Artists’ Sketchbooks 05: Achintya Malviya

Achintya’s sketchbooks are intensely detailed and page after page captures people and places around him. Lights beaming down onto a railway platform, fans whirring slowly overhead, people deep in thought - every last gesture and movement is recorded beautifully.

Who?
Achintya Malviya graduated from the College of Art, Delhi last year and currently working as a project staff at Department of Design, IIT Guwahati and as a freelance artist. At IITG, he writes stories for several short film projects and is also working on a short animation film project.

Tell us a little about work and artistic practice.

I was born and brought up in Allahabad. My father, Yash Malviya, is a renowned Hindi poet and so was my grandfather. I was lucky to be born into a family where art was practiced in one form or the other, but you never know through what mysterious ways creativity finds its way to you - maybe all the credit goes to my mother who is a homemaker. I started writing poems and short stories when I was very young, but I didn’t even realize when I started making portraits and sketches from the very same pen that I was using to write poems.

Since I write as well, I was always interested in understanding human behavior and emotion. I kept drawing character sketches of people in my life or the people I see around me, writing about them, studying them, its always kept me busy and has never allowed me to get bored. Sociology/ethnography is fun and my interest in people and human behavior was not limited to writing. When I picked up a brush I found myself painting human figures, I have always found them interesting - I believe they are the most expressive forms. One can convey an entire story with the slightest gesture and I’ve been trying to capture these gestures, these moments in my paintings. To some extent I’ve been able to achieve this with my writing but I’m still trying to achieve it when I paint – it’s going to take time, but the process is beautiful and it excites me.

What does your sketchbook mean to you?

“Being an artist, the desire to express yourself is always there and sketching is my favourite language. When I speak, write or paint, the moment I’m trying to capture in words or image has already passed and I’m trying to capture the memory of the moment, and in doing so I lose a little bit of the essence of that moment.

But when I sketch, I sketch while life is going on around me - the moment and the drawing happen simultaneously, each stroke seems meaningful, and every stroke and movement adds more life to the drawing. Most times, my subjects are human beings, they move and change postures and it’s about capturing that movement.

My sketchbook is a record of all the moments I was able to express myself, sketching is the only medium that gives me the satisfaction of being able to express something to the fullest. This is why sketching is my favourite language; every page in my sketchbook has a story attached to it. Those moments have made me pick up the pen and sketch it down, it’s like a diary - whenever I felt the need to write - I wrote.”

Could you share one piece from your sketchbook that means something to you?

“As I mentioned, all my sketches have a story attached to it; I don’t sketch just because I can but rather when a moment inspires me to pick up my pen. Every piece is special and very close to me, I remember all their stories and its very difficult for me to pick just one. However, this is one my most recent ones and I really love it.

I was travelling by train from Guwahati to my hometown of Allahabad, a 24-hour journey and these guys asked me to let them sit on my berth as they didn’t have a confirmed ticket. The father didn’t know how to read, so his son was reading the Quran to him. He would look at the Quran with a questioning expression and then to him son’s face as he read to him, and smile – they were the most humble, innocent people I’ve ever met. The son would even scold his father occasionally for making him repeat something. It was amazing to see how similar they were to me, and how their relationship was so much like my relationship with my own father. I love this sketch because I think I’ve been able to capture their relationship in it, I love the expressions on both their faces and this is why I have chosen it.”