Making realistic portraits, one stroke at a time - Truptika

One look at the portrait sketches done by this artist, and you’ll think you are looking at photographs. They are realistic to the core and you may have to look twice or thrice to confirm that they are sketches and not photographs. This is Truptika, the self-taught artist who makes realistic handmade sketches.

Truptika has always been fascinated by art and would spend all her free time sketching right when she was six. Her first project was with the Tollywood actor Allu Arjun, who walked in to get his portrait sketched to be kept in his farmhouse. Truptika earned her degree in Management, followed by which she decided to try her hand at art as a profession. She started experimenting with art, and the people around her pushed her to do it professionally as they believed in her potential. She worked on wall art, t-shirts, and anything that could be commercialized. She also started taking art classes and taught what she knew to students who wanted to get trained in art.

After a point, Truptika realized that she needed to take some time off to train herself, a little more on the technical side. Since there were no art classes in Hyderabad, she moved to Gurgaon to attend art classes. She came back more technically trained, and since then, she has been very serious about art as a profession. Truptika stands out when it comes to the medium she uses. She does color portraits with color pencils, which is a rarity as most artists use black and white pencils to do portraits. This idea came up when one of her friends wanted her portrait to be done with color pencils. Truptika tried her hand at it and it instantly clicked. Before she knew it, she started getting orders through word of mouth, Instagram, and Facebook.

Truptika teaches aspiring artists to become the best at what they do. She makes sure that she works on the interests of her students rather than their artistic skills. She brings in a personal touch in her style of teaching that gives her students the space to explore areas they get inspired by. She believes every student is different in terms of their interests and skills, and she doesn’t follow a common syllabus as such. She chooses an approach where there is a personal syllabus where she picks their interest and pushes it to attain great results. She recounts an incident when she went to an art class, drew a portrait and the teacher laughed at it. It hurt her and she gave up sketching for years until she found the motivation to start all over again. For this reason, she makes sure that she encourages her students to make better versions of themselves. Her dream is to create a diploma course that would add value and help many aspiring artists to excel in what they are interested in.

Truptika is a perfectionist. She was a topper in academics, and it is in her nature to give 100 percent to whatever she does. She says that this nature has helped her a lot in her work, as the genre she has chosen demands a lot of perfection and attention to detail. Truptika has experimented with different styles of art, such as painting, charcoal, etc, but soon she realized that it was not her comfort zone. She came to understand that she is not comfortable doing abstracts, and she finds joy in drawing minute details. If it is simple, it doesn’t challenge her enough and is not her type. She also realized that color pencils and portraits calm her down. Truptika also loves how people appreciate portraits that look like them, and this medium of art has helped her slow down, observe people, and put them on paper the way it looks.

She creates magic using color pencils and a sheet of paper, and she uses different brands to do the same. She says that academically, she is not allowed to mix two types of pencils. But she goes beyond such bars and mixes different brands and types of pencils while sketching for layering. The type of pencils she uses solely depends on what the reference demands. She doesn’t follow the dos and don’ts, rather, she follows her own guidelines and set of rules to create realistic portraits on paper.

If you look at her portraits, you’ll realize that a lot of effort has been put to make even the tiniest of details perfect. She says that she made this happen by training herself on drawing things the way they are. For this, she would hang a towel behind her door and sketch it from different angles. She would keep different fabrics such as organza, etc, and try drawing them exactly the way it looks. All this practice helped her reach a point where she could identify any material. She is a believer in perfection, and she aims to go beyond perfection.

However, there have been challenges in her life in terms of health. She had critical health issues such as neck issues, spondylitis, and even a fractured right hand. But she overcame all that through proper food habits and workouts that helped her stay fit. She even trained her left hand to sketch and write. She pushed herself so hard that nothing could stop her from doing what she loved doing the most.

Her family has been immensely supportive of her, and something that her father told her as soon as she finished college has stayed with her till now - “This is the time to make mistakes. Do what you want and make mistakes, because now, you will still have time to cope up and choose something else”. She had her days of struggle when she had just one or two students coming in for classes and getting just one sketch per month. But she believes that those days of struggle were important, as they allowed her the time to experiment and find her way. She worked hard without taking breaks and prioritized art over everything else. As a result, she reached a place where she can now be choosy about what she wants to do.

As an artist, Truptika has come a long way from being very emotional about art to being a confident artist who can take criticisms and not be disheartened. Her work takes from a minimum of 15 hours to 60-70 hours, where the faces of portraits take longer than the attires. She says it requires a lot of patience, and she inherited it from her mother who can go without complaining for years even when things are going wrong. She applies this patience to all the other aspects of her life. She says that she has matured as an artist and she has reached a place where she has learned to strike a balance between art and life.

Art has molded her to a great extent and has changed the way she looked at life. Art has given her a purpose. She now strives to make her world colorful as much as makes her portraits colorful. For her, success is getting respect, and inspiring people, and it’s more than enough to keep her going. Apart from art, she likes anything creative, such as dancing, cooking, music, etc.

To aspiring artists, she would like to say, “Do not give up on your skills. Let art live inside you. Don’t let it die. Do have a backup but do not stop making art. We need art in these stressful times. Believe in your work and stick to your basics, understand one specialization, identify your niche and work on it. Move with the times and stick to what is required. If you think art doesn’t fetch you enough money, take it up as your backup career for weekends. But don’t quit”.

You can reach Truptika on her Instagram handle @truartbytruptika