Pranab Kumar Saha has always been an artist at heart. Even when he was working as an Illustrator and Chief Graphic Designer in the daily newsprint media, he thought artistically about even the most mundane of pages!

Even as a child, the beauty of nature and the various facets of human characters fascinated Pranab. So he took his fascination to a logical conclusion by studying art. He graduated with BA (Commercial) from the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata in 1985. Life's requirements of earning a living took him into the world of print media, which took up most of his waking hours yet he remained true to his art and continued painting whenever he had spare time.

He drew inspiration from renowned painters like Bijan Choudhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Ramananda Bandyopadhyay, Sudhir Moitra, etc. Like some of his idols, Pranab's medium of painting too is pencil sketches (colour/b&w), and watercolor/mix-media.

"Now I do a combination of manual and digital painting," says the 59-year-old artist. "I love to draw abstract art based on human life and nature. I also love to create portraits and caricatures, which is a combination of both manual and digital work. I don't use any special techniques for my art. I use different types of techniques according to my compositions and moods," adds Pranab.

Due to his busy schedule in the print media, Pranab was not able to exhibit much. On 8 February 2016, his works were exhibited as part of a group show at Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Since his retirement from active print media work, Pranab now hopes to take his love for painting to a higher level.