Well, our little URBAN SKETCHERS SERBIA branch today officially had a bilateral international session 🙂 Srikkanth Iyer, an Indian sketcher coming from the Netherlands, decided to visit Belgrade and unleash his pens on our streets.
Even before we met at noon, Srikkanth already got busy, sketching the St. Sava temple. When we found our spot at Skadarlija, he showed me his result…
…as well as other examples of his work:
Chatting all the time, about art, his travels, cultural differences and all the other stuff, we got busy:
Srikkanth has his own unique style with wide cityscapes full of passing figures. I’m more into details myself, isolating parts I find intriguing, like these stripes this time:
He also showed me something quite interesting and unusual; an Indian brand of watercolors that I found very different from what I’m used to. Not only these colors are specifically packed, more like a “petit carnet” holding samples like golden leaves would be stored, but they also behave in a very different manner.
The pigment concentration is unusually strong, producing colors so vivid and saturated, even by sampling a tiniest drop. And they soak so fast into paper that I had trouble not only painting, but even mixing them – just while sampling the next hue, the first one would dry out, they just bond with paper so fast. It was so difficult to control, I really don’t know how I would work with such a tool, so far away from my approach.
But it was fun, trying something from the other side of the globe, connecting with different flavors, aromas and habits. As was meeting Srikkanth, learning from him and discovering bits of our world I probably never would otherwise.