Kaur Warrior

[Bundha]

This one is by my better half.

[Akal Warrior]

My honest opinion ?

I don't like it.

Now, let me tell you why. With your hand cover everything from the bridge of her nose downwards. With just the eyebrows visible it is clear that you would never have drawn a 'Singh' with such thin and shaped eyebrows. From your drawing.....and from looking at the eyebrows alone....it is clear that, subconsciously, your drawing thought process has been influenced by western ideals of female sexuality. I suggest you go back to the drawing board and try again.

What a strange post. Of all the things, the eyebrows is all you saw? Well, guess what buddy? I know of a few Amritdhari girls who have very thin eyebrows, and are shaped like they have been trimmed, but they have not been (and I know that for a fact). They just genetically have thin eyebrows. Your post reeks of paranoia. Don't lose sleep over this picture because the eyebrows don't live up to your standards. Appreciate the art, or just keep it to yourself.

[Questioner]

This one is by my better half.

This is lovely. Captures Guru Sahib's compassionate nature beautifully.

[JagsawSingh]

On 5/8/2015 at 11:33 PM, Akal Warrior said:

What a strange post. Of all the things, the eyebrows is all you saw? Well, guess what buddy? I know of a few Amritdhari girls who have very thin eyebrows, and are shaped like they have been trimmed, but they have not been (and I know that for a fact). They just genetically have thin eyebrows. Your post reeks of paranoia. Don't lose sleep over this picture because the eyebrows don't live up to your standards. Appreciate the art, or just keep it to yourself.

Akal Warrior, my brother/sister, I have a reputation for sometimes being very dismissive and condascending. But, after a period of self-reflection, that is a trait of mine I am trying to change. Therefore I shall address this post to you with the upmost respect.

Now, there are 2 things you should have borne in mind before making the statement that you did. The first is that the thread starter/artist himself, in the post before yours, clearly stated that although he disagreed with me he truly appreciated and understood the critical eye I cast upon his art.

Secondly, you failed to pay attention to the key word I used in my original post. That word was 'subconsciously'.

It clearly went over your head and thats why you saw it as the strange post, but there's nothing wrong with that. We all have different strengths and weaknesses and there are a million things that you would put me to shame on. But on this occassion let me explain what both me and the artist understood, with conflicting opinions, but you did not:

So, lets start with the very basics - and bear in mind that both you and me are rubbish at drawing - and pretend we have to draw a true Kaur. As Sikhs - real Sikhs, not pretend Sikhs - we understand the beatifullness of Waheguru's creation. So, when we put pencil to paper we know that the Kaur's eyebrows might be better represented by putting them slightly higher on the forehead than the Singh's eyebrows. Thats nature, and its beautifull, so we draw it without even thinking. But what is it that makes us draw the Kaur with thin and shaped eyebrows ? We all come in different shapes and sizes and of course, like you said, some females naturally have thin and shaped eyebrows but the question I put out there was why do we always portray that as the norm when the majority of females as a whole, and certainly the majority of Punjabi females, are not like that.

Thats the question. We have a pencil in our hand and some paper in front of us and we've been tasked with drawing a Kaur. What is it, in our subconscious, that 9 times out of ten without thinking about it makes us draw a Kaur that represents one of those thin and shaped eyebrow women ?

Now, Akal Warrior, to understand this you need to have a basic understanding of 3 things otherwise, I'm sorry to say, you will continue to find meaningfull posts "strange". Firstly, you need to develop a meaningfull appreciation of art. Secondly, you need to share my appreciation of Jennifer Connelly as Hollywood's most beautifull woman and thirdly, you need to fine tune your awareness of reality today and understand that here in the UK today we Sikhs are are in a bit of a quandary. On the one hand we have a 1000% more dumalla wearing young Singhs and Kaurs than we've ever had before and yet on the other hand, on visits to Sikhi stalls and exhibitions, only a fool would fail to notice how so many of those Singhs are covered in tattoos and how so many of those Kaurs have thinly shaped eyebrows (expensive electrolysis treatment before amrit so they won't grow again).

These are Kaljug times. We have mona traditional jatt families where the 3rd generation British born hair-cut girl would never dream of wearing a skirt and yet we have Amritdhari Dastar wearing girls like *edited* Kaur reprsenting Kaurs up and down the land while persuing her occupation as a model and wearing mini-skirts so short even most white and black parents would never allow it.

See ? Different things. Different things to think about. When you're one dimensional all other things seem so "strange". The secret is to become a real person, i.e. a 3 dimensional character. So, going back to topic, wake up and realise how lucky you are to be either living in or easily being able to travel to, the greatest city on earth. The city is unique in that it not only has one of the world's greatest collection of art but also in the fact that it is FREE. FREE !!!!! My god, Paris, New York etc sometimes, once a year, organise a free museum day to show what great cities they are but they never tell their citizens how the greatest city of them all has it free all the time. But thats them (the rest of the world) and this is you. So you ? Are you going to visit a museum, stand and look at a 17th century painting by reubens while trying to understand how everything in the picture is telling you everything about history or...........are you going to continue to find it all a bit bewildering and "strange" ?

[JagsawSingh]

Uhh western society isn't the only one that shows thing eyebrows as beauty. There's many photos of our Guru Sahibs with thin eyebrows too, as well as ancient Indian art that shows statues/paintings with thin eyebrows.. It's just a preference to her art really.. I have relatives who are sehajdhari and have never done their eyebrows, and they are thin as well. Keep in mind that they are Indian people, and not western at all lol. I'm just saying many Indian people have thin eyebrows naturally.

'uhh' the only literature from Roman times about thin and shaped eyebrows talks about prostitute brothels and how these "painted women" have "thinned" and "shaped" their eyebrows. i.e. history teaches us of a time when men where being enticed sexualy by dirty women and the common charateristic of these dirty women was that they trimmed and shaped their eyebrows. Its not my fault you don't know how the whores of yesteryear have become the 'normal' women of today and how Sikhi has bypassed this nonsense.

So what is 'Sikhi' ?

Well, Sikhi, is in so many ways a knowledge of ancient history. In the 1700's Farsi (persian) had been corrupted so much by Arabic that Persian (farsi) was no longer Farsi. But things as they are is is not is not what Sikhi is all about . Sikhi is about the truth. Just like our guiding light was intellectual enough to bypass the islamic invasion of farsi and re-teach the farsi speakers about farsi.......we should at least be intelligent to know the story behind a drawing ?

If we as a community carry on with this thicko unintelligent reputation of oursl we're gonna reach a stage where we've been here 100 years but still can't get a single MP elected.

Doh :wow: :surrender:

So, from the intellectual to the Indian style of painting that you base your second point on: If Sobha Singh sits down one day and decides he's like to, from his imagination, portray the Gurus in the way that he himself (Sobha Singh) sees as the epitome of beauty and the opposite of poor and ugly. So, he paints them in a way that ensures none of them have any charactersistics that one might associate with a normal,albeit low class, member of society. He paints them with very light skin, no thick eyebrows, no famous Punjabi nose etc etc. All these paintings and 'photos' we have today of our Gurus are from the modern day imagination of one man. And so we're back to the original point of this whole argument, i.e what made him instantly imagine the Gurus would be very light skinned and 'greek' like when they were Punjabi just like us and campaigned against that same caste supremacy thinking that manifested itself in the portraits ?

.

[Bundha]

Kindly appreciate that posters Bundha (me, BTW a bloke) and BuddaSingh are two separate people and I have made no comment on any bodies post.

All is cool :-)

[eduardo]

The fallout from the results of the General Election has had one surprising effect: every major political party in the UK, except the Conservatives, is now led by a woman.

Harriet Harman (Labour), Nicola Sturgeon (SNP), Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru), Natalie Bennett (Green), Suzanne Evans (Ukip) and Sal Brinton (Liberal Democrats) are presently leading their respective parties.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/every-major-british-political-party--except-the-conservatives--currently-led-by-a-woman-10238390.html

We need a good Kaur warrior.

[Koi]

Nice sketches bro

[eduardo]

As a Punjabi I spent thousands of years as officialy the easternmost province of Persia and then, after a few generations of an independant Khalsa nation my family have been continously British subjects (without a break) since the year 1849. Never once, in thousands of years, has anyone in my bloodline been 'Indian', and I thank the lord for it.Even though Hindi is a new baby language compared to Punjabi (Punjabi is a thousand years older than Hindi). You mentioned Hindi when really you should have stuck to the other, much older, roots of the word 'stan' such as Kurdish, Uzebki and, given the way many of our groups actually originally came down from the Ukranian steppes, the actual original ancient origin of the word 'stan' i.e Ukrainian and Russian, where it means 'settlement'.

That's a nice post and very informative, I didn't realise Punjabi was such an old language.

[StarStriker]

That's a nice post and very informative, I didn't realise Punjabi was such an old language.

Yea eddy, panjabi and sanskrit r the oldest languages in northern parts of s.asia, and tamil is the oldest in the south. We just gotta makes sure we preserve the panjabi language, n not let it become extinct like latin, and the probably extinct like gaelic/welsh.