Modern art Quilling

A quick quilling of modern art

Frescos of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka in Paper Quilling

                                                                                                                                                                        A little bit of history on Sigiriya for some of you who do not know about it (article from the Book Sri Lankan  history)                                                                                                                                                  

        Sigiriya being a fortress, had been well designed for its defenses by having ramparts and moats built around it. There are several approaches to the inner city and the most prominent is the Western entrance. From the summit of the rock, the land areas up to distances of tens of miles can be watched making it hard for the enemy to make a surprise attack to the kingdom.

King Kassapa had reverted his fortress to an ecological wonder by having Royal Pleasure Gardens, Water Gardens , Fountain Gardens and Boulder Gardens made inside the inner city as well as at the palace premises on the Rock summit.

The most renowned is the Sigiriya Rock Paintings or Frescoes of Sigiri Damsels locally called as ' Sigiri Apsaras' painted on a Western Rock face cavity about 100 meters high from the rock base .There now remains around 21 paintings of Sigiriya Damsels but there had been around five hundred paintings during King Kassapa's time along several other places of the same   Western Rock face                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   This is one of the largest wall hangings I did in quilling. It is 24'' by 18'' and I have been quilling around 3000 little bits for the picture. The frescos are very old and the colours are not very visible, so I have used my own colours. I bet the paintings may have been multi coloured and very bright cause even after many years of being exposed to sun and rain, they still look beautiful. It took me about a month to complete & wasn't very easy either. Hope you like it

Paper Quilling = Black African, Model :

I have not been quilling f or a while now, but my passion for quilling makes it impossible to keep away from it for too long. This entire quilling project is done with left over paper strips. The model is made of over 5000 tiny paper circles, of 1/8" paper strips. Took me some time as it was too small and a strain on the eye.

Hope you like it. May not quill again for some time as the Christmas season is beginning and all the work  that comes with it, will not give me time for quilling. May be a few cards, but no major project.

I prefer to do big pictures rather than cards as it could be made use of as wall hangings after framing and I am sure it will last somewhere for some time and  not end up in a bin as most cards :(
Will be back when time permits with another quilling. Take care and happy quilling till I am back :)

Landscape Quilling of Black African Woman in Village

It's been sometime since I did a bit of quilling but here I am with a favorite of mine :) African art fascinates me. The way they draw their women & landscape is beautiful that I wanted to do a picture of African art in quilling. This is my first but won't be the last cause I have decided to quill more of African art. Sorry friends for the long delay in posting. Will try to post another soon. Happy quilling till then.

Sigiriya Frescos (Sri Lanka) in Quilling

Not been quilling for sometime but here I am with a quilled version of the world famous Sigiriya frescos. I would like you to know a little bit of Sigiriya & how important it is to us Sri Lankans. So I am posting an article too, taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigiriya

.sigiriya (Lion Rock, Sinhalese - සීගිරිය, pronounced see-gee-REE-yah) is located in the central Matale District of the Central Province, Sri Lanka in an area dominated by a massive column of rock nearly 200 meters high. According to the ancient Sri Lankan chronicle the Culavamsa the site was selected by King Kasyapa (477 – 495 AD) for his new capital. He built his palace on the top of this rock and decorated its sides with colourful frescoes. On a small plateau about halfway up the side of this rock he built a gateway in the form of an enormous lion. The name of this place is derived from this structure —Sīhāgiri, the Lion Rock. The capital and the royal palace were abandoned after the king's death. It was used as a Buddhist monastery until the 14th century.^[1]

Sigiriya today is a UNESCO listed World Heritage Site. It is one of the best preserved examples of ancient urban planning.^[2] It is the most visited historic site in Sri Lanka.^[3]

Hope you like it. The quality of paper was not very good and the picture did not turn out as nice as I would have liked it to be. Will be back soon with another picture soon. Happy quilling :)

A Quilling tribute to the London Olympics 2012

     GODDESS ATHENA       

It is the all  important day that not only the athltes but  the entire sporting world and sporting fans were waiting for, London Olympics 2012. This is my entry to the sports theme competition in a quilling group on face book. I wanted to do something different. I love reading history and enjoy all the mythical stories and tales of all countries. Since olympics and Athens are closely connected I wanted to do a quilling  in remembrance of the past and present.
 Athena is the name of an important goddess for the Greeks. She is the patron goddess of Athens the goddess of wisdom, a goddess of arts and crafts (agriculture, navigation, spinning, weaving, and needlework), the favorite daughter of her father Zeus, and, as a war goddess with a focus on strategy more than bloodshed, an active participant in the Trojan War. She gave Athens the gift of the olive tree, providing oil, food, and wood. (article from the web)
Since the first Olympic torch is lit by the high priestess in Greece and given out to the world before any olympic games, I wanted to quill something to symbolise this. So hear is my imagination and tribute to all athletes of London olympics 2012. Good luck to all the participants

Lady in the garden (Quilled)

To day I am posting once again my very first quilling project that I did in  2007 and posted in May 2009 cause that is the time I started my blog. If you look closely all the quilled bits are  not in the usual way that you may have seen in books or tutorials or even from classes you may have gone to. It is because I had never heard or seen quilling before 2009. My love and hobby from very young age was hand craft. I only had to see something and I would never rest till I did it at least once. My flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/laktile has pictures of all my craft since 2009. My Facebook craft album which is public  has all my craft pictures too.

One day as I was going through some books in the Arts/Craft section in a book store, I came across a little magazine with a picture of a rat. It looked like paper circles but  it did not interest me much,so I put it aside. I spend all my free time creating something and one day I had run out of all my ideas and I remembered the paper rat. I knew it was done with strips of paper, so I started twisting and rolling paper for many days till I was satisfied with the result. And the first result is the leafs on the right hand corner which I created with the comb (My tutorial on this leaf is on the blog). Now there are many who do this leaf. Some give credit to me but most don't :)

This picture is my imagination and not from any book or copied from anyone. My visitors to the blog has now increased so much, but I know many of you would not have seen this,cause this was one of my first postings three years ago. I have had many offers for this but I could never make up my mind to part with it. Hope you all would like it :)

IT'S SUMMER (Quilled)

A painting of this picture was posted on facebook by one of my friends. Loved it the moment I set eyes on it. It was a unique painting of a girls face at a glance and then the beautiful flower and leaf arrangement. It was so artistic that I made up my mind to quill it as my next  project. I named it as "IT"S SUMMER" cause it is the time of year that flowers are in full bloom in my country. Hope you like my quilling. Will be back soon with the next. I should thank the artist who painted and shared this picture too.

Dora The Explorer - Quilled

Happy New Year to all my visitors and flowers.. You gave me great support last year by commenting on my pictures and visiting my blog. My visitors flag counter, shows visitors from 120 countries and visitors are nearly 40,000. I believe I give you something of interest and I would continue to do so this year too. I may not create a lot, but will bring you something of interest. Hoping I could do at least 2 projects for a month.

So this is my first project for 2012. I love kids stories. It takes me to the wonder land of kids and make me feel like one too. It brings out pictures like this in my mind and I quill them. Dora is my grand sons favourite story. Hope little kids could see it. Wishing all of you a great year friends. Will be back soon with another project. Take care

Eveil Fairy & Owl

I call her the evil fiery, because my quilled picture looks like she is planning something evil with her friend the owl. When the printed picture appeared on a friends page, I thought it would be beautiful for quilling and commented on it. Paula my friend and a few others too had the same thought. So we agreed to quill it. Paula and myself kept our promise and hear is my picture. Paula, you did a great job too. Love it. It is beautiful. I wanted to frame it and gift it to some one for Christmas. So I thought it would be nice to spice it up by adding some leaves to it. Hope you like my picture. Will be back with a christmas quilling. Take care and happy quilling till we meet again

Cleopatra Quilled

Roman History has always been my favourite reading. I love all movies of the Old Testament. Cleopatra is one of those movies that I would love to watch over and over and never get bored of. It was a challenge to my self to quill this beautiful queen who was so famous not only in her time but in our time too. It wasn't easy quilling. So much paper wasted. I quilled so many shapes and discard them till I was really satisfied with it. I did the face thrice before I settled for this pattern. The quilling pieces for the bird too had to be done several times. It wasn't like quilling flowers or animals. It had to be so close to the real painting if I had to call it Cleopatra. I think I did justice to the picture. May be she will like it if she could see it from where ever she is. Hope you would like it too ☺

.

My 4 favourite Ladies

Wanted to have all my ladies together so you could have a better look at how I quilled them. They are all quilled with 1/8" strips of A4 coloured paper. Hope you like them

Christmas fiery

Since Christmas is around the corner and everyone are getting into the festive mood, I wanted to do something to match the festive season and this was the outcome This is my first 3d fiery and I am very happy the way it turned out. It reminds me of the girl in Avatar. Since the 1st attempt came out ok, I think I will try out more of these:)

Poinsettia are flowers, that are popular with Christmas, and red green yellow are the colours in use. So I did it to match the theme. The picture is 10"x12" and the strips I used are 1/8", cut from A4 coloured paper. This would be my last quilling for this year as December is a busy month with plenty of work and activities and I am off to Australia to spend a few weeks with my daughter which I am eagerly looking forward to. Hope to do a lot of "craft tools" shopping while I am there. Wish you all a happy  festive season :D

A little more details about my quilling technique in the fiery:-
 I am obsessed of getting things perfect as far as possible in what ever I do. Be it quilling,cooking,house keeping or whatever craft. I try out things I see even if I do not know how to, in my own way by experimenting over and over. Sometimes skipping meals and breaking rest till I get it wright. As I have mentioned before, quilling too was something I did with out knowing how to, or seeing one. So it is different to the traditional way. The hands and legs of the fiery was made with tight rolls. I made many hands and legs cause it kept on coming off when I pushed it out to get the shape. But I got it after several attempts. After I pushed it out to get the length I needed, very very gently and patiently I bent it to shape. This was the most trickiest part of the fiery. But I loved the way it shaped at the end. You have to have patience and 100% concentration to get any project well done. There is no wire inside the hands or legs to shape it. The entire picture is done only with strips of paper