Continuing the living with calendar art story, here are two other niches.
These smaller ones are painted in contrasting parrot green and citron orange colours. Although calendar art remained an inspiration in doing these two also, the theme is distinct from the first larger niche (story here)- in that, broad elements of a typical calendar have been used on blank backgrounds as opposed to a dense montage of images culled from calendars.
For the first of these niches, I started with a base of aged mirror for a bright reflective surface. My local glass vendor cut a chor bazar buy into neat squares, which we pasted onto ply with silicone.
A few touches of paint in different colours, a few popular motifs that recur in calendars ( the garland bearing elephant, the Devanagari letters reading `Shubh', lotuses and a decorative landscape), successive layers of modge podge and viola, we had the niche!
I sanded down areas that I wanted to reflect more between layers of the sealant, although it is perfectly possible to have a glossy mirror surface.
The second one, was going to house an old brass Ganpati, a gift from my grandmother. Hence the choice of a color that contrasts well with the colour of the Ganpati. Here I just magnified a single motif- the lotus, and printed it in varying sizes. Colouring in with water colour pencils and acrylic colours to defined the blooms :
I wish I had a better picture, but the entire wall is just too wide even for my widest lense. But if helps give a sense, here is the whole deal :
