Pratham Books is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India. They work towards the provision of quality education to underprivileged children in India. Sometime around April 2019 they approached me to work on a children's book funded by a grant provided by CISCO, which would later be translated into several regional languages and given out to underprivileged children all over India. The book was about how and why sunflowers face the sun and written by Siddharth Mehta. Naturally, I was excited to work on this project and began work on it right away.
This was one of the initial explorations made in watercolour I was happy with.
I began making visuals for the book by reading and re-reading the script over and over again and preparing a bunch of these quick rough explorations and drawings in my sketchbook.
Most of these explorations often were inspired from people and places near my house.
Once I had a somewhat clear idea of what I wanted the characters to look like I began conceptualizing the pencils from a bunch of thumbnails I'd scribbled beside the script while reading it. From these sketches I made the final pencils.
Many of these drawings were later revised to accommodate the story and text better.
Upon sending the pencils over to the editor and writer and incorporating some of their thoughts and revising the pencils I began working on the inks for the book. I inked the entire book using a Japanese Sumi Brush and ink.
Some of these pages were later edited out of the book in order to help the story flow better.
After getting a go ahead on the inks from the editor I began working on the final coloured pages. I also placed the text on the visuals and revised some of the images accordingly.
I'd initially drawn the cover in such a way that it would contrast with the visuals inside the book but later re-did it to be more cohesive with the visuals inside.
It was a fun and insightful process working on this book and I'm extremely glad that I worked on it. I learned a lot while making this book and hope to make a lot more books and experiment with the medium of children's picture books in the future. I'm grateful for all the help and suggestions by Andrew, the editor for the book and Zaheer Merchant, graphic designer of the book. I'm incredibly grateful that I get to make such exciting things for a living and hope that I inspire someone else to make some dope things too. Hope you have fun reading it!
You can read the final book for free via the link below: