Paper, Seattle and Working with the best!

Hello fellow art junkies,

What better way to shake me up into posting ... than showcasing a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Seattle... 

A city that will remain etched in my mind forever and ever. Before you think "Why? What's so special about Seattle?" A picture can explain it to you better than a million words.

  Let me start with a little background on the painting itself.

Subject: The Seattle City Skyline (Washington, USA)

Size: 5.5 ft x 3 ft (That's almost as big as a door!!!!!!!!)

The approximate number of papers used (A4) is close to 600 Sheets not including what we used for outlining each building and base.

FUN Fact:

 If you join all our 26000 strips used, they will take you atleast 8 kms away. So if you are ever planning to go into a maze .... 1 tight coil in your pocket to unravel and you are safe to go into it and back.

DR PRITESH (The perfectionist) DAGUR

Pritesh has been my mentor ... then a colleague, for a little while and now we share so many ideas together its actually uncanny sometimes. We end up thinking of the same thing at the same time. Maybe we are long lost sisters ;)

When P takes a project up, she sits and researches and analyses how to go about it.

Concept ---> Background score ---> Designing ------->Printing ------> Outlining ------> Finally Working.

 Even as she begins working , she is constantly re-evaluating as the painting progresses.

When she got this project, I had thought, Man this woman is crazy!!! The sheer scale and the amount of work involved within the timeline given was next to impossible for my imagination!!!

Since I was not there in the initial stages, it would fill in the gaps if you follow some chapters on the blog Quilling me Softly-  Dr Pritesh Dagur.

http://quillingmesoftlee.blogspot.in/2014/06/sleepless-for-seattle-world-record-of.html

THE PAST

I worked with her for a short while of 5 months during which we worked on 2 big projects namely the Peacock and Rapunsel and several smaller ones as well as Jewellery. I must admit that from P ,I learnt how each process works when you take up a quilling project. Although my projects are in no way on the same scale, I have been tarnished by the perfectionist brush.

BANGALORE

Just when Pritesh moved to Bangalore, I knew there was a project under discussion with Suchitra, but I could never have imagined what they finalised on eventually. I made 2 trips to Bangalore for helping with the painting and ended up only working on it on my second trip. The sight of the huge Plywood looming in the background itself was so daunting. ( the ply took up almost half of the space in her workroom) Just when I came back to Pune on the 1st of May, then Pritesh dropped a bomb that she needed to complete the painting in 25 days and that she was going to try for a WORLD RECORD and then she asked me if I would help her. You see I was used to her quilling standards and  all that mattered was, "If Pritesh has asked for my help, then she trusts me to do a great job." She has said many a times that she doesn't generally expect people to meet her standards. She had asked me, ME! I was (super- duper) happy. When she asked me to come to Bangalore, it didn't even enter my mind to think about it. I just said OKAY, I can come after the 13th of May and suddenly I was part of this project. We worked on 70% of the painting between 17th and 27th May.

  

I don't think the magnitude really struck me, until, I for the first time, sat in front of the Painting and started doing the beehive. Initially I only helped with tight coils, I was scared of not being upto the mark, so I didn't offer to do anything on the painting. I saw her work relentlessly on this project, working 10 hours ( which gradually went up to 20 hours towards the end)  in a day. On the 2nd day, out of the corner of my eye I could see Pritesh's intense face and the realisation hit me, I have to buck up and volunteer to do the beehive. I kept telling myself, if Pritesh can do it so can I!!! If she doesn't take a break... how can I? After a while our rhythm just fit in, Pritesh would layer, give it base and outline and I would sit and beehive. Once I got confident we switched roles to relieve each other. Pasting the tight coils was a pain in the neck (Literally). Your hands and neck would just start locking up after a while. On the other hand, beehiving would numb the fingers. Later on it didn't matter who did what, everything was paining, on top of that we were sleep deprived. We were counting down 10 days.... 5 days.... 96 hours. Then another obstacle hit, we were quickly consuming the tight coils, so one of us had to do that in addition to our preset jobs. Now we had to swap between , beehiving, cutting- making and sticking tight coils, completing our buildings. We must have cursed each and every architect who contributed to making the Seattle Skyline. Each building was a new shape and size and a new layer. 

 It was slow and challenging, but WE DID IT! After all what is a world record if we could achieve it easily. Now, if and when we do achieve that goal it will be that much sweeter.

LITTLE COMFORTS:

We resorted to doing crazy things to keep ourselves alive. We giggled on endlessly, anything and everything was funny. Pritesh's son and his antics were such a fuel to our fast slowing brains. He would totter into the room with a naughty expression in his big round eyes and a smile on his face. It was like he would come around for 2 minutes, lift our spirits and run away ( usually with something from the worktable in his hand). Ananth Krishnan (Pritesh's husband) despite his heavy work schedule, he kept us supplied with coffee and food. I wish I had gotten to thank them before I left.

Another noteable mention would be Radio Indigo... they played our songs all day long, "Lemme take a selfie" "whudat whudat" and we were perpetually waiting for the retro hour!!!

 We even watched some great movies like "Desi Spiderman". [ For those like me, who would revel in crappy movies, this is the best of the best. You should learn dancing from the main characters if nothing else.] I for one am indebted to it.

THANK YOU's
Firstly I would like to thank my pillars of strength, my Mom & Dad who, despite not knowing what I was going to do and why, never doubted me, encouraged me and are still very proud of me ( also my brother and his wife supporting me all the way from Singapore, my cousins in Scotland, Dubai, USA, everyone has been awesome).  Lastly Pritesh, Ananth and Anvesh ... each and everyone have been wonderful to me and are absolutely like my family.
 

NOW all I can think of is sleep and my pending work!

~Rich