The realm of artists is the most magical dimension in the world. It reminds us even in this time when eyes are glued to computers, backs are fixed straight to office chairs, creation is always happening. We love people who follow their dreams, and we interviewed an example of it during our last interview.

We met , a happy-go-lucky artist who paints, sketches, creates illustrations for story books amidst the nature, where creation gets its fluidity the most. We crossed our legs, with smiles on our faces, and sat in her garden. Her colourful artwork set a beautiful contrast against the green grass.

JWB – We see a lot of different styles of artwork, Rupal. What all do we have here?

Rupal – See, for example, this one here is entirely brown ink. I chose brown because it adds a vintage look to my art. I am inspired by the Indian history, and every once in a while something inside me pushes me to connect with the history.

JWB – Does that include reading history books?

Rupal – *Laughs* Haha. Not at all! Please don’t get me to sleep. History books are this beautiful “magical” powder that can put anyone to sleep.

JWB – What’s the story behind these calendars?

Rupal – I love travelling, and as I mentioned, I absolutely love the history (not the books) of India. So I designed a calendar, where I took twelve monuments of different cities and sketched them.

JWB – Wait a second; is that a colourful Albert Hall?

Rupal – Yes!

I was blown away.

Rupal – See, I look at Albert Hall as a colourful place. It represents Jaipur, and I feel there’s no city as colourful as Jaipur in the entire world. A colourful Albert Hall is the definition of Jaipur.

JWB – How do you name your portraits?

Rupal – I don’t. I feel they don’t need names, that’s the beauty, isn’t it? Not finding the right words to define your work!

JWB – So tell us, have you always known? Was there enough support?

Rupal – I realized my dream sometime during school. See, I feel initially parents feared that their daughter had lost her mind, but slowly they got the hang of it. When they noticed that I was getting recognized, they started taking me seriously. Bottom line, if you get where you need to be, even slightly, there isn’t much to worry about.

JWB – Tell us about the recent exhibition where you displayed your artwork.

Rupal – I made a weird mistake there. I forgot to decide the price of my pieces. It’s so difficult to put a price tag on them. So a buyer came up to me and asked the price for a painting, I literally said, “I don’t know.”

JWB – What is the coolest thing you’ve sketched?

Rupal – I was in Mumbai, and I had forgotten to take my camera. Everything was so beautiful, I didn’t know how to capture it. Then I purchased a sketch book and sketched everything I wanted to capture for an eternity.

JWB – What are these storybooks about?

Rupal – Very funny story! We were really young and my cousin Mansi wrote the story about chocomoco…

JWB – What is chocomoco?

Rupal – *giggling* The girl sets on an expedition to find the chocolate chocomoco. It was a silly concept.

JWB – Wow, it’s been happening for a long time then.

Rupal – Yes. In fact, I also created Ramayana illustrations.

JWB – Wow! Forget professionalism, forget everything, what is your most favourite thing to draw?

Rupal – No, please! You’ll laugh at me!

JWB – No, we’ll laugh with you!

Rupal – Okay, back in school I used to draw cartoons a lot and all my friends used to think I was really stupid. I still love doing it. You know how people are just sitting idle and they draw flowers or patterns, I like to draw cartoons, they are still my favourite thing to draw.

JWB – Wow!

Rupal ­– I’ll draw one for you!

JWB – That would be amazing.

We curiously looked at the piece of paper she was sketching on.

It was hard at first to understand where she was going with it, but soon, I couldn’t help but smile.

She made it happen what we couldn’t do for the longest time! She drew our photographer, Pallav Bhargava, who never gives us his pictures to put on the blog.

Pallav smiled and figured out, too. Take a guess, which one is he?

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