Tessy Koshy posted: " Live doodle on a Mini Cooper by Sijin in 2021 The sky's the limit for Dubai-based doodle artist Sijin Gopinathan. After live doodling in the Dubai Metro, on a Mini Cooper and a Mercedes, he has now set his eyes on sketching his signature designs "
The sky's the limit for Dubai-based doodle artist Sijin Gopinathan. After live doodling in the Dubai Metro, on a Mini Cooper and a Mercedes, he has now set his eyes on sketching his signature designs on an aircraft. Born in the lush green southern Indian state of Kerala, Sijin's muse is Mother Nature. His canvases are forever etched with black and white webs of doodles depicting leafy tendrils hosting birds and thick canopies of forest scenes bursting with faces of tigers, elephants and antelopes.
Armed with only a reusable marker, Sijin often doodles in front of live audience. At the recently concluded World Art Dubai, he enthralled over a thousand visitors by doodling for his current passion project -- Save the Nature, highlighting deforestation, water pollution, animal extinction and massive bird mortality.
A User Interface (UI) designer by day, the multi-disciplinary artist is adept at designing, illustrating, painting and photography. He amalgamates a range of media in his work including VR, 3D mapping, robotics, neon and conductive ink paint. Always seen sporting his wearable art (patches of doodles on his T-shirt and jeans), he also just launched his NFT website http://www.doodlerockstar.shop/. In this interview with Middle East Masala, Sijin looks back at his humble beginnings and talks about how he was inspired by nature and life to create art.
From the Save the Nature series
Take us back to the beginning of your art journey?
Art came into my life very early and I found inspiration everywhere -- right from the patterns in the paddy fields to the aerial views of my village, I saw from atop mountains, to the traditional Indian murals, to characters in the Amar Chitra Katha book series.
I was only around eleven when I won The Raja Ravi Varma Award for Art at school. From my teens, I was making artwork and calligraphy on walls and cotton cloth banners for local election campaigns to make a quick buck. I used to also regularly scan the newspapers to look for any art competitions that I could participate in. These gave me a lot of exposure to other art forms. Although I did not take part professionally at first, art always remained a constant companion in my life. Moving to the UAE further steered me towards carving a unique art identity by perfecting doodles.
Tell us about your artistic style and the mediums you use.
My art does not depend on a particular medium. I feel it's a mix of everything. I have learnt and experienced, meshing real life and fantasy. I started by making art using bricks and charcoal. Sometime ago, I saw man near my village in Kerala painting with leaves and other natural materials. I feel we don't need fine quality art materials and gadgets to make masterpieces.
What are the recurring themes in your work and your inspiration behind them?
I come from a small village. My father is a farmer and I have lived very close to the fields helping him at the farm. So, the connection with nature was very intrinsic part of my life that also shaped my creativity. My artwork is almost always a representation of the scenic surroundings I grew up in, which explains why, Save the Nature campaign is close to my heart and I hope to take the message forward globally.
At World Art Dubai 2022
Tell us about your NFT website and your forthcoming projects.
My website is called https://www.doodlerockstar.shop/, which is currently an experimental project to sell and showcase my doodle NFTs. Twenty per cent of the sales from these NFTs will go into supporting upcoming artists globally through The Artist Network and partly also to environmental causes. Apart from this, one of my future projects is to make a Guinness World Record for the biggest doodle art work and of course, doodling on a private jet is high on my wish list. I also hope to conduct more workshops for kids to get them involved in the Save the Nature campaign.
In this post-pandemic scenario, how do you view the role of art?
Personally for me, art is everything. It's an unending passion that drives me constantly. During the pandemic we all saw, how art was one of the best therapies for people to fight lockdown blues and heal their inner world. Art, equally has the power to influence minds and make powerful statements, and so it is crucial to a society's wellbeing.
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