This piece explores four contemporary Indian illustrators whose artistic voices are as distinctive as a filmmaker's signature style. Featuring Priya Kurian, Omkar Patil, Sharanya, and Nikitha Banda, it celebrates creators whose unique visual languages transform everyday experiences, queer joy, rural India, childhood imagination, and internet culture into unforgettable works of art.
One of the few things that stuck with me in my film studies class was the auteur theory. In simple words, it positions the director as the 'author' of the movie, when you watch a film, you can immediately tell which director made it because their artistic style is so distinct, almost like a fingerprint, that it is singular and therefore easily distinguishable. This theory, like all theories, has its flaws, but it can be extended to other art forms as well, even visual art.
And these illustrators on our radar are authors in their own right, each with a style so distinct and individual, from Omkar Patil's vivid use of a palette of greens, blues, and yellows, to Sharanya's soft, almost wispy portraits of young women stringing together a garland of 'mallipu' (gajra).
Bengaluru-based illustrator and comic maker Priya Kurian takes these vivid scenes we all have in our imaginations and puts them onto paper. Predominantly illustrating for children's and young adults' media, her work is innately curious and also extremely clever. If you look closely at every work of hers, it will make you smile like you're in on a joke — something only between you and the artist. Kurian's art forces you to think and imagine all the possible backstories for all her characters: how did the rabbit end up at the disco? Where could there be a water slide leading you to a coral reef? From flamingos playing the guitar to little girls running in a field of wheat, her art is proof that children's literature can be both extremely vivid and colourful, and evocative. Follow Kurian on Instagram.
Omkar Patil’s work captures snapshots of India that are often missed out in the general imagination of all that our country encompasses. From a farmer in the field holding her sickle to the very cattle that helps grow all our food and grains, Patil honours every single part of the farming pipeline that is never appreciated as much as it should be in urban India. The colours he uses are reminiscent of the ones used to decorate the trucks we see on every road and highway: unmissable and so intrinsic to understanding Indian art and culture. He is also known for his mural work and his series of digital illustrations imagining Mumbai’s architecture into something completely different, like Antilla transforming into a jenga tower or the many skyscrapers turning into a stack of coins. Follow Patil on Instagram.
I think, Sharanya views the human body, particularly women like nymphs. Feathery, effervescent, always covered in a glow that feels like it's coming from within. There is a lightness to their art, and you can see it in everything, the soft hues of pink, brown and yellow and the subjects’ hair falling on their face and shoulders. Sharanya captures queerness through the large spectrum it lies on, painting everything from moments of queer pleasure to falling into the unavoidable abyss a Mitski song induces. Her three part series of the goth girl and pink girl falling in love, makes the queer experience not feel as daunting and overwhelming as it is portrayed in their other media representations. It can be playful, funny, and even sexy. To be honest, it can be whatever you want it to be. Follow Sharanya on Instagram.
Nikitha Banda’s page feels like the inside of everything she has ever consumed and loved portrayed through the lens of her creative mind. The reels she has scrolled on that evil app, things we feel we are forced to entertain in today’s world and Fleabag (of course), Banda is representing the chronically online girl to the T. She is exhausted, colourful and both unapologetic and ridden with guilt about her screen time. Her work feels razor sharp with its biting humour and soft and sweet at the same time, encompassing all that girlhood can be. Follow Banda on Instagram.
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