Well, let me give you a little flashback. As a child, I was more active than any other kid of my age. My parents had a tough time dealing with me as I wanted someone to play with all day, and when I wasn’t playing, I used to draw. I was fascinated by automobiles and motorcycles. Whenever I used to see one on the roads, I used to go back home and replicate it. As I grew up, I used to draw them from my imagination, and modify existing models. By the time I was 16, I had begun a liking for drawing portraits of celebrities. To start with, they were plain line pencil or pen drawings. I drew quite a lot of celebrity portraits but they lacked in quality. Ok for a beginner who didn’t have any formal education in drawing or arts.
As time passed, I was busy with my pre-graduation, degree and slowly lost touch with my god-gifted talent for drawing. There were rare moments when I used to sketch for the college competition or just to while away some time but never really had a chance to get back to it. My first four years of being into a high-pressure job didn’t even give me enough time. However, I used to draw occasionally, be it cartoons on a comic situation that I was in, or for my wife’s tarot reading, or a caricature of my family members and friends. This was in 2012-2013.
The Day of Reckoning
There were times when life felt mundane and I ended up getting frustrated. My family and friends quietly bore the brunt until one day, my wife couldn’t take it anymore and gave me an earful. Having so many talents (drawing, poetry, playing the guitar etc.) at my disposal and I just chose to while away precious time watching the idiot box or surfing the internet or watching metal music videos. Enough was enough!
Sometime in early 2014
I took out my brand-new easel stand (that was gathering dust), my old drawing board, paints, pencils, basically every drawing material that I had and painted a monochrome portrait. I was happy with the results and painted another. I uploaded the painting on my Facebook page that I had created sometime ago. The response from my family and friends were like dopamine. It motivated me to draw further and I started drawing celebrity portraits with a pack of pencils (non-color).
Point of no return
My portrait-drawing accuracy increased with every single day. Useful critic in the form of my wife helped me improve a great bit. I started referring drawing guide books to read how famous artists in India and abroad approached their respective works. The outline drawing, shading techniques, use of colors, lighting, finishing touches and lot more. But till now, I only used to draw black and white portraits. There was a slight hesitation in switching to colored pencils as I was wary of using them.
Treading the rough terrain
After much contemplation and self-push, I got a pack of Faber Castell wax-based Color Pencils. My first color portrait was of an old man from Rajasthan whose reference photo was published in a newspaper. I got good responses for that work. From there, I propelled myself into creating more color portraits and even ventured into color caricatures. I started taking up commissioned works and my clients were more than happy with the results. 2014 and 2015 were landmark years for me where I actually grew as an artist. By the end of 2015, my sister gifted me a set of Faber Castell Polychromous Oil-based Pencils that changed the game altogether.
A New Beginning
The Polychromous pencils acted as a rocket-booster and I started creating stunning realistic portraits that enthralled and bamboozled my audience. I can say it was the best thing that happened to me. My confidence was at an all-time high and I even participated in art contests with my artwork winning the coveted 1st prize.
With this confidence I started trying out acrylic paints to draw portraits and still-life figures and thankfully, I didn’t disappoint myself. 2016 and 2017 years were dedicated to polychromous pencil and acrylic based artworks.
Still climbing
2018 started with a new note where I ventured into digital portraits, caricatures and cartoons. Given my immense love for pet animals, specially dogs, I started drawing pet portraits and also recorded time lapse videos to let my audience know how each portrait is created. I have started a cartoon series that visually represents funny and thoughtful situations I have been into.
Right now, I am simultaneously working on my first digital portrait and a commissioned painting.
Where do I get the time?
Over a span of 5 years, I have developed this habit of returning from my work in the evening, refresh with a strong coffee, sit in front of the easel stand and continue working on my portraits or paintings. It usually takes days for me to finish a particular artwork. I adopted this trick of keeping the easel stand in the hall itself so that it warrants my attention every time I enter or roam inside the house. The unfinished works constantly stare at me every time I pass by it and compel me to sit in front of it and finish it. It also helps me find mistakes in them and rectify it. The efforts of sitting at least half an hour to 2 hours a day has helped me imbibe a habit for a lifetime. Yes, there are days when I am too tired, or I am travelling out of town, or running errands or I just want to watch a movie, but then in a week, I sit and draw for at least 10 hours.
That is the average and that’s why I am at this stage, on the road to become a professional artist. So, my message to everyone is, if you truly want to do something and become successful in anything that you like and pursue, spend at least one hour a day on it daily. There will be days when you don’t get the results you expect, and you might feel low and let down. But that is the point when you don’t give up but get back to your business and create that perfect thing you always wanted to do.
And all of it can be done by keeping these 3Ps in mind – Practice, Patience, Perseverance.
Number of Paintings, Portraits, Caricatures created Year on Year
2014–36 | 2015–28 | 2016-13 | 2017–26 | 2018–19 (Till Date)
There’s a lot to learn and implement, and hell lot of work on making my artistic presence felt throughout the world. Hopefully, I will get there on time with the right artworks created by me. Stay tuned!
To see more of my artworks and tutorial videos, go through my profile listed below.
VarTOONS - Varun's Art & Toons 