His elder brother, a signboard painter, was the first inspiration to draw and paint. A seasoned calligrapher and versatile painter, Wajid Yaqoot was born with an eye to adore beauty and a passion to draw. His brother tried to keep him away from the workshop so that he can focus on studies at school.
“I was in grade six when my brother went abroad and it gave me an opportunity to work in his small workshop. I would send him regularly the images of jobs done for his clients. Working independently at a tender age gave me a lot of confidence and my skills got improved within few years,” he recalls.
“My skills convinced the elder brother and he took me to the senior calligrapher Hafiz Muhammad Yousaf Sadeedi who taught me the fundamentals of traditional calligraphy in a strict discipline,” he adds.
Yousaf Sadeedi left for Saudi Arabia and handed me over to Khursheed Alam Khursheed Raqam where I learnt for three and a half years,” he says.
“I am grateful to another teacher of mine, the late Maqbool Ahmad, a portrait painter who helped a great deal in my grooming as an illustrator and painter,” he acknowledges.
To earn his living he worked as an illustrator and commercial designer since 2000, when computers dominated the market leaving no space for the designers working manually.
Shrinking space for designers working manually compelled Wajid Yaqoot to venture into painting palette knife landscapes which became his hallmark and a big financial success.