Are you afraid of a blank canvas?
Don't know where to start from?  Whenever you are afraid of a blank canvas, and do not know where to start or how to start, then for a moment just ask your mind to shut up for some time. Forget everything. Then just start filling up your canvas with loads of random colors and layers. Yes, without thinking do this and I can 100% assure you that inspiration will automatically start flowing and will finally leed you to a beautiful end result.
At least this was my experience while working on this small artwork of mine. I had not painted for more then a month before I sat in front of this small blank canvas. Yes I was nervous and lost and did not really know where to start from and on top of that my critique mind kept telling me, what if you do this and it went wrong or what if you do that and it went wrong. Aaaaaaaaaa. Yes that exactly was the moment when I did what I had explained in the first paragraph of this article and came up with this adorable little doll of mine :)
Hope you will all enjoy the video below and hope my process will inspire you to make one for yourself as well. Thankyou so much for dropping by.
Happy creating
Shilpa / Artyshils
Coming from a quite city of Nagpur in India, I had never ever even imagined that anybody is ever going to even notice me. I was a shy little girl who grew up drawing in her small sketchbooks and sharing them with my parents who inturn shared them with their friends and I loved the little words of appreciation I got from them like, very good, well done and so on. That is it, that was my little world. No body knew me beyond this.
Just Nagpur was my whole world at that time and getting my work known even in India was a big deal for me. But destiny had some different plans for me. I was shown a direction by some external powers. I just worked my way there. Not going into details, I would just like to share, how fascinated, excited and thrilled I get when I get viewers, comments and emails from around the world appreciating my works, telling me how much they are inspired by it and how much they love my efforts and would love to own one of my works. So much love and kind words are a big big boost to me as an artist and that is what keeps me going and makes me want to work more and more. Apart from this I really did not expect more to happen in my life, until and unless I was approached by lovely Jeniffer Hutchins for my first interview ever as an Inspiring artist on her website. I was ofcoarse thrilled as I really had not expected that I will ever be interviewed. When she sent me the questions, it took me many many days to reply to her. Not that I was being mean or rude by rplying late, I was just intimidated. I wanted my answers to be perfect so I just kept thinking about them so much that she had to send me a reminder for a reply. Being embarrassed by the reminder, I thought, what am I doing? There is nothing like "perfect" in this world. Just reply to the questions straight from the heart , the way you feel and let it go. So I did just that and so here is the final interview :- http://www.joyfulartsstudio.com/inspiring-artist-shilpa-menghani-ruchandani/
I hope you enjoy reading my 1st interview and I will look forward to your reactions.With best regardsShilpa / Artyshils
 Ohhhhh yes!!!!! This beautiful lady can absolutely be yours soon. So do you want to win this "Girl behind the bush"?
Its been quite a while since I hosted my last give-away for my youtube subscribers. It was a successful one and I really really had loads and loads of fun hosting it. Ever since then I wanted to host one more but never really got to actually doing it. But here I am once again with an original artwork by me for you, the special people on my life, whose comments just keep me going. I really love you all and really really appreciate your love and feedbacks about my works. So a big thankyou to you all for being there for me and loving me endlessly.
So to win this giveaway, all you have to do is, just these three things :-
1) Subscribe to my youtube channel :-
2) Comment below my giveaway video on my youtube channe and let me know what kind of videos you would like to see from me more on my youtube channel :-a) Painting videosb) Introduction/ reviews of various art material available in the market.c) Crafting videosd) Polymer clay videose) Anything else3) Post the link of my giveaway video on your facebook / blog.This is the link that you just have to copy and paste wherever you like i.e your blog or your facebook :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=varhbwk3bh8
That is it.Just these three things and the artwork will be yours :)The result will be announced as soon as I reach 350 subs on my youtube channel, which is 318 right now.I really hope you enjoy this contest and have as much fun as I am having hosting it.Thankyou once againHugsShilpa / Artyshils
 It is very important for me as an artist to keep experimenting with various new materials available in the ever growing art market. So this is exactly what I wanted to do when I came across this amazing Pearlescent Tinting medium by Daler - Rowney, while I was just window shopping at my favourite hobby store in Leeds. I had not heard about the medium before but looked interesting while I read the description on its tube that said - "Adds shimer and luster to acrylic paints". Daler-Rowney being my most favourite brands in acrylic paints and mediums, I did not really have to think much about the quality that I was sure of to be the best. But what kind of shimmer / luster can it bring to my acrylic paints and how can I use it on my canvases? These were the question raised by my hyper active artistic head and I decided to buy it. I experimented with it first on bits of paper and realised that it converted all my pure acrylic colors into metallic pearly kind of colors and that looked amazing to me. I am not a big fan of shimmery stuff on my canvas as I feel that it takes away the classy feel of my artworks. But this was not the regular shimmer. It was different.very different. The result of it and what kind of different it is, you can catch up in the video shown below. My first proper canvas experiment with this medium is a canvas full of my handmade clayflowers which is available on sale in my etsy store HERE. and again the making of it you can catch up with on my Youtube video below as well along with the slideshow of its pictures.
 I had come across loads and loads of videos on youtube to tempt me enough towards trying my hand at clay. Not able to resist that strong urge of my artistic head, I went ahead and just bought a random clay bag from the nearby art store not knowing much about clay at all then. I just read air dry clay on the pack and bought it. Came home, quickly arranged my camera and decided to share with you all my 1st experience with the air dry clay. While watching other time lapse youtube videos where people are shown to make clay stuff with all the ease and confidence, I too believed myself to come up with a master piece in my 1st attempt itself. Hehe :) But soon I realised that it was not at all a cakewalk which I though it would be. Much like any other art clay too needs a lot of practice and patience and some skilful techniques to comeup with even a decent sculpture. So I having none at that time, came up with what you can see in the video below. As they say - "Necessity is the mother of invention". After my first attempt with clay where I had so much fun playing with it that I decided to explore more and more in to the world of clay. I surfed the internet, explored all the clay related youtube videos and studied about it. And yes by now I know all about it right from different brands of clay to different types of clay. I have even experimented with making different things out of various kinds of clays and have learnt quite a lot about it which I surely intend to share with you all soon in my upcoming videos on my youtube channel.
Shilpa / Artyshils
 Yes!! As the title of this post suggests, that is 1 question I was asked most by my Youtube video subscribers or my friends on facebook page.. - "What kind of paints and brushes do I use for my Acrylic paintings".. So specially for you all I decided to make a video displaying all the paints and brushes I love and own. I am sure you will not be absolutely thrilled to have a look at my brushes, but the video will for sure give you an idea about what kind of paints and brushes to purchase for your acrylic paintings the next time you go to your nearby art store, if you are a newbie to acrylic painting.... I haven't stated any names of the brands of brushes I use in the video because firstly I do not think the taking care of brands while buying your brushes is important and secondly they were brands that I used to get in my local art store when I used to live in India and you don't get them anywhere else in the world. So it dose not really matter. If still anybody would like to know, I am use Weldon and Camlin paint brushes and they work absolutely brilliantly. And about the paints you can find out in the video below :-
I hope you enjoyed the video. Do comment below if you think my video was useful enough to you or if you have any suggestion/ topic that you would like me to cover in my upcoming videos.
Shilpa / Artyshils
 When I was approached by a friend, a mother to a beautiful three year old daughter to make a portrait of her baby, I was completely thrilled and excited with the idea. But at the same time I was at a point in my life as an artist, where I had started feeling that I had painted enough pictures in the style I was painting in and was kind of getting bored of that style. Something only interests me until and unless I am not able to achieve it. As soon as I achieve a particular thing, I want to move on to something new. I knew I wanted to create this portrait but I even knew that I did not want it to be the way I had painted the "Old lady portrait" or "The red boy" . But how exactly I wanted to go about that portrait then was still not too clear in my head. I bought a brand new canvas for the painting, made the drawing of the little lass on the perfectly white, textured, primed surface of the canvas cloth and now was the time to start painting. My head wanted me to play it safe, go with the regular style or to be precise "Just stay in my comfort zone", where I exactly knew how the painting will finally end up looking. But that is not what me or my heart wanted to do. I finally made this firm decision to fight with my head, go with my heart and just enjoy the painting, without much thinking of the final outcome and just play with random colors that my heart desired. It was not really an instant decision made by me, as I slept over it after just completing the drawing, for two days to finally be able to decide that, yes I wanted to challenge my artistic abilities and get out of my comfort zone of a particular painting style to try something new. It is a difficult thing to do, because when you are in your comfort zone, you know that everything will be perfect in the end and deciding to get out of it means that risking an important work which could end up into a messy painting if things dint go right. Finally when I sat down to start painting, I decided to paint with a colorful palette in a patchwork style, the style usually suitable with the oil paints but considered a bit difficult with the very fast dryling acrylic paints. Challenging myself to work in an oil painting style using acrylic paints brought a lot of thrill and made me too too excited to work on this painting all the more. Ofcoarse I wasn't able to stick to that particular style for the whole painting till the end, tough I started with it, but I was so glad with the final results in the end that you can catch up with in the video below. I am more then happy that I fought back my head and followed my heart who asked me to not to worry and just sing like a free bird. One lesson I for sure learnt from this artwork that I thoroughly enjoyed as well and will be a very crucial thing for me to grow as an artist is :- Keep Challenging myself and stop thinking TOO MUCH about the final outcomes. When you are enjoying doing something a lot, your enjoyment will eventually surely show up in the final outcome.Shilpa / Artyshils
 For a long time I had this idea running in my head where I wanted to stitch a canvas cloth in to a wallet or a bag and then paint it. But due to lack of a sewing machine, I just couldn't get going with that project. I so badly wanted to try this project that I couldn't even keep it off my mind. Then I thought of asking any of my neighbours if they owned a sewing machine that I could use, but failed at that as well. So I carried on with my regular canvas board paintings / projects, tough still wanting to work on a canvas bag.
Few days later, I was in the market with a friend and we just entered a random art store which we had never visited before. I had passed through that street, where that store was situated many times but had never noticed it, as it was in a hidden corner. But that day coincidently we happened to cross that street and decided to get inside that store just to check out what kind stuff was available there. And then OMG ( Ohhhhh Myyyyy Godddddd ), I just saw a stitched cotton canvas bag and that too exactly stitched the way I had imagined it to be. I got so so very happy and excited and ofcoarse ended up buying not one but 10 of those. I even bought some for you all to enjoy which you can buy from my ETSY STORE HERE. I am a firm believer of this thing "when you really want something real bad with all your heart, and you just can not stop thinking about it, the universe carves a way to take you towards that thing", and this had then happened. I found the bag and that too exactly the way I wanted it to be and that too by walking by through a shop which I had never bothered to even check out before. The universe had carved coincidences to make me reach that shop. Dont you think so?
Rest is history what I did with that bag. And the way I converted it into a beautiful "Art is magic" bag is recorded for you all my lovely friends that you can catch up in my youtube video below. If you like this video, please dont forget to subscribe to my YOUTUBE CHANNEL HERE.
 The Blue Lady (**Sold**) The Demonstration video below shows the making of this beautiful painting using just three main colors i.e blue, red and a metallic golden color. This painting is just a small example that proves that to be creative you don't need tons of colors and shades. You can make magic with whatever you have in hand. I hope you like it. Plz do let me know if you through your cmments and likes, as they help me and my work grow as an artist.
This is a slideshow of ''The Girl in Blue Jacket''
Comment below and let me know if you enjoy its making. Thank you so much for joining me in the process of painting this beautiful lass. I hope you liked the process. Please do comment below and let me know what you think of it, as your views matter.
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