A hashtag that unites and excites
Jake Parker’s #Inktober finds its calling in Chennai this year, with young artists adding their signature style to it
By : gautam sunder
Update: 2015-10-24 23:35 GMT
The idea came about in 2009 when comic artist and animator Jake Parker had a brainchild — the vision to bring together illustrators across the world for a month and foster a sense of community. Voila, Inktober was born! Draw, upload with a hashtag and let the magic happen.
An initiative that urges creative minds all over the world to not only put on their thinking hats and brainstorm out of the box, but also push their limits and endeavour to make a difference — so of course, our creative folk from Chennai have to be involved. From pop-culture references (please be alive, Jon Snow!) and eccentric imagery, to upcoming Halloween folklore and doodle-stories based on everyday people around us, there is no dearth of inspiration for these creative minds. Here are four young Chennai Inktober-followers on their unique tributes.
For visualiser and illustrator Parvathy Subramanian, Inktober was about coming up with imaginative tales for her character sketches that are about Chennai’s quintessential, oddball Tamilian charm. “They have names like Motta Murugesan, Jaalra Jebakumari, Yucks Yezhilarasi, Tip-toe Thamarai and Lip-sync Limsa to just mention a few! Yes, the idea was to be alliterative and have them exhibit unique, idiosyncratic traits. Once I put a few up, many people started inboxing me with their ideas and stories — which was also fun for me to base my doodles upon,” she quips.
Others like Priyanka John, who recently returned from art school in the U.S, felt it was a great way to meet other artists and a source of motivation to come up with new ideas daily – “It is easy to get monotonous sometimes in a creative profession, and this initiative was a terrific way to keep us from getting too rusty. Whatever comes to mind, I’m going with the flow — some of them include Robots vs. Dinobots, a monster sea bottle, and dark Halloween motifs.” Priyanka also says that many use it to even promote social issues, relevant topics and that next year, she’ll look to base her work on a larger theme.
Some like architect and freelance graphic artist Nirupama Vishwanath are using the month as a tool to improve their skills. “I’m not too good at portraits and faces, so I wanted to focus on my weakness and get better. Also, my style is always very happy and joyful, so this time I went dark and gloomy – all zombies and skulls and bones!” she laughs. Nirupama adds, “The other positive angle to this is that the hashtag helps artists get noticed by a lot of prospective new clients.”
And for yet others like Academy of Art graduate from
San Francisco, Priyanka Menon, it’s getting a chance to break free from the shackles of work and being experimental – “Often, we lose focus on being original, in the midst of orders and work – this reminded me to draw for myself and have some fun. They included everything from Game of Thrones characters like Robb Stark and Jon Snow to Zooey Deschanel’s New Girl and my favourite goddesses! It’s a terrific feeling to be a part of a global art diaspora.”