Have you ever seen a word come to life? Words transforming to comic sketches that breathe life into their many-layered meanings. Subhendu Sarkar, a 2003 postgraduate of Kolkata’s Government College of Art and Craft, creates exactly such magic with a simple sketch pen.
Driven by the zeal of doing something new in the world of art, and with the motivation of wanting to communicate with people through his craft, Sarkar began creating cartoons from words. He called them Wordtoons. He created his Facebook page WarToon in 2013 to make his art and ideas more accessible. In his words, “I am a painter but never wanted to restrict my art into just exhibitions. I feel exhibitions are just for a selected few.”
With a following of almost 85,000, WarToon has clearly captured people’s attention. Sarkar’s videos showcase his talent to reconstruct the literary implication of any given word or phrase with his witty visual art. The words, and the cartoons that are born from them almost always have a socio-political message.
The written word first developed from images and in some way Sarkar’s art brings it full circle, transforming letters to imagery. He feels that “the essence of art is present in every individual in a sublime way. I try to bring that out from every individual.”
Political statements aside, for the art practitioner — he prefers that term to ‘artist’ — his work is a way to connect to people. “If someone expresses to me that they are unhappy, I will try to create a cartoon from the word ‘unhappy’.” Not only is the skill amazing, but it has the potential to affect someone’s mood and make them feel important.
Sarkar travels often for his work. He has showcased his art in Kolkata’s Book Fair and Indian Coffee House, in Delhi’s National School of Drama, and has also gone beyond cities to places such as Baijunath in Uttarakhand and Santhali villages in Bengal. Connecting with people on the journey has only become easier with his Wordtoons.
Sarkar created his Facebook page WarToon in 2013 and now has almost 85,000 followers.
On a trip to Baijunath, Sarkar stayed at a hotel owned by a retired IPS officer. He made an artwork with the name of his host and some others. They were so overwhelmed that they threw him a party. He still receives New Year’s cards from the man. His cheeky drawings even helped him in a sticky situation at Howrah station. When he lost his way to the ticket counter and was intercepted by the TTE, the man refused to trust him. Sarkar wrote ‘420’ on his palm and drew a caricature of the TTE along with an image of the man’s son on a piece of paper. The TTE called his colleagues to witness Sarkar’s work, gave him a porcha and he boarded his train.
When travelling to the interiors of the country where he doesn’t speak the language, it has never been a barrier in connecting with people. “When I don’t understand a word but want to use it in my art, I ask the people to explain the word to me. From there I start my drawing.”
For Sarkar, connecting with people on the journey has only become easier with his Wordtoons.
In the 12-odd years that he has been doing this, Sarkar has not restricted himself to just cartoons. He has done commercial work for companies in Hong Kong, and Singapore, and WarToons have even appeared on movie campaigns. In 2019, he drew Gandhi from ‘150’ to commemorate Gandhi's 150th birthday.
Sarkar has been shown love and affection from people he’s interacted with using his toons. The topics of his drawings vary from cheeky caricatures to portraits of Vidyasagar drawn from his name and Gandhi from ‘2nd October’. However, it is probably the social commentary underlining his artwork on WarToon that has drawn his followers to the page. He believes that with the socio-economic issues the world is facing today and with the pandemic, people are perplexed.
He uses the words of Picasso when talking about the choice of name for his page: “No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy.” For Sarkar, his protest is his artwork.
What began as an activity for the off periods at school changed the entire perspective of an art practitioner. Today, Sarkar has created an artistic language of his own with a global appeal in the new-age media and made his dream of interacting with people from various backgrounds come true.