Kerala artist creates leaf portraits of favourite footballers out of passion

Thrissur (Kerala) [India], December 12 (ANI): The entire sporting world is currently inflicted with football fever as FIFA World Cup enters its final stages. While football fans around the world are erecting enormous flexes of their favourite footballer or even painting the towns with the jersey colour of their favourite football team, this football fan from Thrissur in Kerala has taken to leaf art to create portraits of his favourite footballers.
Charudath V Chandran, has received no formal training in leaf art. He has acquired this skill entirely on his own. In order to pay tribute to his favourite footballers, he has been producing leaf portraits of the footballers since the start of the world cup. He has sketched the images of his favourite footballers, including that of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Pele and Diego Maradona.
Talking to ANI, Charudath also talked about his love for cricket with Sachin Tendulkar being his favourite cricketer. "I am not art a scholar. I create these portraits out of passion. This idea of Leaf art came to my mind just when the FIFA world cup started and it was appreciated by everyone," he said.

He creates the portraits using a completely unique technique. At first, he draws the pictures on a leaf and then uses a pen knife to trim away other parts of the leaf creating a beautiful portrait. Taking about 30 minutes to complete a portrait, the area manager of a leading pharmaceutical company boasts of learning the craft on his own in his free time.
He claims to have experimented with a variety of mediums like oil, acrylic and watercolour painting. He also claims to have created illustrations and designs for major publications.
Previously, his work in creating abstract statues from waste materials and thermocol was appreciated by social media, claimed Charudath.
The artist said that his ability to balance his career along with art has been guided by his passion. Charudath lives in Thrissur with his family, which includes his parents, wife and son who is one and a half years old. (ANI)