At: Pundole’s Auction House, Ballard Estate, Mumbai; On: 17th February, 2018
Hand-painting of photographs is a method of manually adding colour to a photographic print in order to highlight certain areas, add more depth and enhance the overall aesthetics of the image. In India, it gained massively in popularity among royalty and wealthy art patrons, who commissioned portraits and even a sub-genre of religious imagery inspired by the medium. Our workshop was open to photographers and amateurs and was led by our show’s curator, Madhavan Pillai. The ten participants were given a choice of two photographs to work on; both were reproductions of images from our exhibition, ‘Portrait of A Nation, A Nation in Portraits.’ Using acrylic colours, pastels, watercolours, charcoal, etc, they created original artworks that ranged from the subtle to the sensational.