'People like to see the best version of themselves'

Murali Krishna has been painting for 20 years. The self-taught artist began sculpting as a child and delved into painting at the age of 13.

Murali prefers painting portraits, specifically figurative portraits. “Portraits are the complex form you can paint. There’s something about being able to breath life into art that’s so fascinating,” he explains.

He adds that anyone can paint people but the challenge is to give it a sense of realism so that it doesn’t reduce to just a cartoon. “When an artist paints a good portrait, something happens to them, and that’s a feeling I keep chasing,” he says.

While he does realistic portraits, he isn’t a big fan of photographic realism. “If I draw someone it will look like them, but I believe that people like to see the best version of themselves in a painting,” he says. This is why he uses bright colours in wide brush strokes as accents to his portraits. “The freedom to transform is like a super power,” he adds. While he works with digital art professionally, he prefers the canvas and acrylics. “Digital is great fun and profitable, but nothing beats the real thing,” he says.

As his Instagram bio says, he is passionate about helping people reach their full potential through art. And to this end he has been teaching workshops for the past five years. He has recently finished his 50th workshop and hopes to hit a hundred in the near future.