On Instagram, Kanishka Dasgupta calls himself Dr. Jekyll and describes himself as an everyday artist who deals with everyday objects. He’s been doodling on a daily basis for over a year, posting at least an image per day.
One of his recent doodles to mark Dasara depicts 10-headed Ravana, in which Kanishka replaces nine heads with cheeseballs. In another image, he draws a picture of a woman brooding on the bathroom floor, with a comb placed like a shower. In his ode to the city of his birth, Kolkata, Kanishka replaces a wheel of a rickshaw with a biscuit.
“The objects become a part of the storytelling; there are occasions when the drawing itself lends scope for a new story,” says Kanishka. He holds a marketing job with a multinational company, is associated with a theatre group and doodling is an extension of his creative capabilities.
Noticing his doodles, Urban Ladder had roped him in to promote a new line of products. Recently, Kanishka was commissioned to do a few doodles for eBay India’s Deepavali promotions. “The possibilities are endless, whether the image focuses on a festival, a product or a social issue. A bunch of crayons can turn into rockets if used well, an anar can be a perfume bottle, or a biscuit can be a shopping bag,” he says.
Kanishka reckons that it’s easier to doodle with objects digitally, making use of the vast clipart and other image resources. But he prefers the manual method, hand-drawing each image. “It’s fulfilling to do it manually. While I do a few doodles for marketing campaigns, I am aware that the joy of drawing is lost if I commercialise it too much,” he says.
Wafers become blades of a windmill, bananas are used as dolphins, a slice of a mango becomes an eye of Spider-Man and leaves in place of lungs drive home the message of being ecologically sound. “The idea is to tell a story by choosing an object that would befit the image,” he adds.
The doodles on his Facebook page earned him an invitation to teach children at Gymboree. “Children can be extremely imaginative when told to look at objects differently. They drew a Captain America shield with a Marie biscuit and one little girl did a butterfly with her hair clip. That’s the fun and the joy of this art,” he says.
Doodling can be a stress buster, he feels, and emphasises that art has no restrictions. “It’s the world’s oldest democracy. One can see art as a painting on a wall, as a mural on a canvas, as a stage performance, or even with everyday objects. I try to capture that and hope to share a perspective. There are many who do that and I am just one of those many,” he signs off.
Check Kanishka’s doodles at https://www.instagram.com/ kanishkadasgupta/
