Her heart is filled with joy and her eyes are full of shy, a beautiful young Indian girl on her very special day.

This painting is done from a reference picture of a very dear person of mine.

Indian weddings are vast, multiple days events involving both the bride and groom’s family members, relatives and neighbors with lots and lots of rich traditions. Wide range of music, songs, dances, mehendi, rituals, spiritualities, variety of foods, jewelries, vibrant clothes, garlands, bright decorations all are the inseparable parts of Indian marriages. No wonder I was emotionally driven by all these while working on this custom order.

The biggest challenge when you paint a Indian bride is that everything starting from the background decoration to bride’s make up, her attire, jewelry has to be perfectly balanced so that it should look “gorgeous” without being “over done chaos”. The reference picture came to me as a digital copy of a photograph taken almost three decades ago. I sketched the face very carefully but then I had no clue how to attempt the design of the tiara and necklace.

My previous experience of painting Ma Durga’s tiara has helped me there. For the necklace, I remembered the ‘Chandra haar’ (antique royal era necklace) that I saw in my childhood. I am lucky that I have peacock feathers in my studio so I took direct reference. I love the color of her ‘churni’ (scarf) and ‘saari’ which is what we Indian people call a ‘raani’ color (queen’s color) and golden thread design on them. I have used ‘GOLDEN’s iridescent bright fine gold’ acrylic colors to preserve the richness of the bride’s special day look.

Initially I was little nervous as retrieving details was a bit challenging (from the reference image), then I thought of focusing only on the positive side and took my client’s permission to give little wings to the creative freedom that I have used in the tiara, necklace and sari designs. To maintain the wedding mood, my decision was to keep the whole background as it is with red throne and red backdrop. So I have used two different red shades Quinacridone magenta and Napthol crimson. I am satisfied with my achievement of that ‘sweet and soft look’ facial expression with a touch of shyness in her eyes and a sweet pleasing smile on her lips.

My 56 hrs of painting journey reached to the destination when she messaged me (after seeing the final result) ” I love it”.

I am glad to get the opportunity to work on this custom order.

Acrylic of 24X20 inch gallery wrap canvas.