Having had the opportunity of exercising his skills as a concept artist with Fabeliser in 2015, Gajanan says that illustration is not just his passion but is his love!
Bright prospects of exploring and honing illustration skills in various topics like crime, education, politics, etc, all at the same time, got Gajanan working for DNA And Zee Media. This also gives him a chance to experiment with different styles across a wide range of projects like building storyboards, character designing and portraits.
Talking about the motivational factors influencing the decision making to work for a particular publication or newspaper, Gajanan considers the range of exposure of project typology, the target audience of the company and the monetary rewards are the most important.
Working as an illustrator, innovation and time limit are the biggest challenges for Gajanan. Taking into account the newspaper media, the outputs have to be an immediate and witty creation in response to the latest that is happening in the country.
This wittiness needs to be accompanied by simplicity in understanding, so as to reach out to the broad audience in terms of age groups and intellect, all throughout the country. And this can be achieved by a simple exercise of observation, wherever one is. Mumbai locals work best for Gajanan!
This way, the challenges actually become the means for the illustrator to keep up with the ever-increasing competition and help keep the publication house at the top. It also helps the illustrators' individual growth in terms of quick mind-visualisations and their digital execution, thus working as a tool for speed-efficiency and functioning as a confidence-booster!
Speaking of inspirations, Gajanan follows a lot of senior illustrators and also feels that nature casts its own magical inspirational spell on him. To get the best out of him, Gajanan understands the required topic in depth from the reporter in-charge and then fuses his inspirations with the trending topic to create an illustration in tandem with the amalgamation. Whereas creating portraits completely depends upon the character and its background.
In today's digital world of art and everything is so easily available and downloadable, the problem of copyright is a major concern for artists and their valuable work. A publication house has its own registered copyright and working with/for them provides the artist with the security of their individual work being used by others only with permission.
Gajanan feels that professional security comes from within. The style is an individualised element: it eliminates the fear of someone copying it. The combination of passion and practice is strong enough to guarantee an artist the security needed. Passion urges a person to know more and be updated while practice makes a man perfect, as the famous saying goes. This combination along with a keen eye for observation and a challenging spirit to try new things is the success mantra for any artist!
