Sketching the pulse of Kolkata in lines of pen and ink

A tram rolls past, the façade of Laha Bari rises in the background, and a car celebrating the city stands parked along Bidhan Sarani. Sitting nearby with a sketchbook in hand, urban sketcher Avidip Kundu begins translating the moment into lines of pen and ink. As the city moves around him, the scene slowly takes shape on paper , capturing not just architecture but the atmosphere of Kolkata itself. “Urban sketching captures the pulse of a city. The environment, the time spent there, the atmosphere around you , all of that becomes part of the drawing,” he says.

When Kolkata becomes the subject

Kundu’s journey with urban sketching began early. “I have been working with pen and ink since I was 14 years old. From the beginning I decided that my subject will be Kolkata and my medium will be paper and pen,” he says. Growing up in North Kolkata, he found inspiration in the neighbourhood’s verandahs, tramlines and ageing buildings. “Kolkata has a rustic and vintage texture. In that sense, pen and ink works beautifully with the city. Sometimes I add watercolour layers, but the base remains pen and ink.”

He began focusing on the city more deliberately around 2007–08, when few artists were documenting Kolkata through live sketching. “At that time very few artists were treating the city itself as a subject,” he recalls. Over time his work expanded beyond well-known landmarks to the quieter details that define the city’s identity. “Kolkata has a different structure and heritage. Many of those heritage elements are slowly disappearing, and that made me want to document them. Not only heritage buildings but also the intrinsic character of the city - trams, rickshaws, lanes and verandahs.”

Sketching the city live

Urban sketching, he explains, is very different from studio work. “Urban sketching is a live atmosphere - a combination of the subject and the environment. Kolkata is a city environment, Bombay is a different environment, Delhi is another. The challenge is to capture that environment.”

Working outdoors comes with its own challenges, especially in a busy city like Kolkata. “The first difficulty is that there is very little scope for artists to sit and draw comfortably in public spaces. You have to work with many limitations.” Yet that immediacy also becomes the strength of the medium. “The advantage is that the time you spend in that place becomes part of the drawing. The reflection of that moment and environment gets captured in the picture.”

For Kundu, the act of sketching is also a personal tribute to the city. “Kolkata city itself is my favourite. If I do not love a city, I cannot give my best to it. Whatever I draw is my way of contributing to Kolkata.”

Sketching the city: The reality of drawing live

• Urban sketching captures a city exactly as it exists in that moment - the shifting light, passing trams and everyday movement all becoming part of the drawing.
• It pushes artists to observe the city closely, from balconies and tram tracks to the rhythm of people moving through the streets.
• Each sketch becomes a visual record of a changing city, preserving details of neighbourhood life and architecture that may slowly disappear.
• But working on the street also means adapting to the city’s pace - crowds gathering, traffic moving past and curious onlookers pausing to watch.
• Artists often work with limited space and constantly changing conditions, making speed and spontaneity essential to the process.

“Bidhan Sarani is one of the prime heritage stretches of North Kolkata. With the tram passing by, Laha Bari in the background and the car parked there, the scene captures the character of the city perfectly. It is the essence of Kolkata that gives both the car and the sketch their meaning.”- Avidip Kundu, urban sketcher

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