This Kannur-born artist sketches moments from daily life through his realistic paintings

Vippin KT modeled his art on moving life. Everyone this Kannur native knew growing up — from his father to his grandfather to his maternal uncle — were artists, so picking up a paintbrush just seemed natural for him at the time. He remembers painting the evening sun outside his ancestral house as it was about to set. The artist recollects that every moment captured on his canvas felt like a frozen piece of time. Today, you probably know him as the creator of Sketchplore, an Instagram handle he started in 2013 to share his work online. Sketchplore has a range of sketches that feature everything from pop culture to landscapes which have made him immensely popular amongst his followers.

Fresh out of school, he enrolled in a one-year Fine Arts diploma course at Gitanjali Fine Arts College, Bengaluru, in 2003. He also studied multimedia and animation as additional courses to make sure that he could find a job for himself soon after. By 2008, he got a job in a designing company in Bengaluru where he learnt everything he knows about himself and his art.

LIFE LINES: The artist travelled across India for a year

Vippin's evolution was a journey in itself, he says, “When I moved to Bengaluru, I had no style of my own. Designing was just a job for me at the time. When I started to make enough money to support myself, life started to catch my eye again. I wanted to get back into what I have always loved. Living in a new city, there was so much happening in front of me that I needed to find the time to capture all of this."

In 2010, he moved back to Kochi. Here, he got himself a job at a marketing company called WowMakers. It was here that he first learnt to bring together his personal interests and professional duties. “People were more creative in the industry. I realised that being able to work in a creative environment also meant that I could use that as a space for my own artistic vision,” he says, of the time he created Sketchplore

Three years into the job, he decided to take a break, For one year, he kept himself going through freelance work and he visited places he was fascinated by for the rest of the time. He found places full of beauty and recreated it in his sketchbook. Vippin remembers making his way through new places like Punjab and Jaipur, where he found so much more to create and recreate. When he returned to Kochi, he decided to keep doing what he loved to do. Every weekend, he left for Fort Kochi beach at 5 in the morning where he would watch people and places unfold in their natural beauty. It was only last year that he was coaxed into sharing his work online. And Vippin obliged, adding a slice of the world into Instagram.

Check out his work at www.instagram.com/sketchplore/