We were lucky to catch up with Avinash Kharat recently and have shared our conversation below.
Avinash, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
My journey began fifteen years ago, in my hometown of Kolhapur, in Maharashtra. One day, I saw a man at gym holding the attention of a small knot of people using the Gothic script. Fascinated with the aesthetics of calligraphy and the symmetry between the letters in the scripts I began to practice. Then I started practicing in the Gothic and Roman style, moved on to Italics & Devanagari. After going at it for five years, I switched to the Copperplate and flourishing styles, which involve the use of pointed pens and writing in a 55-degree angle. I find lot of struggles to practice this new script but along the way my mentors Prof. Sashikant Pendse & Manish Soni sir helped me lot to find my way. Well, eventually your passion must go somewhere. after doing Masters in Engineering, I decided to take a leap of faith and to use the clichéd expression, to go down the least trodden path. But my passion keeps telling me to explore social media has also helped me out in this regard. When I start begin my workshop to share my passion with like minded people in country. I started my workshop in 2018 from Mumbai and after that I travel from Chandigarh to Coimbatore plus abroad to Malaysia and Singapore. Then after 8 years I realized this is my core interest to follow my passion and work for it.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Yes, along the way I got difficulty of procuring the quality material for this skill. When I started calligraphy no one is there to guide me until I find my mentors. After 2018 slowly things changing and few online stores have brought some quality material. Second thing which challenges me more is to spread the knowledge of calligraphy in India. After my first workshop of Copperplate Script, I realized there where no one in India who can teach this script and calligraphy was not introduce in business or corporate sector in spite its use in many things like logo, sign bords etc. Till date I took 100+ workshops and taught more than 3000+ students. The most challenging things happened during Pandemic where everything is closed and have to cancel my all-physical workshops. It gives me set back for few months and then I decided to teach online. Which turn to be successful than ever and I keep hosting workshop online till date. Social media and physical presence solved many pf my problems things. Meanwhile Me and my wife Teja have decided to start our own calligraphy supply shop Name “Oriandcalli”. As we know for producing good work you need good tools. At the start we face many challenges to organized and maintain the supply and slowly become better at it. Now we have 200+ products in our online store for calligraphy enthusiast. Still while explaining calligraphy to someone is challenging coz, we haven’t able to educate each everyone about it. Only few people who understand these things are willing to spend money on commission work likes wedding invite design, logo design, handwritten invites, envelop addressing.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Social media does help me lot in this regard. With increasing followers, it keeps me motivated to posts my works which increase the visibility and brought the attention of brands to collaborate with us. Definitely it gives you the boost to work and spread it across the world. Also, it helps me bring new projects and peach my profile as portfolio to brands like Google, Uniball, Ethos watch , Google and Moj App. For those who want to build the organic follower base on any social media just behave naturally and think about the solution or tips which can improve someone’s skill. Give your effort on improving things and level them up for your audience. Basically put yourself in shoe of audience. understand them work naturally with them.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
As you know shifting from full time job to freelancing is tough for me in starting days. Later I learn the most important thing to believing in yourself, which make things easy and clear your head. The first Pro of an artist is freedom to choose, you can decide about the projects you want to do. Most important is you are your own boss. Plus you can explore many things and other aspects related to artwork. when you say that your are calligrapher people always pay respect towards it which make me so happy. another things is we can explore any media and source we want without any boundaries. Cons, Yes it’s tuff out there and you got plenty of competition too. Major con I find is constant change in market place about artwork projects. You have to be alert and sound in knowledge to grab the opportunity.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.oriandcalli.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avinash_calligraphy/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/avinash.calligraphy/
- Linkedin: https://in.linkedin.com/in/avinash-kharat-7a95b395
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/avi_calligraphy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AvinashKharat
Image Credits
@avinash_calligraphy