SANKARA NARAYANA hails from Narasapur, Andhra Pradesh, from an artistic family. His father was a very creative person and his elder brother, late Sri Bapu, an eminent artist and film director. Inspired by him, he took to drawing portraits later as a hobby. He joined All India Radio in 1963 and retired as Station Director in Chennai, in 1995.
After retiring from service, Sankara Narayana continued his passion of drawing portraits of eminent personalities from different fields and has done around 3000 portraits with Indian ink, charcoal and pencil.
He has done portraits of Late President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, as well as, the present President Sri Pranab Mukherjee, Amitabh Bachan, Girish Karnad, Rajnikanth, Kamal Hasan, M.S. Dhoni, Sachin Tendulkar, illustrator and cartoonist R.K. Laxman, industrialists Ratan Tata, Azim Premji and many others and has received them with their autographs. His portrait of Smt. M.S. Subbulakshmi was prominently featured in the book MS Revisited published by The Hindu on the occasion of her centenary celebrations.
Sankara Narayana was interviewed by NDTV-Hindu and a documentary was telecast with his portraits on Doordarshan. Portraits of carnatic musicians have been permanently displayed by TAG Corporation as part of their digital music listening archives in the Music Dept. of Madras University, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Kalakshetra in Chennai, Central University, Hyderabad, Gayana Samaj, Bangalore, IGNCA, Bangalore, Gana Sabha in Mysore and also in Sri Lanka and Singapore.
India Book of Records has recognized his sketching of eminent personalities as a National Record Achievement. Last year on 15th December, he was honoured with Bapu Aatmeeya Award in Narasapur by AP Govt.
Endaro Mahanubhavulu Andariki Vandanamulu
Normally, retirement is not an easy time for anyone. But in my case, it was my brother Late Sri Bapu, a great artist and film director, who inspired and paved a highly satisfying path for me by enabling me to pursue my hobby of drawing pencil portraits of eminent personalities from different fields.
It began with a penchant for drawing portraits of Carnatic Classical Music artistes. This was owing to my association with the All India Radio for more than 32 years. I had the enviable opportunity of working and interacting with some of the greatest legends in the field of music. This inspired me all the more in drawing their portraits. Exactly at this juncture, Sri. R.T. Chari of TAG Corporation and Dr. Pappu Venugopal Rao took keen interest in my work and gave me great opportunities to display these portraits of musicians, in their TAG Digital Listening Archives in India and abroad.
I am extremely grateful to Sri. R.T. Chari for making my dream come true, by extending his generosity further in publishing this book of Musicians in English, giving prominence to portraits.
I am equally thankful to Sri. Charukesi for so diligently collecting all the information about these great artistes. I am also thankful to the publishers for executing this book so tastefully.
Here I have to express my gratitude to Dr. K.I. Vara Prasad Reddy of Shantha Biotech, for publishing my very first book in Telugu.
Most importantly, I have to thank my late wife Shantha, for encouraging me to transform what was just a hobby into a full time activity that I cherish the most, and my children Aruna, Aparna and Anil for continuing to support and taking every care in preserving my portraits and updating them on a regular basis.
I earnestly hope that this book will be of great use to youngsters.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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