Sketches in book form
Durgapur days in the early 2010 or 11, had no consequence of my joining full time in teaching there. I was almost jobless that time searching for a good employment opportunity and a roof over my head. Few sketches originated from my hand and I preserved those for some future days, when colour will come back to my life. Now in the lazy, idle days of COVID pandemic in 2020 summer, when my photogenic memory of every art galleries of New York from Brooklyn to Bronx, was fading, I decided to take to pen and brush to resurrect it. And that is the first shot to start my drawing and painting class. One by one, each month was chronologically assessed and how many drawings could be made was estimated for my company's break-even calculation. Accordingly my company was floated and the name was "bhattoos" selected out of few equally strong alternatives.
By 2022, I was pretty familiar with the printing world of Kolkata and its lanes and bye-lanes and few thousand shops dealing in it. 2023 had equally spirited production graph, and the COVID fear was gradually decaying and the painting and printing world was looking shinier again. 2024 came with too many art shows and long waiting line of gallery bookings in and around Kolkata. I crossed the golden 100 marks of making drawings and assumed these to be a valuable asset for me to get published as an integrated "Sketch Book" with nutshell narrative on each piece of images on "why and what".
Now before the autumn festival in 2025, when the Sketch Book hits the racks and stalls with 80 such brand nouveau illustrations, and the drum beats announce it in the air and blue sky, white cloud, fragrance of flowers, dew in the morning give passage to the sketch book in the drawing rooms of the readers, study rooms of the researchers, the library of the elites, shipment outside the country, I finished the first part of my job and thank the publisher, distributors, book shops, readers, and connected persons as well as hordes of well-wishers for collaborating on the first part of the sketch book series.
Background idea of creating the first of the series of such sketch books with 80 odd illustrations started in the idle days and months in the first year of COVID pandemic in the summer of 2020. The whole city, state and the country were reeling under the huge outbreak of coronavirus and every day death count all over the state was abnormally hiking up, The total government, state administration, police came to a standstill. Like world wars, the silence and stiffness in life chocked the daily routine. Rationing of food stuffs, control over transport & movement, Vaccination, Hospitalization, closure of business houses, office and educational institutes, indefinite shutting down of shops and establishments, barren roads, peopleless daytime, cashless ATMs and banks displayed "Service Closed" months after months, with no hope of easing the situation. Then in the outcome of Fall, gradually unlocking process started and in winter of 2020 & 2021, little natural respite was obtained at the end of excruciating two full years. Work from home was the name of the game and all remunerative works were suspended and joblessness crippled the middle class. The upper class and proprietor class saw nosedived trend in their real assets, net worths and businesses. This left effect on everybody's real worth and foreseeing miserable trends, the knack to start business from home initiated. Those with small capitals preferred to invest more on their intellectual property taxing their personal knowledge on the subject. In such context in the wee hours of watching decaying trends in global COVID pandemic lockdown atmosphere, the nascent idea of generating and hoisting a website full with illustrations from the events and acts and happenings during these past two years was the inspiration behind highlighting these stories and snippets from Kolkata as well as eastern part of India to the world of art universally. Purpose, behind such effort, is nothing but bridging the gap in understanding and communication between the two worlds. Themes are mostly city-centric observations and depictions and behavioural aspects of human being living a hard city life, extracting juice out of it and balancing their rural and migratory background.
Insight into the creative process of digital world and exploiting the digital art over Art show in city art galleries and museums was the advantage to reach more viewers and to be widely accessible from all corners of the world.
Intention to promote urban art and sketches forming an acute perspective or a visionary angle, or an abstract 3-Dimensional view suppressing the Nikon camera lense or relinquishing an Apple i-phone photoshoot and directing it on paper with pen and ink is the ultimate in skyrocketing our endeavour.Personal journey throughout the childhood years, school days to adulthood and college days had a monopolistic direction towards arts, architecture, design and planning. Motivation for drawing and drafting came from the multinational design houses, who were into building trades, construction works and contracting in erection of townships, bridges and roads. Creation of outdoor spaces and gaudi interiors, colour sense, contrast, silhouette, brightness, balance in light and shade, dark mode, objects reflecting light source, straight line and curvature, height versus length and breadth, void and composition, were all the experiments before a building or structure was envisioned, designed, tested and retested for a final, foolproof and perfect completion.
Traditionally the history of arts from renaissance time in Europe since 16th century is available and workable with us. From Italy and Greece, it gradually travelled to France and Spain westward and Germany, England, Russia, etc upward. It took many turns and twists to get the names of many major art movements and finally stopped and settled in today's Post COVID twenty-first century first quarter, when post modern movement is already old. American modern art movements and European fine arts are two driving forces for us to take lessons and inspirations and its reflection on our livelihood and work culture and to overcome the heaviness and dull progress of our daily life, the surrealism, ideation, abstraction and non-conventional artworks are a rare fragrance in this rotten world.Main theme or subject of the incident and by twisting its actual or real contextual backdrop, meaning and purpose, if more gainful, purposeful and multiple results can be achieved, then caricature of art or cartoon art or parody art and triangular light weight urban sketches are a welcome relief in this hot, bitter world of monotonous and heavy weight conventional or artistic art. A very popular proverb is commonly heard "Art for Art's sake", but what actually it addresses is intangible.
In this obsessive period, when natural artistic talents and instincts are fighting with scientific and scholarly marvels and medals, Digital technology, AI, IOT, computerization of art, satellite and internet based society, Wi-Fi dependent living room and front gardens, battle between GSM and CDMA mobile technology, SIM controlled lifestyle and more such new new invention and patent everyday are the answer to tripartite or arbitrate the art business and leveraging us to a broader horizon and to an increased viewership and longer list of subscribers and global focus.
"Bhattoos" generator Mr. Supratik (b.1959), had a childhood memory mostly centering Calcutta (now Kolkata). He witnessed seachange in Kolkata politics from the demise of First Chief Minister of West Bengal in 1962 to the upsurge of Naxalbari movement in late sixties to Bangladesh independence in early seventies and the massive onslaught of Bangladeshi Hindu refugees in Kolkata afterwards to dwindling Congress government in state in mid-seventies to change over of political power in favour of Communist Left front regime. It lasted for more than three decades, when the epitome of power was vanquished by less stringent and moderate, pro right-wing TMC ruling for last 15 years. It culminated to an outburst of experience in apprehending, analysing and depicting the Kolkata life in all its hues, shades, colours, flavours, seasons, festivities, sorrows, troubles and sunshine. Then came the disastrous COVID pandemic lockdown. It was heard to be harder than Second WW. It opened up another vista, vision and dimension in our life. Travelling became crisp, creative and meaningful, than whimsical, purposeless and unproductive. Educative and learning process became more enlarged than ever before and the training assimilated during COVID to safeguard, harness and capitalize the goods of incoming future, not to be wasted anymore is the reason to give birth of this sketch book. Its mission is to make aware and generate consciousness among the lovers of urban life and city dwellers to protect their habitat, neighborhood and urban space from danger, disaster and damage of any means. Bridge between hard concrete, lifeless city life and passage to pastoral countryside and clean environment is the motive of this edition. Natural resources-cum-green tech is a new avenue to tread. The author has both bachelor's and master's degree in related areas and is capable of capturing, moulding and remoulding the scenes, scenarios and acts taking place everyday, everywhere and every corner of life around us to a conclusive surity.
