It took a visit to Bhaucha Dhakka, the ferry wharf in Mazgaon, for city-based illustrator Rahul Patil to rediscover and reignite his desire to make illustrations about Mumbai. It was something he hadn’t been able to do because of an artist’s eternal struggle to find an interesting theme. “I was inspired by the colourful Koli people selling fish at the ferry wharf,” he explains. “The idea to draw them brewed in my head for a while and I hunted down some photos as references to draw a Koli lady. It was the first illustration I created.” 

Realising the potential in creating a series of illustrations, as they tend to do better on social media compared to a single post, Patil asked his followers about whom he could draw next and it immediately turned into – the people who are spotted on Mumbai’s streets. “This resulted in a series of 10 illustrations that were received extremely well by my fans and also helped me find new people interested in my work,” adds the artist, some of whose popular posts were liked more than 8,000 times.