Sometime in 2020 when the world was going through an unexpected downtime, Monish Bali discovered the beauty of black and white. Idling away in his study one day, he picked up a graphite pencil lying around and some A4-sized sheets. After about a couple of hours he had an image of a tiger. “I was sceptical, but when I showed it to my wife, she encouraged me to make more sketches,” says the Delhi-based entrepreneur and former owner of Mount Shivalik Breweries.
What started as a one-off thing saw him mount a solo at the Bikaner House in Delhi—Charcoal Chronicles: Eyes of the Untamed—exhibiting 25-odd large-scale sketches created over the course of the last few years.
This is not the first time that the 56-year-old has ventured into the art world. After he turned 50, he gave full reign to his creativity and set up a bungalow-gallery, El Garbo, in Jungpura. From vintage art to rugs, paintings, sculptures and even furniture, it boasted a little of everything. “I just wanted to do something that would resonate with the viewer,” says Bali. This connection with the viewer is what he aims for with his sketches. The animal sketches—tigers, lions, elephants, horses, gorillas—stare at you out of the large frames, their eyes burning bright. “When I started out, I realised that the depth was lacking,” he says. Bali soon zeroed in on what was missing—the eyes. He then decided to use acrylic colours to make the eyes, and suddenly the image came alive.
“I would watch countless YouTube videos to get the nuances right while sketching. I started buying art material as I learnt the ropes. I would also make my own improvisations,” says the self-taught artist who one day chanced on his wife’s makeup blender as the perfect tool to soften the charcoal strokes. “In my horse series, you cannot really make out individual lines because of this. Though my wife was not really happy about me usurping her blender, it proved to be perfect for my drawings,” he says.
Why focus only on animals? Why not draw human portraits? “Animals are majestic, spectacular. That quality is missing when it come to humans,” says the amateur artist, who is now in talks to take his exhibition to Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand. “I’m really excited and waiting eagerly for it to materialise. Imagine seeing these sketches surrounded by the magnificent beasts,” he says looking at a canvas of a lion staring into the distance