Howrah’s teenager makes it to India Book of Records with miniature art of scraps
Human beings are born creative and then taught to be uncreative as they grow older. A creative soul can breathe life into a block of wood or sculpt ethereal figures from stones or take a lump of soil to make exquisite idols. People who retain their innovative spark delve for unique mediums to express their creativity. Moulika Dey of Kalyanpur in Amta Assembly Constituency of rural Howrah, is a powerhouse of talent. The Class VIII student of Bagnan Girls' High School, Moulika has steered clear of conventional mediums and has utilized discarded packets of soaps, toothpaste containers, mobile phone box et al to transform them into her canvas, creating exquisite miniature paintings on them.
Moulika has been an avid artist ever since she could hold a pencil properly. What started as her journey to explore the visual world around her through doodles, gradually took shapes and turned into her passion. As a child, she would often turn cranky like any other kid and would wail and howl for attention. During these stressful times, her mother discovered the most convenient way to calm her down. She would make her sit down with a few colour pencils and a scrap book. Moulika would be lost for hours, exploring her creative world with her prized possessions for company.
Moulika aspires to be a doctor and her family is very supportive of her decision. She is serious about her studies and has been diligently studying and doing well in her school all through. Her only form of entertainment is art. She is passionate about art and whenever she needs a breather from her grinding schedule, she finds peace and solace in her drawing books and her vast array of colour pens/pencils and paints collected since childhood. She is also innovative and looks for ways to express her artistic urge in unique ways, different from the run-of-the-mill stuff. Her search led her to her new medium: discarded packets, soap and toothpaste boxes, medicine cartons and cardboard boxes. She hit upon the idea of recycling the scraps. She cuts them into small sizes and then using water colours and crayons she created amazing miniature paintings of birds and animals, hermits and beggars, scenes from the natural world and myriad objects she observes in her vicinity. She has amazing skill and completes an artwork within a very short time. Making art is one of the most demanding and difficult of human pursuits. Not only does it demand imagination and vision and knowledge, it also demands fantastic physical skill. Only surgery comes close to the virtuosity required of the miniature artist.
Miniature painting, in addition to usual artistic abilities, requires great concentration, patience, a very steady hand, extreme caution when handling the delicate work and of course the desire to subject oneself to these additional burdens solely for the purpose of creating the art on a smaller scale and artists like Moulika who embrace the genre, find it enchanting and addictive.
As Jen Dulong puts it, “Painting small scale models is a way of creating order. You need to plan your time and tools very precisely, be aware of what you are doing at all times, plan the work flow, decide where you should focus first and foremost. The miniature gives you feedback as you progress and as such it makes painting fun as well as challenging!”
Moulika paints only when she gets time to take off her eyes from her text books and reference books and take a break. She took 40 days to draw 532 miniature paintings on pieces of paper. The size of each frame is between 3.5 centimeters to 3.8 centimeters. Her commendable work has been acknowledged and she has already made it to the India Book of Records. This has definitely encouraged her to explore further the vast world of art and she intends to pursue art passionately along with her academics.
Miniature Painting: Surely no other genre is so enchanting or infectious with regards to the way it captivates, charms and excites us to the degree of wanting to treasure it so close while announcing it to the world from the rooftops!
Painting small scale models is a way of creating order. You need to plan your time and tools very precisely, be aware of what you are doing at all times, plan the work flow, decide where you should focus first and foremost. The miniature gives you feedback as you progress and as such it makes painting fun as well as challenging!
Jen Dulong, EU
