Allen Shaw Allen Shaw is an Indian Artist

Allen Shaw

Allen Shaw is an Indian Artist, illustrator and story teller based in Berlin. For the ‘Environmental Perception’ course his class was taken to an environment which was completely different from the one they were used to, to document by interviewing, sketching and making notes, to see the possibilities of design intervention in the new environment. Allen thinks he never really completed the course and has given himself a permanent repeat in it! If you look at what Allen is doing today it’s easy to connect the dots. He travels and documents his journeys in a sketchbook and he work as a communication designer.

What started as a little indulgence 20 years ago has become his life today. Allen was always a storyteller but what he has discovered over the years through these books and traveling is that he has been a nomad, a drifter, or gypsy, with many stories in his books in the form of sketches, illustrations, conversation pieces and memories. Allen completed 20 years of sketchbook keeping last year and is currently doing a road trip where he talks about this journey through presentations and a set of panels and sharing his sketchbooks.

The travelogues are essentially pen and watercolour sketches with a few words sprinkled in. ’ Shaw now lives in Berlin, was born in Bihar, partly owns a communication design firm in rajkot, studied history in Delhi ultimately dropping out to join NID in Ahemedabad. Traveling and sketching were inseparable to him, one being inevitable for the other. ‘The only thing that concerns me when I have to move/travel is whether I have my sketchbook, pen and watercolours. ’ And shaw confesses that it is his experiences with people, architecture and spaces in general that he travels to that compels him to put them down in his sketchbooks as stories to be shared

• ‘I returned to Calcutta after 10 years and it was very special. I was fascinated by the yellow ambassadors as always and I like the way it came out in this one. ’

• ‘This is one gets a little carried away with details, it was a beautiful piece of architecture and I’m glad I spent some time with it. ’ •

• ‘I did this last week for a friend after Lou Reed passed away, I like these moments when I do something as an impulse. ’ •