors for the background
• Distress Inks
• Ranger Archival Black Ink
• Gelly Roll No 10 - White Pen