Check Out Rasika Ashwin’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rasika Ashwin.

Hi Rasika, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m Rasika Ashwin originally from India and currently residing in Atlanta GA with my husband & newborn baby boy. I love being around nature & dream of creating an unban jungle in my sunroom. I’m a freelance artist passionately working on picture books, surface pattern designs and love being an art educator to little human beings. I do also love taking up mural projects under my brand CocoRosha.

I have always been an artist since childhood — a special thanks to my artist aunt who runs her own brand of hand painted fabrics & we often love collaborating. I have a family full of artists which is a blessing.

As a kid, I loved selling my hand drawn greeting cards and now I sell my hand made home decor items at artist markets. I always find inspiration in nature and love drawing fun, colorful things for kids. Art is so much a part of my life that most of my designs I sketch are from my dreams and things I see in nature.

As my newborn keeps me busy most of the time (lol) I manage to capture those funny, tiring and wonderful memories in my sketchbook (Hopefully share a few on my socials).

When I’m not dreaming up ideas for CocoRosha, I am gardening, crafting d.i.y for home & friends as i love the concept of personal handmade gifts & I love planning in advance. I’m a 24×7 artist and any spare hour between freelance work I use it up to take a nature walk and some rapid sketching.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Mostly my art journey has been a smooth ride all thanks to my family & the artist community that has always been so inspiring and supportive of my work. I love experimenting with new things & am not afraid of challenges in the way being said that, before coming to America, I used to work as a graphic designer at ‘Godrej’ – a home appliance company in India then I met my husband and I decided to quit my well paid job to join him here.

Unfortunately we weren’t together for an year as covid hit and there were travel advisories. I looked up for some jobs on LinkedIn and found art education to kids interesting as online schools were booming then. So for an year I worked at two start – up companies as a pedagogy designer for visual arts to kids from age 4 to 14. It was a great start as I enjoyed creating art curriculum for young minds.

When I finally joined my husband in Atlanta, I volunteered at a private preschool where I used the learning from the art education experience. Working as a preschool teacher brought in so many new – funny challenges. Working as a part-time art educator I am building up my design portfolio on print on demand website – Spoonflower where I have fabric collections and I love taking up mural painting projects locally. I am now trying to create multiple design paths to be able to work from home/places is love being and stay with my sweet little boy.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a child I love setting up a booth at artist markets and sell my hand drawn greeting cards. Continuing my childhood love, I began setting up a booth at various spring – summer fest and I sold magnets, doodle diaries, wrapping papers, bookmarks, sarcasm cards, and made my portfolio to pitch to the companies. When I am not at a artist market, I create customized home decor products for gifting or for on demand orders. I do love creating look books of my products to showcase items available for licensing.

With good 4 years of work experience in pattern design for home appliances I enjoy studying trends, patterns and colors for product markets like children’s and women’s apparel and home decor.

It was only when I moved to America, I started collecting my previous sketches and got into the process of creating repeat patterns. You can find my online shop at a print on demand site – Spoonflower by the name “Cocorosha”. I enjoy staying on trend and taking part in the Spoonflower challenge is a best way. I do also believe that having evergreen designs in my portfolio is a must to get good licensing deals.

All my passion projects as well as paid ones are my favorites but, last Christmas, I thought of crafting head bows and neck bows from my patterns at Spoonflower for the kids at preschooler at Primrose Buckhead, where I used to work part-time as an art educator. (A big hug to my husband for gifting me the sewing machine LOL..)

Another proud project would be a mural painting for “The Brunch Spot in Lawrenceville, GA”. The owner Manasi is my dear friend approached me for a food theme based mural. On a coffee call, we got this idea of painting food stamps as she loves inventing new dishes and serving people.

I had so much fun and learning from this project. Now, when I see my work there, it makes me feel so proud of myself and thanks to Manasi for believing in me.

I am full of creative ideas and love taking projects from multiple areas my current top five streams are surface pattern designing for children’s and women’s apparel, children’s picture books , mural painting, teaching art to kids and take personalized orders for hand painted products. My excitement, energy and eagerness to make it happen sets me apart.

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I love connecting with creatives locally in person and online. I definitely believe that having mentors in life is important and i am very lucky to get good ones at each stage of my journey – right from college, previous jobs and now I do take their advice and share my work to get better with their suggestions. I feel sharing my work and my thoughts with right creative minds has really worked for me. Creating art in isolation has never been my way of working so going to book launches, connecting with local artist community and finding a community online are ways I keep up to date. When finding an online artist community, it is very important to identify the right mentor and I feel the best way to do that is take a pen-paper brainstorm what I want and am looking to learn, then jot down pros and cons of the community and stay consistent with what I do. Most important is to have a written plan for the year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/CocoRosha
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cocorosha_artroom/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rasika.rajput
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rasika-rajput-0a932327/
• Other: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/cocorosha