Written by These unique doodlewashed cartoons come to us from Subash Sachidananda in Bengaluru, India (check out his blog here!). Subash says he’s a hobby artist and mainly creates watercolored cartoons. His approach is very different, however, as they are all painted on a celluloid sheet of film rather than canvas or paper. This is an old method, mainly used for making animated videos, that requires you to paint the colors in reverse order (darker first and lighter last).
“I find it slightly tricky to keep track of the order of the colours in this method,” says Subash, “and so it’s a lot of fun! I know the texture, grains and strokes are probably lost on cell sheets but it works well for cartoons where I don’t need them much. I can just scan and upload my cartoons without doing any software-related tweaking (which I am not a fan of).”
Also this way, he can still retain some hand-drawn imperfections. He learned this technique from watching videos of Sheila Graber. “I highly recommend checking out her videos. They are great!”
“I never really did much drawing while growing up,” he says. “Only did scratches and nibbles when bored. I started drawing seriously after my wife and I returned from our trip to Europe in July 2014. I got inspired after seeing works of many great artists there and the tools they used and I just felt like drawing something, didn’t matter what.”
As luck would have it, a cartoon competition was announced at his work place in November 2014 and he decided to give it a try. To his surprise, he got the second prize and most importantly he says, “good feedback from friends and family for my cartoon. I decided to never look back.”
Subash started doing art with the main purpose of putting smiles on people’s faces and so cartooning was his first choice. “I named my cartoon collection ‘Undercurrents’ because they have undercurrents of comedy, tragedy, helplessness and sarcasm, all flowing at once. I have just started and whenever I come across great works from other artists, it amazes me and assures me that I have a long way to go.”
It also makes him realize that he is still scraping the surface and there is so much to learn! He hopes to continue exploring more ideas, tools and techniques to illustrate exactly how he wants his thoughts to be brought out. “My yard stick is the reaction that my family and friends show for my art. They are my first audience.”
Subash recently started a WordPress blog so be sure to click here to check it out! Thanks so much for sharing your work with us! It’s wonderful to see all the different and unique ways to make a doodlewash! For anyone checking out his work he would like to say, “Thank you! Keep (or start) drawing and most importantly don’t forget to have fun while doing it!!”
I don’t know the process at all so I have to check out the YT videos! I love learning new things so this is fun!
Yeah…it’s totally intriguing! And sounds challenging! But definitely an interesting new way to doodlewash! 😃👍🏻
Yup! You should try it. It’s kind of unconventional but loads of fun! 🙂
Those are a lot of fun. I’m not familiar with that process either.
Glad ya liked them Kirk! 😃
Right on! Love it.
Awesome! Glad you liked Subash’s feature! 😃
Very interesting and looks like fun. Great feature Charlie! Thank you.
Glad you liked it Haunani! Something really different to try! 😉
Awesome Subash, thanks for sharing with us. Thank you Charlie.
Thank you Sharon! Glad you liked Subash’s feature! 😃
Thanks so much Sharon! 🙂
Very cool work!
Hahaha, great cartoon!