Off the cuff sketches and doodles has got some serious patrons in the name of Delhi Pencil Jammers. Initiated by a product designer, Prabhat Mahapatra and a communication designer, Deepikah Arora, the three-month old club has nearly 500 followers on Facebook.
So, the jammers meet every Sunday in one of the serene areas of the capital, and do just what they love — draw, paint, sketch over a cup of tea or coffee.
Prabhat says that he got the idea from the original pencil jammer group in Bengaluru. “I got to know about it through a friend who attended one of their sessions. I was so fascinated by the idea that I called up one of the members to check if they have anything similar in Delhi. To my disappointment, they said no,” he says.
But as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way, the artist in Prabhat resurfaced and started the group on Facebook. “It’s not that I was not sketching all the while. But it was mainly for work. This gave a fresh lease of life, not only to me but many others like me who wanted a break from their monotonous life,” says Prabhat and adds that within weeks they had more than 150 followers.
A la Fight Club, Delhi Pencil Jammers, runs without any involvement of money. It’s meant only for recreation and the members want to keep it as small as it can be. “We just created a group and left it for people and members to talk about it. We didn’t make any extra effort to popularise it,” says Prabhat.
Every session, witnesses at least 15 members, which includes people from all age groups. “We have members who study in school (Class 7, 8) and also have members who are in their 50s. However, most of the members are young professionals who like to kick-start their Sunday mornings with a dose of creativity,” says Prabhat.