Nongdamba Leitanthem, sixth child among his seven siblings of three brothers and three sisters, was born to (L) L. Thoiba Meitei and (L) L. Prembala Leima of Kongpal Chanam Leikai, Imphal East, Manipur. He completed his MBA (Customer Relationship Management) from Annamalai University.
Nongdamba who is author of two books on drawing instruction is today Chief Artist and Mentor have experience of more than 18 years. Since his childhood he used to draw by his own. He loves singing more than painting but his mother wants him to go for painting so he chose to learn art. His mother made him to wait till his 10th standard to learn painting. After he completed his 10th standard he started learning art from Yumnam Gunindro Singh. He used to go to his house daily in the early morning by 6am till 8.30am then went to school/college.
He learned painting till the end of his college. His subject was totally different from art, he did Zoology Honours in Modern College, Imphal. As soon as he started learning art, he also started to join painting competitions. He win prizes in most of the painting competitions. During his 11th standard, he joint a competition in Hyderabad and got Merit certificate and joint the same competition in his 12th standard and win Gold Medal.
During his graduation time he got Silver award in painting competition from Madhya Pradesh. On the next day of his graduation exam, he went to Chennai for some other professional training. After the training was completed he got a job as a Trainer in Global Art India, also he was the 1st staff across India. It is Malaysia based company. He also continuously travelled to Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kerala, Coimbatore for faculties training and also to Malaysia as a Jury for International painting competition. Every year they conduct State level, Regional level, National level painting competitions for their students. He was the team leader at the National/state/regional painting competition’s winner selection and also a member of jury at International painting competition too.
Till now he have trained more than 4500 people across India. Currently he is teaching through online class since May 2020. He started to teach online classess due to Covid pandemic where there is no possibility for offline classes. There are businessman, faculties and school students in the class, most of them are apart from Manipur. He designed the course for four months for each subjects i.e Acrylic painting, Water color, Oil painting, Pencil sketch, Portrait class, Soft pastel, Oil pastel etc. He told that earlier he thought teaching art through online may not work well but it really comes to work well. During the online classes students can learn well even though he could not help them on their paper/canvas board and outcome of the work is totally done by student.
What usually happens at offline classes is that the tutor helps the students on their canvas/drawing book directly. So he never thought of the possibility to do online portrait class but he later found it totally fine, there is no any lacking in techniques and steps. He expressed that he got very good feedbacks from the learners, all the learners are quite happy with his teaching method. His students are from Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi, Bihar, Kerala, Hyderabad, Noida, Manipur, Gurgaon and Maharashtra. In last year September 2021, he took Best top 10 Award from Midigiworld, he also works there as a freelancer. Since January 2021 he teaches online classess at Midigiworld daily to both children and adults. He asserted that he works gracefully at Midigiworld all because of the positive environment.
Personal achievement:
He published two drawing books showing easy steps. Everyone can draw by seeing the steps because he made the steps quite easy and it also mentioned which pencil should be used in every steps. His 1st book was published at Chennai on 21st December 2017 and 2nd book was published on 14th July 2019. He told that these books are available online and across the world through Amazon, E-book, Flipkart and other online based stores.
His first live painting show on the stage was performed on June 2019 in Manipur, and 2nd live painting show was performed on February 2020 at Kolkata. Recently he got an opportunity to share his experience with college students as he got invitation from “Wiztoonz Academy of Media and Design” Bangalore on 10th September 2022.
Some of his awards received in this field:
- Gold Medal from Vijay Informations, A Guidance Centre for Fine Art Education, Hyderabad in 2000
- Copper Medal from Manav Sanket Academy, Ujjain M.P. in 2002
- Young Talented Award from North East Zone Cultural Centre Dimapur 2007
- 5th rank in World Biggest Art contest in 2015 conducted by MJ. Creative Navi Mumbai
- 1st Position in World Art Facebook Contest in 2015 December conducted by Art Freaks People’s Choice Art Contest.
- Got Special Award conducted by “The Heart Of Art Contest” 10/12/2016.
- Got Silver Award in Exhibition Art International Contest conducted International Painting competition on 23-12-2016.
- Got Gold Award in London’s Art Eye International Painting Competition in facebook, January 2017.
- Got Best Art Work in Online Art Contest conducted International Art Contest on 8th February 2017
- Got top 100 in the World conducted by Fine Art Universal, facebook. Theme was “Paint It Red”, January 2017.
- Top 10 best Tutor in Midigiworld in September 2021.
An excerpt from the interview:
How you would like to inspire the upcoming young artists?
Art is totally based on creativity. Many people says that art should have inborn talent otherwise can’t do art. According to me it is not true because if tutor shows them easy steps they can draw well. All the difficult areas should split into parts so that they can draw easily. Doing art will improve creativity, concentration, observation skill, visual memories, confident, problem solving, self-esteem, self expressions etc. So I would say everybody should learn art because it’s kind of therapy. I would like to mention few points which we should keep in mind, these points will help young artists to bring them up to the next level.
- Appreciate their work and make them feel freedom to create anything.
- No fault finding, instead explain and make them understand where they have done mistake.
- Praise them up for their work and time
- Always talk positive
- Ready to help.
What are the qualities needed to be an artist?
- Target to get good position should have some qualities i.e
- Passion
- Discipline
- Patience
- Creative thinking
- Hunt for solutions
- Control
- Never compare your work and other’s work, instead compare your previous and today’s work.
News Anchor at ISCOM, and a degree holder in mass communication from the Department of Mass Communication, Manipur University
