Ganesh on a big and rare Skeleton Leaf
Frame Material: Barman Teakwood (More than 70 years old)
• In the childhood, I had initiated taking interest in making Skeleton Leaf inspired through my education curriculum subject, painting, in which I had to make the impression of the Leaf on the paper by putting the Leaf behind the page and draw the impression on that page with the use of colour-pencil.
• But, at an early age, I don't know or I can't remember about the idea generation of making of the Skeleton Leaf and how to make it; nevertheless, still, I made, at that time, the Skeleton of Peepal Tree Leaf in numbers. (Around 20 to 30)
• This was the time when computer age had just begun in India which was around 1997-98. If, at that time, I had the leverage of computer, then I could manage to take the support of the artist through it, but, unfortunately, there was no possibility of having a computer attached to the internet having channels to offer courses or any sort of guidance.
• Moreover, there were and, still, are very rare people who took interest in Skeleton Leaf painting, because the storage of painting is a difficult task to accomplish.
• Afterwards, there was a gap of performing on this artwork due to the time was needed to be given for my education, but, still, I managed to spare some time by experimenting on various Tree Leaves.
• I have got 60% success in 2005 but, unfortunately, almost all were broken or half-broken during that period due to having lack of knowledge of how to preserve these Leaves. Additionally, my personal circumstances didn't facilitate me to store and preserve these Leaves. (Some were broken due to annual home-cleaning work and others were destroyed on their own.)
• Thus, it took me around 10 years to learn to make a complete Leaf conversion into the Skeleton Leaf. Finally, in 2014, I have invented a technique to create the Skeleton Leaf by self-learning .
• Skeleton Leaf generation is quite difficult in the sense that there was only 5% success rate from Green Leaf for me. Out of all Leaves, 95% Leaves had been broken during the cleaning of Leaves, which is the process which needs to perform to make it Skeleton Leaf and it is arduous and time-consuming process of at least 3 months.
• There is a lot of other painting-work done available on the Leaf but less comparatively on the Skeleton Leaf. On the top of that, Leaf size is also shown small in the other Skeleton Leaf painting. It has been observed by me that, till date, there is not any Skeleton Leaf painting of this big size Leaf on display anywhere.
• During the period of around 2005 to 2014, I had used water-colour for Skeleton Leaf painting because there is no chance of breaking of the vanes of the Leaf using water-colour. Later on, 2014 onwards, I have started using artistic acrylic colour for the value addition to the art and so completely stopped the usage of water-colour.
• Now, I am fully equipped to make this art as you can see, but, in spite of that, to apply shading colours is not my forte as it is highly time-consuming and extremely difficult task to perform it on a Skeleton Leaf when comparing it to the canvas painting and the paper painting.
Content created by Tapan Vora