Painting digitally at fourteen

Have you ever heard of someone passing the advance art exam at the age of  twelve?  Oviya Ezhil Vendan, who started painting at a very young age has achieved the rare feat, as she took to the world of colours like fish takes to water when she was just four.

However, her trysts with the digital medium for painting began just a year ago. Born in Chennai and brought up in Scotland, the teen wonder has many awards to her credit. Apart from winning art competitions she has won trophies for other subjects in her school at Dundee, Scotland.

An exhibition featuring some of her fascinating works was inaugurated by Russian Vice Consulate, Vladimir Mariy. Several other Russian delegates also graced the occasion.

Oviya mostly paints with her fingers on various smart phone apps. Rarely does she use a styler. Dabbling with Japanese comic characters  as subjects for her art works, she, however, focuses a lot on eyes as a feature. “Eyes fascinate me the most that is why I give importance to that particular feature of these characters,” says Oviya pointing to her paintings, highlighting why all of them have expressive eyes.

Her biggest inspiration is music and she admits that she can’t paint without connecting to the world of songs and tracks. Her array of works include pop stars, cartoon characters and wolves as well  and she draws inspiration from her observations of works by her friends.

The works on display reflect her train of thoughts, like the images of a girl turning into a wolf while painting, or a  boy taking the form of a tiger.

“Sometimes I paint what I dream, like the one where a boy is standing with a girl with open hair in the background. I wanted to put the emotion of love in it and so I painted accordingly,” she adds,  pointing to one of her paintings.

She adds that she also does a part time business by painting portraits and other characters based on orders placed by friends. Oviya who wants to become an architect, takes around ten minutes to make a simple doodle but it takes around five hours for her to paint the complex ones as she does not paint at a stretch.

Renowned artist Trotsky Maruthu was also present at the exhibition. While praising Oviya, he said that initially not much importance was given to comic book artists but now the trend is changing. In the coming years more people will take this up as their career. He congratulated Oviya for her success and said that it is difficult to find a child with such an extraordinary calibre at this age.

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