Just look! Grass is not just green, wood is not just brown and the sky is not just blue

Is this a purple flower? No, it is a cluster of seven leaves of the Saptaparni tree. We have a large picture window at home. We are on third floor and the bough of the tree dominates our view. And it is green nowadays because of the monsoon.

So, why have I coloured my leaves purple? “Things are not exactly the way they seem”, is what Raie aunty always says. “All leaves and the grass are not green, wood is not brown, the sky is not blue.” She told me. “Each object has all colours. It is just that one dominates them all. She talks about “seeing”.

We are often together because I started school with her son and she is now a good friend of my mother’s and drops in home often. I have started taking art classes with her on the weekends. 

There are always streaks of red and orange on a green leaf, or blue and purple patches on an earthen pot, when she is with me, but whenever I sit down to draw without her, no matter how much I squint or try to move my head I cannot  spot any different colours on any object. Grass is always green and the sky, always blue.

The day I decided to draw this tree I was drawing after many days. I looked at the tree and saw only green. I decide that I would draw the opposite of green which is red. With Raie aunty I feel free to choose colours. So, I was going to use one colour all over. But the outer parts would have lighter red and the inner part of the leaves would have been darker red.

Then aunty suggested that we add another colour. So, I decided to add a deep shade of blue in the centre to show the shadows falling there. So, the middle shades became purple as we mixed them. Then emerged this exotic looking single flower on a white background. So, we had used the shapes of the Saptaparni tree but had created something new.

Then I added the final branches of the Saptaparni tree which are still green and have the leaves growing on them. Then because the branches were bare, I added on some clusters of leaves. That looked bare and so I coloured them yellow. In the branches I wanted to shade the opposite of yellow and so you can see a shade of purple in those green branches.

Then we decided to work on two corners – put some activity in them. Aunty suggested that I use all the colours. I decided to use orange because it is a warm colour and it would push the painting ahead. I decided to draw the neem leaves of the tree across the road that we can see in the lower corner of the window. You can see the orange neem leaves in the bottom right corner.

Now to balance this corner with the opposite colour I made blue Saptaparni leaves in the upper left corner. The ribbons hanging like water are the leftovers of the pods after the insects have eaten them up in spring. There were these ribbons hanging from all over the tree then.

The white in the other two corners were looking bare. The paper had also got dirty from handling. So, to cover that, I made both sides yellow.

By now I might sound like a nature lover, one of those people who love bird watching and can spot minute details of nature; but it’s quite the opposite! all these details are from a tree I had seen every day for the past seven years of my life but never noticed. My observation goes for a toss in nature. Watching TV I can spot every minute detail, but till I wrote this article, I had not realized that all the clusters in this tree had seven leaves and that is why the tree is called Saptaparni.

It is not just nature that I oberve now;  Raie aunty has taught me to understand the play of light and shadow in very ordinary objects. When earlier I would see a red football lying on the floor, it would be, well just red, but now I can see the reflection of all the objects on  it. I can see lights of the chandelier shimmering on the ball and also the sunrays from window bouncing off it. The shadow of the ball on the marble floor, which I would either ignore or draw black, is now appearing red, like the ball. I can even see the thin shadow of the window frame falling on the wall. Earlier I would have ignored it as a corner.   

This is not the first time I am taking art classes. Every Sunday I went to learn art for many years. My teacher there was very good. She taught me how to make drawings which looked to me like masterpieces; my mom has proudly framed them and hung them up on the wall.

However what Raie aunty does is not only make us draw but through the medium of drawing explore many more things. Now if I sit in front of a tree, I can observe things I never did before for hours. For example the cluster of the seven leaves of the Saptaparni tree are not evenly circular like a flower, it is broad on the outside and a little narrower towards the stalk, more like a leaf. I noticed this even as I was writing this piece.  

“Seeing” comes naturally to Raie aunty as she has been doing it since 5^th grade. In Lithuania, her country, you can choose to specialize after class five in any skill you like. Aunty chose to specialise in art even though she did study other subjects.

She is forever carrying a camera and for example what we just saw, two flowers offered to a deity, looking very normal, would look exotic through her lens. She can work in many mediums.  

Aunty understands my paintings and often gave me tips and feedback. She has been in my life since I was in nursery. When my sister was born, all my mother’s attention was diverted to her. I had turned glum. Aunty noticed and took me under her wings. She would bring me back home with Sargam every day. She sang Lithuanian songs for me and told me stories. I could even speak some Lithuanian back then. But soon we moved out of her neighbourhood. I saw her but not as often as before.  

Then aunty had another baby and she got busy with her. But as luck would have it, her engagements bring her to my neighbourhood every weekend.  

Now, I have again started learning art with her on the weekends. This time it is a class class. But it is also time spent with Raie aunty.

Krishna Abrol