Meet the woman turning photos into sketches...with help from a robot

Shama Chilakwad always loved painting, but found drawing difficult. This often put her off creating paintings from scratch, as she couldn’t get the sketches right.

“There’s a big gap between my imagination and my actual physical skills, and something that I really did not enjoy and struggled with was making sketches,” she says. “I had so many amazing photos through the years of travel and whatnot, and I was like: ‘there’s no way I’m going to sit and draw this photo’.”

She looked online to see if it was possible to buy a pre-sketched canvas or personalised sketchbook, and was surprised when she couldn’t find one.

With a background in IT software, Chilakwad turned to technology to help her solve her problem. She used a software programme and a writing robot to create canvases with digital drawings of her favourite photographs.

“It just looks like a notepad with a robotic arm over the top of it, and you stick a pen or pencil, whatever into it, set your canvas up on it, and just hit go and… it just starts drawing it on,” she explains. 

“I worked quite a bit with automation in scientific settings, and it scratched the itch of the nerdy side for me.”

When this ignited her creativity, she felt it could do the same for other people.

“Last year, I was painting a lot more regularly. And it was actually improving my wellbeing quite a bit,” she says. “That’s when I decided that it would actually be a good thing to put out there and see where it goes. And that’s why I set up The Easel Club.”

Chilakwad’s family moved from India to Kerry in 2008, and when she finished secondary school, she went to study genetics and a masters in biotechnology in University College Cork.

She has worked in technology companies that create software for scientists, and now works at a consultancy that focuses on AI solutions for life sciences.

“That’s my background, it’s purely scientific and tech-based,” she says. “That being said, I’ve always had a creative bone… I used to really love to just make things that popped into my head, but never took art classes professionally or did any coursework or anything like that. It was just purely a personal hobby.”

As someone who spends a lot of time looking at a screen, she finds that being creative gives her a chance to escape and unwind.

“One of the things that I had to confront was you just need to make time to not consume [content]... and instead, just make something with your hands… painting has been something that brings me a lot of peace. It’s one of those super-meditative things.”

Last year, she founded The Easel Club, which creates digital sketches from photographs and puts them onto canvases to paint. They are sent out to customers along with paints and materials, so that people can create their own paintings at home without having to create a sketch from scratch.

The kits are suitable for all, and no painting experience is necessary. At the moment, the canvases are eight by eight inches, so they’re small and manageable.

“I’ve had couples send me travel photos or selfies… something that they already find really meaningful,” she says, “That’s what I’ve observed to be a real game-changer…I’ve had people send me really special moments, and they just take the painting part a lot more seriously when it’s something that they care about.”

The kits make great gifts for creative people, and it’s a lovely activity to do with a partners or with friends, says Chilakwad.

“You could actually interact with whoever you’re doing it with quite a bit. So I really wanted a community element to it as well, because that, again, I feel like is missing so much these days, with everything being online.”

Although there is no Artificial Intelligence (AI) involved in Chilkawad’s drawing robot, she doesn’t feel threatened by the potential of AI.

“I’m not concerned about it at the moment at all… when I fed my own personal photos into different bits of software… it just gave me something fairly nonsensical,” she says.

“The thing that’s unique about my product is that… every single line on the canvas is placed there meaningfully...I’m there, mapping out the shape of the glasses, where the reflection is, what their expression is, with just enough detail for it to look like them… that’s not something AI can do at the moment.”

If AI technology does improve, Chilkawad is open to using it to enhance her products.

“If those solutions become viable, maybe there is a way to make my products cheaper and more accessible and scale them faster than I could now. So I don’t see it as a threat, but I could see it as an opportunity in the future.”

Looking ahead, Chilakwad hopes to expand into hen parties and paint and sip events. “I’d love to do something around Paddy’s Day, for example…a paint and sip that’s more curated,” she says, “[Or] a hen do…I’m actually looking for a group that might be interested in this…where they all paint their favorite photo with the bride. Same with baby showers as well, like create art for the baby’s room”

• See: www.theeaselclub.com