21Tue
Coordinator: Prof. G. Nagarjuna
24Mon
Coordinator: Prof. Rekha Vartak
24Mon
Coordinator: Shri Shirish Pathare
01Mon
Coordinator: Shri V. D. Lale
02Tue
Coordinator: Dr. Prithwijit De
04Thu
Coordinator: Prof. Jyotsna Vijapurkar
Prof. Santosh Kshirsagar, Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai
Since ancient times, across civilizations, various scripts have been developed and are in use even today. However, evidences of scientific research on handwriting can be traced only since 19th century AD and most of it is Roman/Latin centric. Surprisingly, in a multi-script country like India, no trace of scientific research has been found on the process of teaching and learning handwriting. Since each script is unique and has different graphical and morphological aspects, it is necessary to study every script individually. The skill of handwriting is acquired through regular and step-by-step practice. And it starts with learning some basic strokes. The importance of the basic strokes for handwriting acquisition hasn’t been researched yet. We probe into understanding the sufficiency and efficacy of existing Devanagari basic strokes for the complex graphical nature of the complete script.
The newly extracted Devanagari primitives for handwriting have shown significant impact on handwriting acquisition by new learners. Manual method for extracting handwriting primitives are proposed, which will surely help many other Indian scripts in the future.
Prof. Santosh Kshirsagar has received both his B.F.A and M.F.A. (by research) from Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai, India. He has been experimenting and doing research in Indian calligraphy for the past 30 years. Amongst his most noted works are his typefaces in Gujrati and Oriya for Microsoft Windows XP, the first of their kind to be designed in the OTF format. He has conducted basic Devanagari calligraphy and stylization workshops in national and international fora, and has been teaching Indian, especially Devanagari calligraphy, typography and visual communication design, for more than two decades at JJIAA, Mumbai. He has given talks on Indian calligraphy in renowned institutions and conferences in Germany, Belgium, London and Japan and has held solo shows in Mumbai, Belgium, Australia and USA. He also held his retrospective calligraphy exhibition in Japan with Prof. Mori Kooun. He is currently the Dean of Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, Mumbai.