National Geographic Traveller: India & Let's Get Busy!


I am back from a wonderful trip to England with some VERY exciting news to announce! Before I left, I was asked to create illustrations for the Indian edition of National Geographic Traveller magazine to go with an travel article about places throughout India that were important in the life of Gandhi called, "In the Footsteps of the Mahatma". They used illustrations from Grandfather Gandhi to represent several of these places, and asked me to create three new illustrations in the same style to show different points on Gandhi's life.

As a huge fan of National Geographic and travel illustration, this was a dream job to get. Even more, they surprised me by putting one of my illustrations on the cover of the issue! It was an amazing feeling seeing that iconic golden rectangle around one of my illustrations. Thank you to the innovative editor Niloufer Venkatraman for the opportunity! You can preview the issue on their site, here: National Geographic Traveller: India


First, was his childhood home in Porbandar, which is maintained as a historical site. Here, young Gandhi is shown in his favorite room on the upper floor of the house. He liked to read up there because the room was so airy and well-ventilated.


The second was Rajkot, where Gandhi lived as a boy. He attended the stately Alfred High School in the background (now known as Mohandas Gandhi High School) and loved to play cricket.


The last (and my personal favorite) was Gandhi as a young lawyer in Mumbai, getting off the train in the Churchgate Station.

In other news, I was also recently featured on the Let's Get Busy! Kids Literature podcast, where I was interviewed by the wonderful Matthew Winner! We talk about travel, my upcoming projects, and the story of how I came to work on Grandfather Gandhi! It was a great pleasure to do, so I hope you enjoy listening! (Link below)

Grandfather Gandhi: Behind the Scenes


With the Grandfather Gandhi publicity train out of the station, I thought it would be fun to share some of the preparatory work and drawings from the very early stages of the book! We have been receiving wonderful reviews so far, even being named as a possible Caldecott 2015 book by Betsy Bird over at Fuse 8, who does annual predictions for the Caldecott/Newbery awards. She also wrote a beautiful review of the book, and really understood everything Bethany, Arun, and I wanted the book to do. So gratifying!


Once I had been offered a chance to illustrate the book, by Ann Bobco and Namrata Tripathi at Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, they asked to see some samples of how I would illustrate the book and the characters. 


Above were the first character sketches, where I played around with the idea of using fabric and thread in the illustrations as a way of referencing the spinning wheel in the story, and Gandhi's political movement for India to free itself from Britain by spinning their own cotton thread and fabric, instead of submitting to high British taxes.


This idea then became a major symbol throughout the book, with the transformation of the raw unruly cotton into useful yarn mirroring young Arun learning to channel his anger.


After I had been given the okay to illustrate the book, it was time to research and search for things in the manuscript to emphasize in the art. In notes on the margins, the idea of shadows and spinning as symbols throughout the book came out.


The idea of shadows showing Arun's emotional state throughout the book, came out of the thumbnail in the upper right-hand corner of the manuscript, with Arun literally standing in his grandfather's shadow (which ended up in the final book, too).


I then had a lot of fun playing around with colors, shapes, and patterns from Indian miniature paintings, textiles, and shadow puppets, to figure out the final look of the art. It's interesting for me to look back and see which things made the cut (the fabric, shadows, colors, etc...) and which things didn't (namely the patterned sky I seemed very fond of in the beginning).


 I wandered around the city picking drawing, and working out different ideas. In the drawing above, I was at the Bronx Botanical Garden, studying how plants were depicted in Indian miniature paintings.


I even came across a man on the subway who looked exactly like Gandhi (above)! 


The sketches got closer to the final look of the book as I started playing around with tea-staining the paper (with 100% "genuine" Indian chai! The final collages do smell nicely spiced...).


I was also able to see how the warm background enriched the already vibrant colors in the concentrated watercolors.


Finally, everything came together into the finished collage illustrations for the book! What an amazing project to work on. You can read more posts about the art in this book at the official site, GrandfatherGandhi.com, here: The Art of Grandfather Gandhi

Grandfather Gandhi


This past year I was able to do the illustrations for an upcoming children's book called Grandfather Gandhi (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster), written by Mohandas Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, and YA author Bethany Hegedus. It was a wonderful experience and it is so exciting that the book will be out this March.

Arun speaks to the choir.

I was able to finally meet Arun Gandhi this past weekend at an event for the Keystone State Boychoir in Philadelphia, where I donated a print from the book for a fundraiser and Mr. Gandhi was their guest of honor.

The choir is made up of students of diverse economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds and offers dedicated members a chance to travel all over the world and experience new cultures through their gift of singing. This December, a group of 60 of the boys will be traveling to India to learn about the culture and about Gandhi, as well as to perform. The talented group sang many songs, including a Muslim hymn sung in Urdu, an Indian raga, and Arun's grandfather's favorite hymn, Lead, Kindly Light.

Arun translated the significance of the Namaste gesture and greeting in India as "I bow to the divine spirit within you."

Arun listening to the choir.

It was beautiful to see how all of the kids in the choir really responded to having Mr. Gandhi there, and how he was also humble, gracious, and very touched by their appreciation. It is not his direct lineage from someone great, but his own inspiring efforts to live by his grandfather's teachings as an individual, that make him worth listening to. He cautioned against people simply revering his grandfather without remembering to turn his teachings into practice. Arun's lineage gives him this platform to live by example and sow the seeds of those teachings in himself and a new generation of young minds.

 

It is a similar lesson to one offered in the book, Grandfather Gandhi, in that one does not have to be perfect to do great things. In the book, Arun wonders how he, with all his anger and imperfections, could ever live up to his revered grandfather. But Gandhi teaches Arun that everyone, even the now legendary peace activist himself, experiences anger. It is what a person does with that anger that counts. I thought this was a beautiful lesson to pass on to the kids, who are just starting out and are learning to allow themselves to dream of what great things they might be able to do one day.

Arun, his grandfather Gandhi, and his sister Ela.

It was a wonderful experience, and I am very appreciative to Julia Rasch, Steve Fisher, Martha Platt, Arun Gandhi, and everyone else for welcoming me and inviting me to be a part of the weekend with a great group of boys. I'll be posting more about the book as its release date gets closer!