A 46-year-old artist is capturing the city’s iconic buildings and locations in watercolour.
On a busy weekday, Metrolife spotted Nitin Singh at the busy M G Road-Brigade Road junction, as he brought the century-old building Cauvery Emporium to life on a 15x22 inch watercolour paper, sitting on a tall easel. With crowds rushing past and automobiles honking away, he attempted to capture the essence of the spot on the cotton-based cold-press sheet. No filters, no AI prompts, just watercolours.
A 2003 graduate of fine arts from Patna University, he moved to Bengaluru for work and painted almost every day of his career, despite working long hours. In 2025, he quit his IT designer job. “Now I am free,” he said, adding, “I take things one day at a time. Typically, I try to paint one location in a day and on the spot. I want to capture the environment and immerse myself in the essence of the place. That reflects in the painting and it looks lively.”
Singh draws inspiration from impressionists like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas. He has an affinity for loose, fluid strokes and minimal detail, not cold realism. His painting of K R Market depicts the chaos of the spot - the vendors' shouts, the bold red and yellow strokes of the flowers, and the vegetable sellers’ baskets of produce placed in front of the colonial arches. He takes 2-3 hours per piece.
Talking about the challenges of painting outdoors, he admitted, "I feel so judged when I’m painting." People whisper, "Why is this man painting?". Earlier the fear of public eyes on him working made him freeze but he overcame it by immersing himself fully and letting the chaos fuel the art. "I cut the distraction mentally, commit to what's in front of me. The interaction with people is part of the experience," he shared.
His mission? Telling the stories of the historic buildings and locations to those unfamiliar with them, and to raise awareness as development erases history. He aims to paint 100 historical buildings of the city under his "India on My Easel" series. Next, he wants to paint the regular people who occupy these spaces.
His work titled 'When We Parted' heads to London's Royal Watercolour Society this year. The work, inspired by the partition's train tragedies, is painted in fiery reds in the modern abstract art style.