Artist Gopalan, one of the early names in Malayalam illustration, may not ring instantly familiar to many readers today. But for an earlier generation of Malayalis, his art was part of the act of reading itself.
His lines appeared in some of Kerala’s most celebrated magazines of the time, including Bimal Mitra’s Malayalam novel ‘Vilakku Vangam’, giving faces to fictional characters and shapes to worlds created in words. At a time when illustrations were not merely decorative but central to how fiction was received, Gopalan helped form the visual language of Malayalam print.
However, he remained one of those artists whose work was remembered more than the person behind it.
For Gopalan, now 86, art began close to home, in every shape and form around him.
“I don’t know exactly why I started drawing. I would draw on the ground in front of my house. I drew what I saw around me — the cows at home, the surroundings...,” he recalls. “Nobody noticed it much at first. I would draw, look at it, and feel happy. Those were the days.”
There was no known artistic background in Gopalan’s immediate family. However, his maternal grandmother’s brothers were known artists of their time, painting landscapes on backdrops for theatre companies. Even so, in the village he grew up in, art was not seen as something that could become a serious pursuit.
“My siblings all went to college and studied. Somehow, my path was different. I wanted to remain with drawing. Even today, I cannot really say where that desire came from,” he says.
Magazines became his first training ground. He studied the illustrations that appeared in Malayalam periodicals, copied them, observed styles and slowly worked on his own hand. He also collected international magazines whenever he could, using them as references.
Formal art education remained out of reach. His father, an ordinary farmer, could not afford to send him to a fine arts college. Gopalan still tried. He sent his sketches to institutions and received admission to J J School of Art in Bombay and the Washington School of Art. But money stood in the way.
“The Washington School of Art noticed my work. Though I could not go there due to financial issues, they continued to send me study materials free of charge. That support gave me the strength to continue,” he says.
By then, he had begun to dream of becoming an illustrator for magazines. It was a time when drawings were central to the experience of reading a story or a serialised novel. “When I entered the field, magazine illustrations were at their peak in Kerala. For me, it was not just about making a living as an illustrator. I wanted to do it well, and show that I could,” he says.
One work that made his place clearer was ‘Vilakku Vangam’, serialised in a popular magazine at the time. The novel became significant in the magazine’s history and equally important in Gopalan’s life as an artist.
Through his illustrations, characters from Bengal, an unfamiliar place to many Malayalam readers, began to gain a visual identity. It was this ability to make a distant world believable that gave his work its lasting value.
The task was not simple. The story demanded that he imagine a Bengal he had not seen closely.
“When that novel came to me, the challenge was to draw its people, streets, and social world for Malayalam readers,” he explains. “At that time, we did not have easy access to Bengali films, even those by Satyajit Ray or Ritwik Ghatak. So, I collected whatever film stills I could find and studied them carefully — the faces, the way people dressed, how they wore their hair, the mood of the streets. I had only seen life in Kerala, so references were important when drawing for such stories.”
For him, illustration always began with the text. He would read the story, understand its emotional centre, and then decide what the drawing had to do on the page.
“Sometimes, the picture only needs to introduce a character. Sometimes, it has to explain the story,” he says.
His illustrations were often appreciated for their detailing, especially in the way he drew faces. No two characters looked like copies of each other. Gopalan says that was a skill he developed consciously over time.
“In one of my early works, I drew a character called Sati, and readers noticed it. Later, some began to say that other faces I drew resembled Sati. That made me more careful. I began to give each face its own identity. No two people around us look the same. That is the secret of drawing different faces. It is not about beauty, but about finding the person behind the face.”
His work later moved beyond literary illustrations into other areas of print and cinema publicity, including films such as ‘Thulabharam’, ‘Nadhi’ and ‘Nizhalattam’. In each field, he brought a style that came from reading, observation, and discipline.
Gopalan was 22 when he began drawing for publications, a journey he continued until 1994. Looking back, he speaks without bitterness. There is a strong sense of self-respect and contentment in the way he remembers his life.
“I am very happy with my work. I tried my best to do better. After a point, I realised this is enough. I have no regrets,” he says.
After nearly three decades, he recently picked up the brush again to sketch his home for Ormakal Kondu Varanja Varakal, Baiju Chandran’s biographical work on him.
The book gives Gopalan’s long journey a place in the record and restores attention to an artist whose contribution had remained scattered across old magazines, covers, layouts and memories.
For a man who kept away from attention, it becomes a quiet act of recognition and a reminder that Malayalam’s print history was drawn not only by writers and editors, but also by artists like him.