Painting Gift for Birthday

Original Image

About 6 months ago, a dear friend moved to a new house and I thought I would paint one of my modern Ganesha as a gift. When I shared my thought to her, she said she had a wonderful picture of Infant Ganesha that she'd like to put up in her study room; it'd be great if I could paint that for her.

I asked her to share the picture while playing it safe; saying I'd try to paint it. I sat over this idea for about 6 months and just a week before her birthday I thought I should give it a try to make it a birthday gift.

I started to sketch on the canvas board and it got really difficult as the pencil gets stuck in the groves of the canvas cloth. Racked my head for more ideas, came up with drawing on chart sheet and framing the final painting.

My attempt

Drawing on plain sheet is so super easy; I finished the sketching in like 15 mins. Almost exact to the original. The sketch looked so beautiful, I wanted it on a canvas so she can hang it directly on the wall. Then I racked my head further and the idea of carbon paper lighted up! Spend 2 days looking for carbon papers; finally found a good stationary store locally - The Paper clip  (better than Michael's) about 14 miles from my house. Drove down and got perfect A4 sized carbon papers.






Only on second attempt with the back of a fork, I finally traced out the image onto the canvas board. Next day, finished the entire painting in 1 sitting. Have totally fallen in love with this image of Ganesha, couldn't believe I'd be giving it away as a gift!

But it made a perfect gift for my friend. Feel accomplished! Glad I attempted and it came out close to the original picture. I may make a copy of the same painting for myself too!