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