Life is a Cartoon

The city is huge and damn fast. Wherever you look, you will only find people in hurry! People going about their daily routine, oblivious to their surroundings, in the hurry to catch a train, a bus or maybe an auto-rickshaw. No one walks here, they all speed-walk! Through the course of your average day you come across many people, you have many interactions. The streets are bustling with interactions, incidents and accidents. Some incidents, you are a mere spectator, some, you’re part of. The tech savvy generation of today documents many of these incidents on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. However there a few who look at these incidents from a very different viewpoint. One of them is Saakshi Vyaas, for whom, such incidents from her daily life become the source of her illustrations. Discovering Mumbai presents the story of ‘Saakshi Vyas’, Mumbai based freelance illustrator.

Saakshi would have been like any other average Mumbai girl, if not for her peculiar interest in illustrations. Little girl with big dreams, she wanted to be an astronaut when she was very little. But then came school and along with that came mathematics which killed her dream of being an astronaut! Her childhood was spent traveling across the country, but finally her family settled in Mumbai. She completed her junior college, graduation and her post-graduation in Graphic Designing, all from Mumbai. She can’t stay away from sweets and loves to bake cakes. Her other interest is music; she is very fond of her keyboard.

Saakshi didn’t have to travel far in search of inspiration; her mother was a brilliant artist and was the one who introduced her to arts. She used to make pencil sketches during school time. But later she gave it up for music. It was only a few months ago that her love for illustrations was rekindled when she was struck by the idea to illustrate a funny incident that occurred with her. This incident would turn into her first illustration. See below pic. This set the stone rolling and soon she started churning out more and more illustrations all inspired from incidents from her life. “I draw inspiration from whatever happens around me, mostly my life. Oh and what sets a good mood is a beautiful rainy day”, says Saakshi.

Saakshi's first illustration

 Though, initially, she was a bit skeptical of having her own Facebook page, a few illustrations later, she decided to start her own page to share her illustrations with her friends and the world. Drawing illustrations is her passion and it is work in which she gets totally engrossed, becoming oblivious to the world around her. That’s also where the name of her Facebook page stems from, ‘In the middle of something’, when working on her illustrations she refuses to do anything else by saying. “Sorry, I am in the middle of something”. In the middle of something she loves very much. Her family and friends have been very supportive of her and the response to her Facebook page has been very encouraging.

Impressed by her work, a lot of friends started requesting her to make cartoons of them. Soon she realized that she should also make cartoons for others and not just her friends. That’s how she started out on her freelancing job three months ago. So now she provides illustrations as a service. She can make cartoons for you on T-shirts, mug, posters, post cards, greeting cards etc. If you want to know how you would like in a cartoon then you should definitely get in touch with her. It’s been so far so good for her freelancing work. She has a steady set of client base which is growing pretty fast!

The city has charmed her. Having spent more than twelve years in Mumbai, she says she can’t even imagine moving to another place. As for her work, ‘In the middle of something’ is very dear for her and she will continue working on it. Saakshi confesses that she hasn’t planned anything big for it. Ideally, she would like to work for a design studio to get some real life experience. We hope that once she has gained that experience she will decide to, like a free bird, fly on her own. Till then you can enjoy her great illustrations at In the middle of something and if you want to make use of her service then just drop her a mail. 

You can follow her on her Facebook page here

You can also check out her blog - http://skiimoicer.blogspot.in/