Malayali by art

Kottayam native Danny Jose’s illustrations serve a purpose rather than being vehicles of self-expression.
Malayali by art

KOCHI: Kottayam native Danny Jose’s illustrations serve a purpose rather than being vehicles of self-expression. An admitted commercial illustrator based in Chennai, Danny’s work, rendered digitally, positions itself firmly as light-hearted, pleasant and easy to digest. The alternatively warm and vibrant hues of his illustrations often allude to pop culture and the exaggerated proportions of his characters exude likeness to cartoons, where even sombre scenes and grisly personalities are brushed with endearing qualities. Given the rose-tinted world of his art, it is hardly a surprise that Danny has designed the visual narrative for several brands and tech startups.

“It wasn’t a conscious decision to make my style commercially viable. I attempted to move away from reality. I wanted my characters to defy anatomy. When I sketch, I think if the illustration would put a smile on someone’s face. Hence, the playful quality in my work is deliberate. Also, I have never felt the compulsion to express pain through my art,” says Danny.

The 31-year-old who has worked with familiar names such as Swiggy, Nippon Paints, Reliance Jio and Dunzo, considers art his bread and butter. Even so, his projects elicit Danny’s deep understanding of character design. One of the series in his oeuvre, simply titled ‘Malayali’, depicts vignettes from a Kerala Danny is accustomed to through movies. His protagonists are sketched in basic geometrical shapes, they are often boxy with minimal features in a way that could perhaps be described as soft cubism. “I illustrate on Adobe Photoshop and I use the ‘pen’ tool a lot, It allows me to make clean lines and shapes. That’s perhaps the reason why my characters are boxy or more angular,” he says.

Danny’s earliest influences come from the steady dose of cartoons he watched as a kid and the comics he read. He would try to recreate his favourite characters. “Since I never really lived in Kerala, my idea of it comes from movies and Malayalis I met elsewhere. Although I did engineering, I learnt about various art communities right after college and started drawing and sketching regularly.

A turning point in my journey was landing a job at a design studio in Bengaluru around 2014. Since then I have mostly worked with companies to help create a visual narrative for their brand,” adds Danny who is currently a freelance graphic artist. Going forward, he plans to create non-fungible token art for cryptocurrencies. Find his work on Instagram @dannysgarage12

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