Illustrator Anirudh Kadav’s romance with the arts began in his childhood. He vividly recalls sketching for fun as a child, but he didn’t realise it back then how it got his creative juices flowing. He adds, ‘I was just drawn to sketching. Soon people in my vicinity noticed my skill set. One uncle of mine even recommended art colleges and said I should consider those.’
Anirudh’s colourful artworks, with their slight old world charm, pay attention to detail and manage to capture even the minor banal details in a scene. As an artist, he draws inspiration from the maestros he looks up to and from his own observations of the world around. In the age of social media, Instagram helps him stay updated, but more than anything else, it is travel and life in general that fuel his creativity the most. Even the most mundane situations can get his juices flowing. Talking about his aesthetic in particular, Anirudh asserts that it is a composition of his sharp observational skills. He explains, ‘I feel that if your composition is good, you almost win your audience over by 50 percent. The second part of it for me lies in the drawing, colour scheme, patterns, shapes. These are things that are important to me and I feel everyone should follow this.’
His process for creating the artworks is fairly methodological, it begins with a deep perusal of the subject and then he manages to map out mentally what exactly it is that he wants to achieve. What follows is pulling out some references. He breaks it down further, ‘After that I create thumbnail sketches and then I choose one sketch out of them, which I am drawn the most towards and then I polish it and lock the final version of the illustration.'
The artist also runs his own independent illustration and design studio based out of Mumbai called Hey Doode. Anirudh and the team deeply believe in the power of design and illustration to improve lives, and provide solutions to be able to create a more immersive experience. They work with brands and agencies for their illustration needs, right from packaging to digital requirements, and from murals to magazines. Talking about one of his most challenging projects till date, the illustrator reminisces about one done by Hey Doode, adding, ‘The most challenging project I’ve done is a huge wall painting. I had to hire 8 people for the project and we had the task of covering two floors of characters in just 10 days. It turned out to be a great learning experience.’
While the lockdown has proved to be severely unproductive for certain people, it has most certainly proved to be helpful for Anirudh and his future endeavours. On a parting note he adds, ‘For the longest time I had been planning to start my own studio, and I did by the end of 2018, by the name of Hey Doode. This lockdown has actually been a blessing because i've been able to give it the time it deserved, which I couldn't before. I am learning and growing along with the practice.’
Text Unnati Saini
L: Anirudh Kadav