Sudhir Tailang (1960-2016): A structured cartoonist who made bold switches

More significant was his next shift from pocket cartoon, which was what he was doing six days a week in Hindustan Times and briefly with The Indian Express, before he moved to editorial cartoons for Asian Age, again every weekday. Sudhir was in full flow in his display cartoons. The generous editorial space was where his characteristic stylisation played out. Firm brush strokes tweaked facial features and anatomy to make public personalities as ethnically and politically diverse as P V Narasimha Rao, Manmohan Singh, Mamata Banerjee, J Jayalalithaa and L K Advani (an admirer) look straight out of Rajasthani folk art.

[related-post]

This Bikaner-born, who went at 55, was the most stylised Indian cartoonist of the generation that succeeded the veterans — Abu Abraham, O V Vijayan and Rajinder Puri. Like them, Sudhir stuck to black-and-white and brush-and-ink. He did turn to technology, but to draw as generously as he felt like — scanned in parts and stitched the images — and in short used the software to leave his drawing alone. The residual effect was stunningly individualistic. Of my peers, he needed the least to sign.