Creating Drama in Drawings With Natural Light

Arti Potdar is an illustrator and architect out of Pune, India. With a focus on product and industrial design, Potdar is an experienced, talented artist with a prolific portfolio. Her body of work ranges across several mediums including photography, painting and graphic design, much of it geared towards commercial artwork. Her talents are self-evident, but it is in her artistic, presumably passion-based work where Arti Potdar literally shines. The shining I refer to occurs in her mixed media series, Sketchbook of Light. Potdar’s Sketchbook consists of photographs of her drawings that have been lit in the room to affect a greater sense of drama while further illuminating and shading specific portions of the pieces. It’s a cunning and powerful method, bringing a true sense of life to the characters populating the series’ many portraits. In examining the ways in which the light is used in these portraits, the light seems to be coming down upon the men from above, implying that there is a greater “something” giving them favor or that they, the men, have tapped into this above, elevated light and have achieved a sense of enlightenment. In an illustration of a woman in a dress, standing on a rock, the light that cascades over her visage, flares and shimmers and breaks out into smaller beams and creates this overall sense of beauty. It’s as if nature stands close to her to catch a glimpse of the beauteous spirit that radiates from her like a lightwork butterfly. Through the rest of the photographs, Potdar uses light in ways which draw your attention to various aspects of her characters, emphasizing certain pieces of their expressions or features or adding more dramatic detail to her already immaculately lined work of incredibly lined faces. The entire series is a knockout and makes Arti Potdar an artist worthy of a follow.