B’luru artist makes wall art to teach Kannada letters

He was hired by an institute in Mysuru to create cartoons, and he came up with this idea

Bengaluru artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy recently created wall art with Kannada alphabets for children of All India Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysuru. Photographs of the work have been making the rounds on social media.

Baadal was asked to create artwork for the campus, and he painted in the special education department.

He was working on cartoons for some rooms in the building, while he was requested to create this educational work, where 49 alphabets have been represented with words starting with them.

He explains, “I’ve depicted animals like squirrel, animal and rat, easy-to-identify home objects like ladder, clock and bell, food items like onion, numbers and even actions with the alphabets, so that the children can easily understand the connection.”

Baadal looked for common and basic words used in day-to-day conversations, similar to ones used in Kannada alphabet books. “I remember learning the same words as a child. These are simple words which everyone, especially children, can understand,” he says.

Done on a background which looks like a page from a book, he worked on it with black emulsion water colour. It took Baadal almost 10 days to decide on what images to depict for each letter.

“I took time to think about each drawing. I scribbled them out on paper before I did them on the wall, to be certain about how it would turn out. I experimented with letters and connected images and tried at least three different drawings for each letter, before the finalising them,” he says.

Baadal is known for representing social issues and problems through art at public spaces. From drawing attention to potholes and broken roads to creating awareness about wearing masks, he’s done it all.

This wall art was special to him. “When I was working on the cartoons for the rooms, I observed teachers taking online classes for the special kids. I noticed the effort and strain the teachers took to teach these children and make their parents happy. I wanted to do something for the children,” he says.

Baadal used to work with an advertising agency earlier and creating logos came easily to him. But this work was challenging, as he had to be artistic while not change the font of the alphabet too much.

“In English, one can use varied fonts and play around with it, yet communicate a word or message clearly. But here, the alphabet couldn’t be distorted too much, as the work was meant to be educational,” Baadal says.