Pics: Vincent Braganza
For Rohit Chari, getting into the art field was the most obvious choice. “I was always drawing in class . My notebooks would be covered with doodles which of course got me in a lot of trouble with my teachers!” he chuckles. After completing his schooling, Chari enrolled himself at the Goa College of Art, Altinho where his interest in caricatures slowly grew. “I was always more into faces, portraits, full figures and illustrations and caricature art was close to it,” he says. After stints at a few companies around Goa and in cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru, Chari decided to launch his own company. “ When I started out the companies I worked in hired artists to do image resizing. Image resizing is not an artist's job! Today even a six year old can do!” he says. While, the opportunities outside Goa were plentiful, Chari states that there wern't any jobs that allowed him to focus only on caricatures and so he decided to start something on his own. Thus Red Canvas came into being five months ago. under which he does a lot of customised caricatures on tiles, mugs or frames in addition to undertaking wall art projects. Some of his most memorable ones include restaurants like The Goan Room and Zostel, a backpackers hostel “Another memorable caricature project I did was when I sketched out the whole love story between a couple from the day they met to their wedding,” he recalls.
And Chari believes that the interest in caricature art is only growing. “ Although there have been great artists who are masters at doing caricatures for a long time the interest is growing in Goa slowly and this is largely owing to the presence of social media,” he says. “ Also, over time the very face of caricature art has changed. “ In earlier times artists used to do only traditional caricatures which was a basic style using juts strokes or one tone colour. But now with digital art work one can explore many different styles.”
Deciding on the style, rests solely with the artist. “Every artist has their own distinct style of making caricatures. But to achieve a good result, facial features in particular play an important role,” he says.
At the same time, Chari wishes that people would understand the work that goes into this art a little better. “I get a lot of customers asking me to create a simple logo in the hope of paying less. What they need to understand is that whether it's a simple or a complex logo the charges for the logo remains the same as per market. Also, creating a simple effective logo which defines your company or firm is much more difficult than complex one,” he explains. “ People need to realise that artists also work for a living and have bills to pays. It's not just for fun. And please don't ask an artist to do it for free!”
Although, he works mainly in caricatures and wall art, Chari states that he will not be restricting himself to these mediums alone. “ There are many things I would love to do , the list is vast. I want to do paintings in oil colours as I hardly do that anymore owing to the low demand presently. I also want to try my hand at sculpting . When I was in school I used to make this Ganapati idols at my uncles place in Shiroda , but it has been awhile since I did it last,” he says, “ I just want to explore everything where creativity is involved and then slowly get in like minded artists into the company who understand creative aspects the way I do.”
