Bengaluru-based freelance illustrator Vijaya Sonia Aswani shared Inktober founder Jake Parker’s idea behind starting ‘Inktober’: to improve drawing skills and develop personal drawing habits. #Inktober calls out to artists across the world to do one ink drawing a day for the month of October.
“But what inspired me,” says 23-year old Vijaya, “is a book I read by Jason Polan called ‘Every Person in New York’, where he set out to draw every person in the city. I could relate to his love for ideas and his love for people and I thought I should do something in Bengaluru because there are so many people here, doing so many interesting things and so there are so many interesting stories. I wanted to give it my own twist.”
While Jason drew his portraits from a distance, Vijaya talks to the people she sketches and incorporates their story into the drawings, which she uploads onto her Instagram page @spreefirit. She has named her project #EveryPersonInBangaloreCity.
“I love listening to stories. Drawing people is vastly different from other kinds of drawings because one has to be able to capture their essence, their unique flavour, for it to resemble them. The way I do it is by asking questions about their lives, prompting them to share stories. Sometimes they share their personal stories, sometimes they talk about their hobbies or about what they do while I capture them on paper.”
Each drawing takes anywhere between five to ten minutes, at the end of which Vijaya picks out a resonating line from their story to add to the sketch.
“That makes it personalized,” says Viaya, who did her portraits at the Koramangala Social over the weekend.
“People have been quite open to sharing their stories. And on the rare occasions that they are shy, I try to open them up by asking them questions about their childhood, their career or their passion, whatever they wish to express.”
She usually does her drawings in coffee houses and at her hostel, which is also a community living and learning space. “I like it best when people are comfortable around me. Once I met a beautiful couple at a coffee shop, who said that they had bonded over pop culture and films. I asked them to continue their conversation while I was sketching them and they went ahead and spoke for over 15 minutes about movies, while I drew them. They were so relaxed the whole time,” she recalls.
“And another time, at the India Coffee House in Church Street, I met an old man who works as a cleaner. He was so sweet and welcoming. I asked his supervisor if he could take a five-minute break so I could sketch him. He was conscious about sitting and a little uncomfortable because he had to stop his work. I tried to make him comfortable by smiling since we didn’t speak the same language. But at the end of it, he was ecstatic to see his sketch. He kept coming back to look at it.”
Since the project is called “EveryPersonInBangaloreCity’, her aim is to capture as many portraits as possible.
“But it’s a time-consuming process. I was on a one-month break from work, until the end of October. I will get back to my project when I take my next break.”
Vijaya’s sketches will be posted on a wall at the Koramangala Social.
