His guide was a small photograph and using the graph enlargement method, outlined the faces on a 20x10 foot piece of fabric, where the face of the main actress in the centre overshadowed the rest. One side of the entire breadth of the cloth depicted an action scene while the other portrayed romance.

The garage is hot and humid but the heat did not stop Anil from continuing what he was doing, or while relating how he got into this job.

Anil had studied only up to class 8 and entered the arena of painting watching his older brother Akhil who painted cinema posters -- hung at the front of cinema halls.

"I admired my brother's paintings and aspired to become an expert in portraits of cinema celebrities like he did," said Anil.

Anil said it took him three years to learn the art of painting pictures of such magnitude.

Cinema posters are drawn on polyester fabric of four sizes -- 20x10, 20x8, 15x10 and 12x8 feet. He charges Tk 190 for the large posters and Tk 96 for the smaller ones.

He does only the faces. Other artists specialise in painting clothes of the actresses and titles of the movie.

The fabric for his paintings is purchased from the Islampur market in old Dhaka, where he spends around Tk 500 to Tk 900.

He keeps his paraphernalia in a small room inside the garage. The room is crammed with used and unused brushes and bottles of oil paints.

Anil and his peers use 10 shades of paint using red, blue, green, yellow, and violet as a base to bring out different shades. He blends burnish oil to dilute with the paint and purchases the colours from Nawabpur and Kaptanbazar.

There are 11 factories in old Dhaka that supply painted posters to cinema halls, with four o five people in each including a carpenter who makes the frame to hold the fabric containing the painting..

Anil gets orders from his 'mahajon' who takes orders from movie distributors, who provide the printed movie advertisements. Artists are guided by the posters. Mahajon pays for the cloth and paint.

But things are not good these days. Technology has taken over manual labour. Dominance of digital posters has reduced their workload considerably.

"We are going through tough times as digital and printed posters have almost replaced the hand-painted ones, Anil said.

"There was a time when I painted 10 posters a week, but now it has dropped to three or four and sometimes none at all," said Anil, adding that even if he does get some work, he does not get the payment in time.

A few years ago distributors ordered 70 posters for a single movie but now there are hardly 60 for two.

"Two years ago I earned Tk 6,000 to 7,000 a month, but it has now shrunk to Tk 4,000," Anil said.

Yet Anil cannot think of any other profession.

"It took me three years to become a professional and worked hard for nine years. How could I change my profession to something I don't even know anything about? It isn't easy," he said, continuing to his painting, blending one colour with the other, with his bleak future at the back of his mind.