Among the various subjects he sketches and draws, Prakash Thombre always finds Portraits to be most fascinating and interesting – mainly because he chooses his subjects from real life. Most of them, he captures on camera when travelling, later using them as references. He feels drawing Portraits helps to study people around us and connect with them – it's like capturing their life narrative in lines and shades in the form of sketches. He has a keen interest in body language and face reading.
While observing people in real life, he generally tries to find the story about the person. Carefully observing the costumes, facial features, gestures, posture, etc. tells him an interesting story, which he then tries to capture in sketches and drawings. Aspects or elements like these help display and represent the core personality or temperament of the subjects. When he is observing a subject, he studies the minute details about their costumes, poses, gestures, expressions, facial features and so on. If everything compliments each other, it becomes an interesting story to capture in lines as a sketch or drawing.
Prakash is not very comfortable with following one style or technique, nor is he comfortable with the typical copybook fundamentals of rendering. He likes to be spontaneous with the tools and its application, and prefers the lines to be free-flowing and organic in nature – nothing rigid, nothing attempted. Further, with regard to the style of sketching and colouring, the nature of lighting and the likes depends on the time and place.
Usually, on location, he chooses to use the pencil, finding it to be the most efficient tool to play with the line pressure and tonal values. Sometimes, he also uses fountain pens, but with flex and fude nibs, as they provide fantastic dynamic lines, depending on the pen angles and pressure. The sketch artist finds water-colour to be the most dynamic medium since he feels It gives a lot of flexibility with the way one applies and uses it.
If we take a good look at it, most of the designers today are inclined towards using smart devices to draw and sketch – like the iPad or Wacom Cintique – which Prakash feels cripple the true potential of the designer to draw with real tools. He rather opines that designers should use these tools but, at the same time, bring in and maintain the habit of drawing with hands and real tools, where they don't have options like 'Undo' and the likes at their disposal. So, starting the design process with sketching using real tools will help explore and capture ideas quickly, and then explore further to refine it through Smart devices like the iPad or Wacom.
