Bodhinatha, Acharya Arumuganathaswami and Sannyasin Yoginathaswami departed for India early this morning at 5:30 am. Here they are waiting in Honolulu for their next flight to Narita in Japan

The long awaited artwork from the Kerala mural artist, Suresh Muthukulam, depicting Gurudeva’s San Marga visions of Siva arrived and were stretched onto proper painting frames but a professional shop in Lihue. Today Brahmachari Mayuran scanned all them. You can find out about the artist here: http://www.keralamurals.com/

The scanner had to be placed on the floor.

Each painting had to be scanned in pieces. Oh, wait! Look, the light is going right through the canvas. What to do?

Supports were made to the exact level of the scanner bed, and a dark cloth placed over the area being scanned to prevent light from escaping. Tape was placed on the floor to mark the offsets for each scan, indicating where to move the canvas next.

Photoshop wants to have at least a one inch over lap of adjacent sections to properly stitch them together.

Each canvas was scanned in 15 pieces, 5 X 3 adjacent areas.

Mayuran checks out the scans to be sure the over laps are good enough.

The scans were done at 600 DPI (dots per inch). Here he goes up very close to see how much detail we are getting.

At this resolution you can even see the texture of the canvas.

The resulting art is magnificent. Although the artist never met Gurudeva, he had done a marvelous job in depicting the other worldly, divine sight reality behind this mystical beginning of San Marga and Iraivan temple.

Although the facial features may be different, those who know Gurudeva well will attest that the expression of “this is a serious spiritual matter!” comes through very much as you would have experienced it in Gurudeva’s living presence.

Mayuran saw to the culmination of another project today as he scanned the last of our Rajam art collection. These were all done on our new hi-resolution Epson scanner. A total of 923 scans!

This collection of art was rescued from oblivion from the Chennai loft of famed singer and artist S. Rajam. Renowned for his long and illustrious career in Carnatic music, his art work in the field of Hindu cultural paintings was not well known. When he was young, he decided he wanted to catch the spirit of Hindu India before the Muslims came; he went to study the pre-Islamic invasion art of Elephanta caves. There and later he developed a more purely Indian-Hindu aesthetic art form.

A passing pilgrim happened one day to show us his art on the back of a book and the long story of contacting him, acquiring his collection and then commissioning him for more work began, years ago.

He has since passed, but Himalayan Academy Publications will carry his legacy forward to coming generations.

Our new digital library upgrade to the Himalayan Academy web site will have these available for all.