pune commercial art also known as visual or applied art is an up and coming field for fine arts students with opportunities in book illustrations design and advertisingart teacher shashikant gawali said art colleges accepted students if they had good drawing skills two decades ago but now there are two departments applied art and fine artsstudents interested in drawing nature or from memory are drawn to applied art after a degree in fine arts one can get into advertising set designing or graphic designing he saidfine arts involve paintings sculptures and portraits which depend on composition and imagination fine arts offer options but applied art has scope fine arts need consistent efforts for 10 years making a name for oneself and getting recognition for ones work gawali saidapplied art is dependent on industry requirements the industry will hire solely on the basis of work advertising will help you get in as a designer you can set up your own studio software skills are necessary he added students must be aware of the importance of thought behind every design the art teacher said they must be updated about the latest trends literature psychology art history and current affairs there has to be more dialogue for awareness gawali saidsanjay bharati acting principal of abhinav kala kendra said both branches are available at their college we have undergraduate courses on applied art and drawing and painting he addedapplied art mostly deals with product design students can get into vehicle design illustration calligraphy advertising hoardings and many more such allied areassanket kalgaonkar an abhinav kala kendra alumnus is now an art director at mccann worldgroup a private advertising firm in mumbai it was during a oneyear foundation course that i realised i wanted to get into applied art he saidhe did his fouryear course in commercial art from the kendra originally from baramati kalgaonkar said he was unaware of the commercial field at baramati i was told i could become an art teacher as i was good at drawing once my teachers at abhinav commended me on my graphics i realised i wanted to get into commercial art he saidthe demand for applied art courses encouraged the mit world peace university mit wpu to start a fouryear bachelors programme makarand malawe director of the school of media and fine arts at mit wpu said the programme is not mediumspecificit incorporates methods on contemporary art production there will be technical workshops to assist them to develop practical skills the course will be researchbased he added