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Most of the work presented below (barring one illustration at the very end of this post) was done for The Magic Store of Nu Cham Vu, a children's fantasy adventure written by my father (Shreekumar Varma) and published by Puffin. The book is full of surreal and magical characters and situations, so illustrating it was a great workout for my visual imagination.
A note on the book cover: The final cover design for the book (seen at the bottom of this post) was not done by me. The Disney-Aladdin-style typography isn't something I would have gone with, nor do I approve of the dull colour scheme and composition. The cover does use a portion of one of my illustrations, though, but it's been rather poorly cut up without my final approval. (If I sound belligerent and defensive, it's because I am, slightly. Then again, I'm also an inveterate control freak.) In any case, you'll see all my original concepts and artwork for the cover below, so you can compare the lot for yourself.
Nu Cham Vu's magic cat, from The Magic Store of Nu Cham Vu, Puffin
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The first major book project I worked on after completing The Insect Boy was Penguin's The Tenth Rasa, an anthology of nonsense -- poems, stories and songs -- from India. This was in 2005, if memory serves. This book was edited and compiled by Michael Heyman, Sumanyu Satpathy and Anushka Ravishankar. (Heyman, who has since gone onto shepherd more, bigger and exponentially frabjuous nonsense anthologies, is now considered the leading nonsense-rasika in the biz.) They came up with such hilarious and imaginative material for the book that it remains the most fun project I've worked on. Oh, and mine isn't the only artwork in the book: two of my co-illustrators, it is my distinct privilege to claim, are Sukumar Ray and Edward Lear!
My brief from the art director at Penguin was to come up with simple line drawings that could scale easily, along with a colourful cover that properly conveyed the idea of the title. This idea, as you've probably guessed, is that the navarasas are all well and good, but that the complete range of human emotions is effectively inaccessible without the tenth and most evocative rasa: nonsense. You'll see what I came up with for the cover, as well as the interior artwork, below.
Book cover illustrations and hand-done typography for The Tenth Rasa, Penguin
Showing posts with label Penguin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Penguin. Show all posts
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