Strokes of creativity

Chidanand Gowda was a victim of his mother’s admonition — ‘just drop your pencil and go study; only then will you score good marks in academics and be able to achieve something’ — throughout his childhood.

But today, his mother holds immense pride in what Chidanand does with his pencil.
An engineering student who hails from Kundapur, the pencil is his best friend and sketching, his true passion. Sharpening his obedient tool, he sketched throughout his childhood and continues to do that even today, which summarises the story behind his detailed and perfect strokes.

Anything or anyone who interested him found space in his drawing sheets and he worked devotedly on tracing the exact features. Sitting in class, he sketched the portraits of his classmates and was a hit among all of them. During the various drawing assignments in school, there flowed requests from his classmates who pleaded him to make their assignments presentable.

Chidanand never denied their requests and worked towards making each one’s assigned task unique, without taking any credit for it. “When I was pursuing Science in Pre-University, I had a lot of my friends’ records to complete. This was not a hectic task for me. Instead, I considered this as an encouragement for my passion for drawing and sketching,” he says with a smile. He adds that it is the support from his friends that keeps his passion alive and pushes him to improve his skill.

His works include the sketches of his friends (to whom he gifts the sketches on their birthdays), family and his favourite celebrities. One of his very first sketches was of the popular Japanese manga character, Naruto, sketched with colour pencils and it holds a special place among all his works so far. His portrait sketches of Kannada film celebrities like Vishnuvardhan, Rajkumar, Upendra and many others, come alive with detailed strokes and shades and lack no facial expressions. “When sketching, it is the eyes that have to talk to the viewer. So, I begin all the portrait sketches by drawing the eyes and it is these that bring out the expression and emotion,” he explains. He uploads his works on Facebook, after which they go viral; some are even picked up by a few publications, he says.

A self-taught artist, he likes monotones and hence, has stuck just to sketching. However, he says, “I have done a couple of coloured sketches, and they are not bad as such.” A creative thinker, he sketches a few objects in 3D format that are mesmerising. New to the City, he attended the recent exhibition at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath and explains,
“I was bowled over by the works presented by many versatile artists. I showed a few sketches to some of the artists and they offered to teach me some techniques. After this visit to the exhibition, I look forward to joining art classes and further perfecting my skill. I also look forward to attending painting classes or joining an art course.”

He dedicates five hours to each of his works, which is now distributed as one hour everyday, due to his busy schedule in college. After every work that he uploads on the social networking site, there are a lot of his followers who message Chidanand, requesting him to sketch their portrait. He openly agrees to their requests, however, he explains, “There was this one time where I dedicated five hours to a sketch after I received a request from a stranger on Facebook. After it was completed, I asked him to come and collect the sketch. But this stranger wanted me to WhatsApp the image. I was heartbroken as there are not many people who appreciate the time and effort that goes behind a sketch. Sketches may look simple, but there is a straining effort that goes behind them, which is not valued by the majority.”

Chidanand’s works can be viewed on his Facebook page ‘Chidanand Arts and Clicks’.