Funny Strokes

The bold strokes of black and white,the exaggerated noses,the large eyes and the striking similarity can make anyone smile. Pick up a newspaper and after the black and white columns,the cartoon strips lend a happy break. Walk in at Cafe Mondegar in Colaba,Mumbai,and you will see creative figures staring at you from the walls. Ditto at Malaka Spice,Koregaon Park,where there are sketches on walls and on every table. In India,cartoonists and caricature artists have gained a lot of popularity for their unique way of presenting complex ideas. Their popularity in print magazines and newspapers is now supplemented with a growing market for live sketches and drawings.

Prashant Sinha,a freelance caricature artist based in Pune,believes that carving a way into this field is quite lucrative,especially since requests for live caricatures,events and trainings have increased in the last five years. “When I decided to take this up,there were hardly any opportunities apart from sketching for magazines and the like. Today,the options have opened up,right from realistic portraits to event based activities to serious intricate work where we are asked to represent an idea,” he says. According to Sinha,an artist can earn anything between Rs 400 to Rs 1000 per caricature. “And a lot more if he is well-known and really good with his work,” he adds. Corporate gifts,advertising and family events are other areas of interest for caricature artists and cartoonists.

While training for this profession is more or less concerned with a training in fine arts,a few specialist schools have sprung up recently. With the opening up of opportunities in animation,some institutes offer courses where one can develop their skills specially for cartooning. Arena Multimedia,Maya Academy of Advances Cinematics and National Institute of Design,Ahmedabad are a few names. The Indian Institute of Cartoonists based in Bangalore is another school which provides such training.