Well-oiled memories

Indu Singhania, 60, adores her two grandsons. This Peddar Road housewife, like most proud grandmothers, has a picture of the twins that she keeps safely locked away in her cupboard. “It is a natural photo. They were just playing around when I decided to click them,” she says. A fan of paintings, Singhania was loath to put up their framed picture in her home. Then she came across Your Portrait’s work. Today, an oil of the twins holds pride of place in her home and has her grandsons hooked onto learning paintings.

The nearly two-year-old Your Portrait does photo-portraits — send across a photo and within weeks you get your own custom-made oil and acrylic portrait. It’s a team of eight artists spread all across Maharashtra whose labour is on display in the muted shades on canvas.

Painted memories
When Mumbai-based painter Gawde, now 38, was in school, his focus was on studies. Painting portraits started off as a hobby in college, a factor that stemmed from his fondness for Rembrandts’ work. Gawde started off small, doing odd paintings till finally specialising in portraits. Till date he has done portraits of Steve Jobs, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, and even Johnny Depp.

Tripti Kedia, director cum owner of Your Portrait, got the idea of starting Your Portrait after she fell in love with Gawde’s portrait of her sister, which was a birthday gift. The duo got talking and a little market-research later, Kedia realised that portraits hadn’t caught on enough because most people thought portraits were meant only for the affluent, the recently deceased or in the case of big corporates, of their founders/ directors. It was a mindset that Kedia and Gawde, now her lead artist, wanted to change.

Gawde’s favourite and most challenging portrait was that of a newborn baby. To get a feel of what he wanted to paint, he would hold his daughter and study her. The result, he was able to capture very fold, every wrinkle and the character of the child whose photo was given to him.

Art in progress
Every picture that Your Portrait gets is zoomed in and blown up, to check for the minute details like the lighting, the play of shadows, the different tones and so on. Once the picture is finalised, a call is made to the client to get additional character details and personality traits, which can be translated onto canvas. For eg: if the person in question has a romantic side, then shades of pink and red will be used. Much like memories, the portraits are made to last, requiring just minor touch up and tightening of loose canvas over the years. Your Portrait will be making their
debut appearance at the Kalaghoda Arts Festival 2012 in Mumbai from February 4 to 12.