Illustration: Sameer Kulavoor paints a beautiful portrait of metropolitan India

Sameer Kulavoor’s most recent project as Bombay Duck Designs is Blued, an illustrated documentation of the use of tarpaulin, or Taad-Patri as it is colloquially known, in India. The waterproof, strong and convenient nature of the material lends it to a whole variety of everyday tasks, as Sameer explains, from sun, dust and pigeon-proofing to packaging and building temporary refugee camps. His illustrations paint a beautiful picture of the sights that result; a street market is transformed into a sea of cobalt when viewed from above, a block of leaky flats are cloaked in blue to protect them from the monsoons, and a pair of fishermen use a sheet of tarpaulin as a sail on their boat. Combined in a beautifully printed publication with a small square of tarpaulin attached, these illustrations combine to create a sweet urban portrayal of daily life in metropolitan India.