Scribbling your thoughts on paper is a common hobby, especially when we are in school. The difference though is we never realised it was a piece of art from our imagination until we started celebrating these doodles.

Antima Nahar started playing with paint and sketches in the art room at Mayo College Girls’ School – Ajmer which inclined her towards her profession today. At her boutique design studio – Ants at Work in Mumbai, Antima manages to steal some time for her love for doodling and we caught up on some of that action.

Fighting a serious illness for the past three years, she started doodling her therapy and treatment in a sketchbook. “Before I knew, I had created a character – ‘stripey’ who began to live this experience with me. I now have books full of experiences, pains, and remedies all in the form of illustrations which I hope to publish it some day so it can create awareness for people going through Rheumatoid Arthritis.”

Antima’s doodle exhibit precision. “It’s never about getting a job done – it’s about getting a job perfectly done”, she emphasises. Even the randomness is stringed together in a tidy layout with margins and dotted lines.

The compositions are complete in a way that you don’t have to search for missing pieces. With a blend of mixed and oriented strokes she manages to give depth to the characters, environments and texts in her illustrations. Perhaps the master’s degree in Design and Typography adds character to her doodles.

Her favourite project is a collaborative one she did with a friend titled ‘Wordsworth‘. She along with her friend wrote out every word that was spoken by the six housemates in her living room and put it up on walls, floor, ceiling and windows. “We had created a room full of words and it was exhilarating to say the least. The fact that we got featured in the next month’s Creative Review was the silver lining.”

The expressions on each of her characters’ faces made me smile, maybe because at some point I started relating to them. If you want to follow more of AntzDoodles (Antima’s work), visit her Facebook and Instagram profiles.