Child Art Prodigy

Gaurav sketching at home. He usually draws while sitting with his legs crossed. Click on the image for the full view.

At the age of three, young Gaurav Agrawal of Raipur, India was creating abstract

art. Now at the age of 14, Gaurav is creating abstract art of birds and animals in his own style. He has had over 17 exhibitions and has displayed over 2,000 sketches all over India.

Not fond of colors, Gaurav uses only a black sketch pen to scribble down images of birds. Each drawing only takes three to four minutes to complete. As he created, his parents, relatives and neighbors encouraged him to develop his art. One day his work was spotted by a reporter and this gave him a big break.

Gaurav is currently a freshman at Gyan Ganga Educational Academy in Raipur. His father works at the local railway service and says, "I am hopeful of finding a proper art teacher to channel the unbounded flow of talent in this young artist. Who knows, with the right guidance, he might turn out to be the Picasso of India."

The list of media coverage is endless. Some of the newspapers and magazines that have covered his art include Nav Bharat, Dainik Bhasker, The Hitavata, India Today,

Gaurav shows off the book he illustrated. Click on the image for the full view.

Nanadan, and Balbodh. He has been interviewed on a popular children's program called Kislaya. Other television features have been on ZEE-TV, Aisa Net, and Sahara TV.

Gaurav's first solo exhibition was in 1998 at the Mahakaushal Kala Vithika in Raipur. He presented 300 sketches and thousands attended the event. He has had many other exhibitions including the Nehru Art Gallery in Bhilai, the Sixth National Youth Festival in 2000, the Jawahar Art Centre, and the Mahakaushal Kala Vithika Art Gallery.

Gaurav's awards include the Sri Satyanarayan Sharma, first place in the All India Camel Colour School Competition, the Agrasen Award, first place in Aarsh Vidhyalaya, the Gold Medal by Adharsh Vidhyala, the Maha Kaushal Alankaran Award, first place in Gyan Ganga Educational Academy and many others.

Says Gaurav about his talent, "I do not exactly know how I started this at the age of 3 years. It just happened. It is God's gift. I was very happy that people talk about me, take photographs, and arrange exhibitions of my creative art."

Gaurav shows off the article of him in ChildArt magazine. Click on the image for the full view.

"We live in a small house. I dream for my father to purchase a bigger house where I can have my own room to keep my artwork and do a lot of independent creative art. I don't have a computer or access to the internet to surf websites to know about my art."

"My Mom and Dad are so good that they are supporting me at every stage. They escort me to distant places wherever my art and I are honored and exhibited..."

Gaurav's art teacher, Mohammad Rafi Qureshi, says about Gaurav, "When I observed his drawing for the first time, I came to know what God's gift is. He has an excellent blend of imagination and expression. It is very difficult and impossible to sum up his art in words. He has proved himself par excellence- which can be the greatest gift for a teacher. With the core of my heart I wish him all the best for his bright future."

Articles

• India's Picasso Child- A ChildArt article
• Incredible But True- An article on Through the Eyes of John Baselmans
• My Page: Sketches by Gaurav- A few sketches on Dimdima
• Gaurav Agrawal: India's Picasso- an article on Encyclopedia.com.

Sketches by Gaurav Agrawal (Click on the images to enlarge them)

The Emerging China

Lately, I have been getting a lot of e-mail from artists, galleries and art companies in China. Many are just now discovering the internet and how it can promote their work. Some have difficulty writing in English and have many grammatical errors. Recent e-mail includes the following:

Art Breeze- They said, "We are from Guangzhou,China and now we’re engaged in some beautiful Chinese art works which have special national and local features and styles. They are paper-cuts, farmer paintings, clay figurines, new year pictures, shadow puppets, facial masks and so on. The works belong to the first batch Chinese intangible cultural heritage. If you’re interested in wonderful, ancient Chinese culture, you will enjoy much by learning about them. Welcome (sic) to visit our website to know more and we will enrich the works continuously to meet your needs. Have a nice time!"

New Visual 3D- They said, "We'd like to introduce our service as follows to you. Our business scope is "interior rendering", "exterior rendering", "sketchup rendering", 3D floor plan, CAD conversion and animation/fly through. Elevations, Floor plans, Perspective angle and Material are enough for us to produce one eyelevel rendering. It will take us US $250-US $380 and about 2-4 days to finish each rendering... We'd like to be paid when our work is completed and accepted. We have about 25 renderers, modelers and animators. All of them are experienced and excellent in providing model, renderings, animation and other related service."

They attached a few images to the e-mail and a few are below:

Although they do nice work, the website and images didn't really fit on IAD and I simply deleted the message. Finally, I received an e-mail with the following message below. Grammatical and spelling errors are included:

"We write to introduce ourselves as one of largest of oil painting manufacturer in xiamen of china, China Handart was establlished in 1997, having more than 10 years of exporting experience in this field, wining customers high praised and enjoying good reputation in over the world. We employ over 500 professional and very skilled oil painting artists specializing in classical, impressionist, realistic art oil painting. We cater to all client all over the world for oil painting retail and wholesale needs. for big order, we supply better price and discount and welcome for the first trial order."

Art Supply Specials

Several times a year, an art teacher can find special discounts by one of the big art supply companies. This month, Dick Blick is offering 10% discounts on orders of $50 or more, 15% on orders $100 or more and 20% off orders $150 or more. Prismacolor pencils are 53% off. To get your discounts, enter "CCEW" (without the quotes) in the promotional code box when you check out.

Crayola is having a few specials of their own. Their back-to-school specials are still going on this month. Items on sale include 24 ct. crayon box for $2.99 and magnetic frames for $2.99. You get free shipping on orders over $75.

To get additional savings, enter Coupon Code: B2SCHOOL to get a free 8-count Mini Twistable Crayons. (Expires September 30) To get $10 off a $50 order, enter Coupon Code: CRAFALL8 (Also expires September 30) Receive a 10% Off discount code when you sign up for email updates.

Finally, MisterArt has a 75% off sale on some art supplies. Brush sets are 66% off, bamboo brushes are 59% off, and print racks are 60% off. Mister Art was taken out of service for a few weeks due to Hurricane Ike but they are now up and running again.

Pine Needle Artist?

Richard Carpenter, who calls himself a "simple country folk artist," sent me some of his work. He creates all his sculptures with pine needles. In one of his sculptures he used over 200,000 pine needles. He tells me his business has picked up and he sells them for about $1,000 more. A sculpture two feet high costs $3,500.

If you want to contact him to talk about his art further, e-mail him at mntmagic@custertel.net.

UPDATE- Richard now has his own website. You can find it here.