Watercolorist Vikas Patnekar gave a demo at the Indiaart Gallery on the 9 th of September of water-color painting to an avid group of amateur artists, students and art lovers.

A well–structured demo, which explained step-by-step the artists' way of working. His first step was a quick pencil sketch of the water–sketch he intended painting, which he then transferred to a ½ imperial paper. He then demonstrated the use of masking gum, to leave lines and dots of white areas as highlights. This was followed by giving a wash to the whole paper using a ‘mop' brush and then quickly working with cobalt blue he painted in the sky and then other areas of the landscape, using a palette of tonally compatibly colors to create contrasting areas of the land-scape.

Right through the demo, he encouraged the viewers to question him freely, making it a friendly interactive session. Asked why he used such large sizes to work on, Vikas said, he even worked on 4' x 6' size works, as he enjoyed the freedom of working on larger works and also he has the confidence of 15 yrs. of handling this challenging medium.

Vikas grew up in the sylvan surroundings of the lush forests of Belgaun, where he was fortunate to study under his given, the renowned senior artist, K. B. Kulkarni. As a landscape artist, he has been painting for the last 15 years and has since developed a distinctive and personal style of his own.