The Great Goddess Durga

is a multi armed goddess from Hinduism. She is known as a sacred feminine force, and Durga reflects the warrior aspect of the goddess, embodying a traditional male role.

Painting Durga was Not only a challenge with the painting of the multiple arms but also finding a representation of her that would best suit the model. I wanted to make sure that I had an accurate idea of the goddess before I started to add my own Artistic license to the painting. I started by studying the sculpture and historic paintings from the people who actually worshiped her . From there I started to look into more modern interpretations including Manga,Comic Books and CGI graphics

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ting those measurements It was ok to have the model go about her business. There was a few times that the arms were out of proportion so I had to snag my Niece as a reference to re-calibrate my painting. One of the tricks to doing this is to choose a color for the background that you have an abundance of .. Though it may have a better control over the color if you mix the color your self you may not be able to match that color exactly if you have to paint over a section. So what I did in this case was take two colors straight from the bottle and tried to not mix them . This way when I painted over one of the arms that did not come out the way I expected i did not have to repaint the entire background or spend too much time trying to match a color.

The items in Durgas arms are key to the painting . other gods had gifted her their own most powerful weapons, Rudra's trident, Vishnu's discus, Indra's thunderbolt, Brahma's kamandal, Kuber's gada, etc. after some research I chose to have the objects that I had seen the most in the historic sculptures . I painted the arms to a central point in the center of the canvas. The idea was to make it so the model would have freedom of movement for the photo shoot. Some of my paintings require to have the model stay in one place and this really limits our options of poses for the model. My thinking was that even though the Human body does not connect the arms to the spine directly Durga is not human and who knows how those extra arms are mounted. I did not want to have partially painted arms because this might limit the movement or would show up unexpectedly and ruin a shot.

The Bodypainting of the sari was easier then I had expected. I uploaded some images of Saris from the net to and chose a color pattern that was similar to the patterns seen in the historic paintings of old . This way I was able to see a closer detail then what the original painting offered.  

This was the first painting where I used Tasia as a photographer. I have used other photographers in the past and have been disappointed and it seems that anyone with a camera with a camera over $1000 thinks they are a professional photographer. However After seeing Taisa’s work I am very VERY happy with her work and I will use her as much as possible. She has a very good report with the models and is able to make them feel comfortable very quickly. (Very important ...even more so then Photographic skill) and We seem to be able to sync our vision for the end product. What is even better is that she is not afraid to deviate from what we had originally planned and try something new. Its those happy accidents that seem to make art so eye catching.