🇬🇧 The North Pandal, Part 3

Yesterday was my last day of working on the Pandal, so it seems I finally have time to write about it.

Me in my comfort zone

Last I wrote, I had been working on the faces of the two figures in the bed. The next time, I must say I was much more in my comfort zone, charged with drawing a child’s doodles all over a section of the pandal. The chair and table I previously mentioned are in fact a child’s study, and my doodles were meant to show this. This was incredibly fun as, although the stakes were just as high, if not higher, than last time, drawing, particularly doodling, is what I’m good at and besides, these were child’s doodles so if I made any mistakes, it wouldn’t really matter anyway. I genuinely had a great time drawing these, and I think the end result looks really good!

After that, my role became that of chief colourer, and using pastels and crayons I coloured in six sunflowers, ten leaves and eleven little cardboard pigeons (five of which I also made). It was honestly quite relaxing, and though I’m not sure my back will ever recover from sitting on the floor, but then again I was never really one for posture, and it was worth it for the pigeons.

I also love how the sunflowers look now that they have been installed, twisting and twirling out of a vase. The stalks were made from green pipes and the vase, like almost everything else, was constructed from cardboard.

I had imagined that the pandal would remain in a blue-green colour scheme to echo the paintings of Van Gogh, but as you can see in this picture, I stand very much corrected.

This wall has been covered in pastels and it reminds me of Monet’s Water Lilies, both thanks to the colours and the strokes used (you cant really see in the picture, but the wall is covered in every colour of the rainbow. I’ll try to get a clearer picture next time I go) Infact, every different area seems to reference a different artist or art movement; Van Gogh, impressionism, cubism and surrealism are all nodded to at some point of the Pandal. The cardboard brick wall is now complete, and looks amazingly realistic (again, it has been coloured purely with chalk and oil pastels), and there are pillars framing bits of the pandal that have been painted all over with app icons. The stairs on the outside of the pandal have also been painted in this way.

As for my pigeons (I am embarrassingly proud of them, they are so cute!), they watch over the visitors of the pandal from the ceiling of one of the four sections.

Finally, the starry night has been painted! It took my colleagues all day but as the main view point and the backdrop for the goddess herself, it looks lovely.

Although my work on the pandal is complete, there is still plenty that needs to be done; things like lighting, sound and the exterior walls that need to be made. Also two massive metal letters spelling “ON“ that I believe will be illuminated and an intriguing tree-like structure again made from metal, and of course the idol is yet to arrive.

I will be coming back for updates on the progress and will of course be visiting the pandal once it’s complete.

In the meantime; an update on the exterior: it’s sparkly!! Again the photo quality isn’t great, but if you look you may be able to make out the big “ON“ in the top left corner. The centre represents a map of the area with a (sparkly!) location pin of where the pandal is.