If you've got a sibling, then what you have is your best support system, worst critic and, above all, your greatest inspiration. Inspired by her sister's talent in pencil sketching, Badhrieaswari Rajagopal wanted to try something unique. She spent hours surfing the net and finally found her calling in paper cutting. Finding this style of art interesting, she collected all the necessary materials. “I learnt through YouTube videos and other online art tutorial platforms,” said the 24-year-old whose first piece was the word ‘hello’.

Badhrieaswari Rajagopal

Believing strongly in 'practice makes perfect’,  Badhrieaswari decided to challenge herself by doing one portrait per day. “I knew that it was not easy to make portraits but I still decided to try out portraits of famous personalities every day.” Her works include paper cut portraits of Bruce Lee, Mahatma Gandhi, Sachin Tendulkar and other such stalwarts. She explains to us that portrait paper cutting is challenging as one needs to first understand lighting and properly study the picture before making a negative version to get the original image. “We have to understand the regions of lighting and where exactly the face of the person looks tilted,” shares Badhrieaswari whose Instagram page @bee_paper_cut_art, started in 2017, has over 1,600 followers.

This ‘100 days 100 portraits’ challenge in 2018 made her an expert in the style so much so that she began to teach her art to others. “I conduct one-day workshops almost every month. Most of my students have started their own pages with their paper cutting experiments, which makes me extremely proud,” says this artist from Kovai. However, owing to the pandemic, Badhrieaswari is unable to conduct workshops. But she is planning to conduct online workshops soon.

Speaking to us in detail about her workshops, she adds, “My workshops include students above 15 years of age. We have set this age limit because we use sharp instruments that may be difficult for younger kids to handle,” concludes Badhrieaswari, who works as a research executive in a private firm.

Some of her other works: