A cluster of stickers starring a grey tabby cat picking lemons off a tree sits on one corner of a wooden desk. Above it, soft white curtains are pulled back and held together by a wispy blue ribbon. Natural light spills in, drawing attention to an iPad featuring a work-in-progress illustration of a cherubic boy with floppy hair holding a snow globe. Kohima-based artist Tim Yanger’s 225,000 Instagram followers will instantly recognise this rouge-cheeked figure as Orange Boy, the central character that features widely in his work.
“I used to paint a lot of still-life portraits and oranges always showed up in them,” Yanger says. “Eventually, people online started calling me ‘the orange boy’. One of my fondest childhood memories was my grandparents peeling the fruit for me every winter, so last year, I decided to develop Orange Boy into a character.”
Orange Boy’s calming escapades—blowing bubbles while lounging on lily pads or wading through the woods with a rabbit in tow—resonated with whimsy-seeking audiences and pushed the artist from Nagaland to virality. Soon, Yanger was shipping stickers, postcards, notebooks and calendars featuring the sketches across India and to Japan, Singapore, Spain and the US. In September, he spent an entire day packing 100 artworks for a client, his largest single order so far. Meanwhile, his DMs are already flooded with requests for the 2027 calendar.
