Hemu
02_Silk Smitha.jpg

One Hundred Portraits Project

A #100DayProject exploring digital collage and illustration with a focus on South Asian (specifically Indian) personalities from different arts industries (e.g., art, music, theatre, film, writing, etc.) as well as social figures in the Indian landscape.

One Hundred Portraits Project 

I’ve been meaning to explore more botanical, fauna, and elemental illustrations, digital painting and collage, and portraiture for a while now. Book covers and movie posters are a huge inspiration for my everyday art-making and I figured I’d try and collapse a bunch of these together. In this series, I’ll be looking to do digital paintings with a central portrait subject photograph. Only the subject will be a photograph and everything else will be digitally sketched and drawn. I’m excited about it because I admire so many people in my professional, personal, and fan-girl life…hoping to bring some of them to colour. The images themselves don’t belong to me—I simply use them as my starting point before manipulating colors.

I was particularly inspired by the digital collages and art work of Kara Walker, Natasha Shaneek, Dewey Saunders, Ernesto artillo, Malvi Bharmani, Sarah Kaushik, Seher Khan, Shilo Shiv Suleman, and many others, borrowing pieces and parts of techniques and developing my own style in the process.

In this project, my subject photographs are always black and white and paired with a two-colour scheme. I love how this grounds my design side before choosing subject’s contextual accompaniments, flora, and fauna. I primarily only focus on South Asian subjects (particular focus on India)—I want to bring our music, arts, theatre, films, and other important social figures into the fray to increase awareness and make more visible. I am currently at the halfway mark for this project and I couldn’t be happier to introduce it to you. :) Please check out @hemuvenkat and/or #Onehundredportraitsproject hashtag on Instagram to follow this project real-time.

Disclaimer:

I do not own the rights to photographs used for the project, only the art that accompanies it. I am only using it for artistic exploration as an extension of my ‘digital sketchbook concept’ and do not monetize the images nor have any other commercial avenues with it. I have cited all the photographers/photo authors at the bottom and they own the respective images’ copyright.

#OneHundredPortraitsProject (Numbers 1-15) | Favourite Actors (Women), Part-1

#OneHundredPortraitsProject (Numbers 16-31) | Favourite Actors (Men), Part-1

#OneHundredPortraitsProject (Numbers 32-39) | Favourite Actors (Women), Part-2

#OneHundredPortraitsProject (Numbers 40-45) | Favourite Music Directors

#OneHundredPortraitsProject (Numbers 46-53) | Favourite Vocalists (Men)

#OneHundredPortraitsProject (Numbers 62-69) | Favourite Actors (Men), Part-2

Image Sources:

  • Sridevi Kapoor: A.V. Bhaskar

  • Aishwarya Rajesh: Prashun Prasanth Sridhar

  • Madhavan (The Indian Express Archives)

  • Vivek (Enga Siri Paapom production team)

  • Shobana: Bikramjith Bose

  • K.J. Yesudas: Syed Shiyaz Mirza

  • Gregory Alan Isakov: Rebecca Caridad

  • T.M. Krishna (Deccan Herald File photo)

  • M.S. Subbulakshmi (Shanmukhanand Archives)

  • Abida Parveen ( The Guardian, Kevin Frayer)

  • Sujatha Mohan (Jeo Jomey)

  • Mammooty: (Supplied image/ Gulf News, photographer not cited)

  • Elango Kumaravel - (Cinema Vikatan e-magazine, photographer not cited)

  • Aamir Khan: (By Siebbi, ipernity.com; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)

  • Dhanush: Dani Charles Silverscreen Media Inc., http://silverscreen.in; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported)

  • K. Manikandan (Suryan FM)

  • Rahul Bose (Getty Images)

  • A.R. Rahman (Sony Music?)

  • Santhosh Narayanan (SPI Music)

  • Rahat Fateh Ali Khan (BBC)

Authors/owners unknown for the following image sources:

  • Silk Smitha, Madhavi, Lakshmi, Manorama, Nassar, Irrfan Khan, Karthik, Sivaji Ganesan, Raghuvaran, M.S. Bhaskar, Nimisha Sajayan, Sri Vidhya, Illayaraaja, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Vidyasagar, MSV, Pradeep Kumar, SPB, Mohd Rafi, Chinmayi Sripada.

From their respective Twitter/IG accounts:

  • Fahadh Faasil

  • Prateek Kuhad (Screengrab from ‘Kasoor’)

  • Shreya Ghosal (her website)

  • Amitabh Bachchan

Photo stills from movies and their respective marketing teams:

  • Tabu (Iruvar, Produced by Mani Ratnam and G. Srinivasan)

  • Ramya Krishnan (Super Deluxe, Produced by Tyler Durden and Kino Fist, Alchemy Vision Works, and East West Dream Work Entertainment)

  • Bhanupriya (Swarnakamalam, Produced by Bhanu Art Creations)

  • Shabana Azmi (Susman, Produced by Shyam Benegal)

  • Manju Warrier (Azmi, Produced by Reel & Real Cinema)

  • Superstar Rajinikanth (Johnny, K. R. G Productions)

  • Prakash Raj (Netflix Navarasa series’ team)

  • Naseeruddhin Shah (Nishant, Produced by Mohan J. Bijlani and Freni Variava)

  • Nagesh (Server Sundaram, Produced by AVM Studios)

  • Kamal Haasan (Nammavar, Produced by B. Venkatramana Reddy)

  • Arvind Swamy (Roja, Produced by Mani Ratnam, Pushpa Kandaswamy, K. Balachander, Rajam Balachander, Babu Bhai H. Shah, Fatehchand H. Shah)

  • Pasupathy (Sarpatta Parambarai, K9 Studios, Neelam Productions)

  • Parvathy Thiruvothu (Maryan, V. Ravichandran)

  • Radhika Apte (Kabali, V. Creations)

  • Sai Pallavi (Shyam Singha Roy, Venkat Boyanapalli)

  • Saranya (Nayagan, Muktha Films)

  • Suhasini (Ramanujan, Produced by Srivatsan Nadathur, Sushant Desai, and Sharanyan Nadathur)

  • Vijay Sethupathi (Soodhu Kavvum, Producer C.V. Kumar)