BananaBandy interviews Digital Painter and Spotlight Artist Prajakta Rao

A bibliophile since birth, Prajakta Rao grew up with more books than friends. With the tonnes of Disney story books at home, she was fascinated by folk tales and mythical creatures. Her imagination was piqued as she read about these fascinating tales. As a child, she started channeling these scenes in her head into art on paper with various mediums like crayons, sketch pens, watercolours, etc.

I used to fill up all the books and then I’d move to scribble all over the walls. Nothing was left untouched by my colors.

Always placing amongst the toppers in school, most people expected me to pursue a “real job”. I took up science after 10th but my obsession with sketching and painting would not rest.

After two years of science in Junior College, she took up architecture feeling it had the best of both worlds, science and art combined and pursued it for two years. However, she couldn’t continue her education in architecture and had to complete her degree in animation. Her interest in painting grew even more along with animation and she started diving into digital paintings. This is where she finally found her calling as she is currently employed as a Digital Painter.

Every time I create something new, I feel like I did a better job on it than the previous one. I’m satisfied for like 5 minutes until I begin to find mistakes in it and then hope my work gets better the next time.   

Prajakta Rao has worked on multiple mediums such as inking, watercolor, acrylic, charcoal, pastels, etc. She loved the feel that watercolour gave her and is keen to explore it further in the future. Creating bold black graphics with sketchpens and ink are also very interesting to her.

In all of my portraits what I love the most are definitely the eyes. I love making eyes and eyebrows more than anything else. Eyes add soul to the person and I like getting into the details.

Prajakta Rao often seeks inspiration from her contemporaries and she is deeply impressed by Jamini Kavoori and Kesar Khinvasara.  She really is impressed by how Jamini uses clean lines so well in her work.

Kesar Khinvasara’s mandalas are a visual treat for everybody and Prajakta Rao too, is in love with those designs.

I want to go back to traditional media and work on my basic skills. So these days I’m making watercolor paintings. Digitally, I want to take the next step and make photorealistic paintings.

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