SPONSORED
VELLORE: Art teacher Navakumar of a private school in Vellore has done it yet again. His 240 feet painting of flags of 192 countries as a New Year greeting card with a message of world peace, which he had accomplished in a record nine hours’ time has found an entry into the Limca Book of Records (LBR) as a national record.He has used around 5 litres of enamel paint and chart paper sheets.
He had downloaded the pictures of flags from the Internet. The project, which cost Navakumar Rs 4,000, was sponsored by Shanmugam of ASA Bakery.
Last year, his portrait of Saint Poet Tiruvalluvar on a cloth measuring 133 feet by 60 feet (representing the 133 couplet chapters of Tirukural) had found an entry into the LBR as a national record too.
The 25-year-old Navakumar says that since childhood he had a flair for innovation. As a school student, he had painted colourful natural sceneries on 1001 postcards besides pencil sculpture, miniature paintings of great leaders and their sayings on small cereals such as rice and mustard which received acclamation from the locals.
More recently, he took to micropainting to express his greetings for the recent Oscar achievement by the Indian movie team, when he painted the same on a thin thread used for sewing purposes.
In 2001, he painted over 900 household articles, logos and traffic signals on a post-card. In the first attempt he had used a magnifying glass to do the painting. Later, he broke his own record by adding 100 more items, this time without the help of the magnifying glass.
It was at this point, he shot into fame when his attempt to draw a massive portrait of Tiruvalluvar on 350 metre-long canvas when locals evinced interest in extending help and sponsorship to his ventures.
While most of his attempts have been successful so far, some have remained a dream too. His plan to paint all the main languages of major countries in the world in 2005 on a 21-km canvas, for example, which drew the attention of the President Abdul Kalam then, who, in fact, directed the TN Government to support the project, estimated to be around Rs 2 lakh never saw the daylight.
Navakumar says that he is pursuing the matter and hopeful of getting funds from the state government.
