During my trip in the Himavaan mountains, acres of gigantic trees and tall lengths of grass was a constant scene regardless of the distance I had travelled. Looking at these mountains forests, I wondered if it was inhabitated by any wild animals. When we passed by the signboard indicating route to The Nanda devi reserve park I couldn’t help but think of the many deer, bears, and the foxes that lived there. I wondered if there were any tigers. In the duration of this trip, Jungle was imprinted in my mind, just as well Tigers were after my Chiang Mai trip in 2015.
It felt organic for me to enter the July ABS, the monthly challenge at the Art bead Scene Blog with was focussed on the Tiger in a Tropical Storm painting by Henri Rousseau.
Tiger in a Tropical Storm by Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau’s Surprised
I submit my work to different challenges or publications and when it doesn’t get accepted, I change a couple of components or sometimes only its name and submit it at other venues. I was surprised to learn that a great artist like Rousseau too did exactly that all those years back. When his Tiger in a Tropical Storm painting did not get accepted into the Academie de peinture et de sculpture, he changed its name to Surprised and submitted it the Salon de Independants where it was accepted. Though initial criticized, the painting was later found to be technically superior mainly due to the rendering of the green leaves where the colours were layered upon one another. Naturally, I picked the greens, browns and yellows of the leaves to be the center of attraction of my piece.
My interpretation
As mentioned earlier, my design for a pair of earrings started with a pair of leaf components in pewter. I rendered the leaves in layers using various inks and compounds to get a streaky – pencil rendered feel as in the painting. I dribbled a little paint and let it drip to mimic the effect of rain watering down the pigment as in the painting. The photo does it no justice. I combined these with the triangular matt glass beads by Soul Silver.
To me, a tiger is made up of triangles – its face, its ears, its nose and even the way its eyes and nose are placed on its face is a triangle. Also, after petting tigers for nearly one hour in Chiang Mai, I can honestly say that most of the stripes are triangular too. Given the fact that I do not include faces (human or animal) in my designs, the triangular bead with a stripe is the abstract representation of a Tiger for me. The red and yellow colors represent the passion and ferociousness nature of a tiger and the whole form is suggestive of how playful they are.
Usually I create necklaces for challenges that I participate in (except ofcourse the we’re all ears which is an earrings challenge). However, this inspiration called for earrings – something long and linear to mimic the movement of the tiger’s tail.
I hope you found it interesting
Cheers
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