KOCHI: It looks like an image studded onto a celestial cluster, plenty of tiny diamonds twinkling in and out of the image, flooding the canvas. Be it portraits or landscape every art Diliip Devarajan creates bursts with a starry glow. An art style he has created, Diliip calls it the ‘Stencil Spray Art’.
For 33-year-old Diliip, art is all about innovation. “The kernel of art is experimentation. As artists, we should always come up with something new. And that’s what drives me,” says Diliip whose portraits created using the Stencil Spray Art method is making waves in the art milieu. It is his passion to try something new that made him come up with this unique art style. Having christened it the Stencil Spray Art, Dilip is quick to add that it’s how he calls it and that one may not find it on Google.
A sculptor by profession, Diliip started experimenting with this new technique in 2018. But it was only in 2020 he created his first portrait using this method. The urge to try something new prompted Diliip to create a portrait of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput after he passed away”I had created a video of the making process and it went viral on TikTok, crossing 18 million views,” recalls Diliip.
People started approaching him from afar in search of his artworks and also ask him to teach the technique. According to Diliip, it takes roughly seven hours to finish a work using this technique. “Many people approached me wanting to learn. I did teach, but they left it midway. One thing you need is patience as you will fail a number of times before you finally get it right. When I started, it was like that for me too,” says Diliip.
In this art style, the photo is first converted into a stencil type. This involves an elaborate drawing process and then the stencil is cut, a process Diliip says is taxing and takes hours to complete. “It normally takes around three to five hours just to cut the stencil. And it has to be done with ultra care. Once you commit a mistake, a rework on the same is not possible.”says Diliip. The next step involves brush painting where one has to ensure the acrylic paint comes out in the right amount and size.
Although Diliip says he has tried different colours, he likes the monochrome version. A sculptor and self-taught artist based in Thrissur, Diliip who goes by the Instagram handle @diliip_devarajan says art brings him immense joy and happiness. “Nothing in the world will come closer to the feeling you get when you complete a work of art,” says Diliip.