When was the last time you wrote a letter or wrote on a greeting card? The last time I did was in class VIII. We had this mandatory activity to send postcards to someone. I was so excited about it. I cut out chart papers, even used glitter and stickers to make it attractive. I was impressed with my creativity and decided to send greeting cards to my relatives for every festival. But just like any new year resolution, I never kept it. While I used it as a boredom buster, Manisha Kapoor, a 24-year-old from Coimbatore quit her cabin crew job to make brush lettering her full-time profession.
Manisha was happy with her previous job, but she experienced an intolerable vacuum in her heart. She missed her pen and paper. “Making cards was a ritual at school. We made cards during our birthday parties or when any of us fell sick. Brush lettering started as a hobby and continued as my kind of therapy to overcome stress,” she says.
If you think that brush lettering is just scribbling, you are so wrong. “Brush lettering is the art of drawing letters with multiple strokes. We use a brush pen for this purpose. It doesn’t stop there. You can pair any other art form with brush lettering to make your work attractive. I have experimented botanical doodling, where I draw leaves or flowers and pair it up with my brush lettering,” explains Manisha.
When you are passionate about taking up your hobby as your profession, then you’ll need to be prepared for challenges too. “I would call myself a one-woman army,” she chuckles. “From getting the raw materials to arranging furniture for my workshops, I manage everything by myself. I want to know the challenges. I can get someone to help me out, but I feel I must be independent in this case,” says the former student of Dr GRD College of Arts and Science, Coimbatore. She promotes her artwork through her Instagram page, Comfortink.
This artist is a firm believer of Robert Noyce’s (co-founder of Intel) quote, ‘Knowledge is power, but knowledge shared is power multiplied.’ Manisha conducts workshops to teach brush lettering. She starts with instructions on how to hold a brush pen and creating beautiful quotes with the basics of brush lettering. If you want to try your hand at it, make sure you participate in her workshops, which are held twice every month.
Working as a graphic designer before taking off as a cabin crew member, she still loves illustration. And guess what? You can also buy her illustrations online. “I try to convey some message through my illustrations. In one such illustration, I pictured a lady with a cooler. Through one lens of the cooler, she sees trees on a riverbank, whereas in the other lens, the water and trees seem to recede, indicating climate change,” concludes Manisha.
