An Interview With Rakesh Sharma

# An Interview With Rakesh Sharma.

Rakesh Sharma is an Indian artist born on the 15th of August 1963, he was raised and educated In Bombay, now called Mumbai.

In his formative years he disliked education and changed schools often, even though his father was a teacher. He developed an interest in science and excelled in his studies, a naturally talented artist, with a knack for drawing “Funny Faces”. From this artistic ability he made the decision to study Architecture.

Five years of schooling, a demanding schedule and an overwhelming volume of study, led to him neglecting these hobbies as he entered into his professional career. Most of his family members were self employed, and he was the first person in his family to be hired by a large firm. After six years at this position he married and sought to also become self employed. Specializing in high-end interior design, he and a colleague would start their own company which would eventually employ approximately a dozen people.

At age 33 his wife Priya -herself a fashion designer- gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Devika. She would go on to interior design school, and after completing her education she joined her father briefly in the family business, leaving to pursue a love interest, herself marrying into an industrial family.

As a working professional artwork was always a side hobby, but as the company grew and his time became available, he began taking the sketching seriously. Slowly joining different social media groups, and eventually distributing his artwork online. Drawing Inspiration and citing influences such as Jean Giraud, Herge, Ernesto Priego, and Uderzo, he excels at drawing Caricatures, and his favourite classic comic characters. In recent years he has begun teaching online art classes, and is also available for custom art orders.

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing him.

# Where are you now?

“I am in Mumbai, I am traveling early morning tomorrow to Calcutta. Then after a few days again I’m Flying again. These times it’s little hectic to keep flying all over the place.”

# What is your favourite thing about your home country of India?

“There is so much diversity in India, it is made up different states, in the south the culture is completely different. It’s comfortable for me. In the north we Speak Hindi and English, but in (some aregions) the education rates are low, so foreigners would have a hard time traveling there.”

# What is your favourite place to travel?

“Austria, in fact I didn’t like Vienna that much. I like Graz, I like the place because it has got so much nature, at the time time if you see the people they are not in a hurry.”

# As a child what was your first inspiration to pursue art?

“I never as a child -or even the time I was in school- I never had any idea about people who were artistically talented, I was very much influenced by comic books, and more by western comic books, cowboys, commando books, I would read a lot of those books, I was very much influenced by that.”

“I would try to draw those Cowboys and Red Indians, Tarzan, and all the comics, I was not so much into Batman and Spider-Man to be honest. At six that was my love, then there were be other comics, Richie Rich and so on.”

“ People would used to tell me your drawing is good, but I thought…it is rubbish.”

“Sometimes you are not good at something, and you ask people to criticize what you’ve done, so its a learning process again for you.”

# Art is always subjective though.

“It’s a passion, it’s not really my bread and butter, whenever I get free time I try to sketch and it keeps me occupied. For me Sketching, I treat it like a religion. I try to worship the art, and it brings me a lot of peace.”

# Who is your favorite artist?

“He is no more, he was Indian, his name is Mario Miranda, he is somebody who was very under-rated as an artist in his time, but some of his work is very classical and very good.”

“ Another one, obviously he is world famous, you must have heard of is Sebastian Kruger, he is German, his work is known throughout the world.”

# Who is your favorite living artist?

“Thierry Coquette, His work is unbelievable for me, he does it in ballpoint, and when people ask what is his medium, no one will accept that it is done in ball point. The way he carries out - in the caricature- the exaggeration, still maintaining the resemblance to the person, and bringing out the character, is totally, totally different. For me he is the biggest inspiration of today.”

# What is your favorite medium?

“I draw with Pencil, most of my sketches are done with a mechanical pencil. a 0.5 or 0.3. My Favorite medium is pencil. Some other work you’ve seen is done with a black Brush pen. The skill lies in how much pressure you apply to the pen.”

“I used to use simple copy paper, there was a friend who saw my work and he said, “your art is definitely good, but why are you using such cheap paper?” So eventually I progressed to using a higher end paper, mostly A3 format,”

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# What are your future artistic endeavors?

“To become more enlightened in field of art and to understand the great masters who have achieved great skill in this form of art.”

# Have you ever experimented with drugs, or been a heavy drinker?

“Never tried drugs, used to have drinks once in a while, however of late I have given up drinking in totality.”

# What are your religious beliefs?

“I believe the biggest God is Karma which translates to doing your duty in best capacity, wether as a leader, father, brother, son, in various stages of your life.”

# What do you enjoy most about teaching?

“With what I have learned - little in this field- if I can convey to aspiring people to cultivate this talent in them, which sometimes if not tried remains inherent.”

# Thank you very much Rakesh. It was a great pleasure talking to you!

“ You are most welcome.”

Rakesh is currently welcoming students for Online Art Classes.