Best Photoshop Tutorials

Barnali Bagchi

by miche on 09/02/10 at 12:42 am

We are very pleased to feature the art of Barnali Bagchi, a very creative and talented artist whose use of graceful lines and imagery can only be described as beautiful.

About the artist

I am Barnali, an Indian now residing in Dubai. When keeping the tiny studio apartment my journalist husband and I call home became very tedious, I turned to the second love of my life – art. (No prizes for guessing the first – my hubby, of course.) At present my art is purely a hobby, though I yearn for the day when I can make a living out of it.

I was born in a small town in India called Jamshedpur into a family where everyone can either paint and draw or sculpt. Doing any of these professionally, though, was always frowned upon. So I was never sent to art school, though I had always wanted to go, instead studying for a BSc in IT systems and programming at university, which bored me. But I kept up my study of art privately on the side and obtained a diploma in fine arts. So far as graphic art is concerned, however, I am completely self-taught.

My work can be seen at

• DeviantArt
• CG Society

CG Arena, which featured one of my works in their bi-monthly magazine last year -

• CG Arena Magazine

and then again in their 2010 calendar -

• CG Arena 2010 Calendar

Discovering a talent

I always loved art, though the art I loved was done with pencils, brushes, oil paints, water colours, paper and canvas. It was only after marriage two years ago that I started reading up about digital art, as I had an always-on broadband connection and lots of time to kill. I started viewing digital art on-line and thought – “Hey, I would love to do something like this!”
So I set about teaching myself the details of Photoshop and Illustrator, with which I only had a passing acquaintance before. Soon I felt confident enough to attempt my first digital painting.
I don’t want to be just a skilful manipulator of photographs; I want my work to be different. So I base it on the rich motifs and styles of various traditions of Indian art. We have a great heritage of art in India, especially in Bengal, my home state, and I want to interpret that art digitally, even in the non-Indian themes I take up.

The base of my art still remains the paper and pencil, and I draw out the outline of every little piece I create before scanning it in and digitalising it. And now I draw hours on end almost everyday, honing my skills through practice.

Favourite software

Photoshop takes care of 80% of my work. The rest is Illustrator. The other tool I can’t do without is the humble MOUSE! All my digital art so far is done only with the mouse. I hope to be able to afford a Wacom Cintiq one day.

The works of art