This is blasphemy! This is madness!

I have no idea why I named the post " This is blasphemy! This is madness!". Perhaps, I was thinking of the movie 300, and somehow related that to my exams, which BTW will be over on Thursday! WOOT! I worked on my paintings a little, here and there. Its not much but I have exams going on, come on!I found some nice references for the horse for the Banda Singh - Battle Charge, so that worked out well. And for Baba Deep Singh one, I had Akaal_Singh from Flickr help me out with some shastar or weapons that Baba Deep Singh Ji might have carried. He also sent me pictures explaining how a farla is added to a dastaar and how a puratan Dhumalla might have looked like. BTW check out his photostream, he has some lots of pictures of amazing artifacts.

Another thing I wanted to share was some details from the Battle of Chamkaur WIP. The cool thing about this painting is that its one of my biggest, over 8000 by 5000 pixels, which is around 80" by 50" when printed on to canvas. However, this means that it will take longer to finish for two reasons. One, that my computer is ancient so it cannot take the stress, and two because Baba Ajit Singh turned out be so darn detailed and I feel compelled to carry out that detail on the Mughals, as well. Being an amateur artist, I crafted detail onto his armour like there was no end! I went overboard and added sweat on Baba Ajit Singh! His beard was styled and every hair was hand painted. It is quite frustrating to do that much but I think, the end product will show the true work of the labour. When this is done its going straight up on my bedroom wall!
I didn’t think that this painting process would require so much research but you know what? I learned a heck of a lot of things! Did you know Mughals specialized in cavalry and that their infantry were vilalgers? Mansabdars were the highest rank. Banduqchis were villagers but with a Bandook or a Matchlock. Did you know there were Hindus in the Mughal army? Mughals had Hindus in their armies called, Bhumi. These were Hindu infantry! I incorporated this into the Battle of Chamkaur. In the foreground, you will see two Bhumi soldiers. Ajit Singh is stepping on a Banduqchi while taking out another Banduqchi and a villager/infantry. In the far back, there is a Mansabdar, a detail of him is coming up.
Not only did I learn about the structure of Mughal army, but I also learned about how the armour and weapons looked like back then. My craze for this newfound knowledge was one of the things that led me to overdo the armour.

OK, enough typing, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I present to you, a few thousand more words! Oh, and YAY! I have followers, following my blog! Wicked!

(click on the images to see enlarged view)