Riyaaz – July 2021

Website note for July 2021 Riyaaz sessions

While the focus of the sessions that took place this month was different in name, each of them veered towards addressing the conceptual and technical questions that illustrators, new or seasoned, have to resolve in order to their work resonate seamlessly to the text at hand. Through a discussion on the various forms, traditions, and practices of storytelling and illustrations found in ancient traditions, and storybooks, Mr. Suddhasattwa Basu’s lectures compelled the Riyaazees to follow what it takes to produce a work with depth. The process of illustrating a text is marked by both an inward as well as outward movement: while a given story could be dealing with a specific character who has his/her/its own quirks and fixations, the life-world it inhabits needs to be designed in such a way that the reader knows at all points where they are being taken. Having plotted the character in a world which is intelligible enough, in all its similarity or divergence, the illustrator has to find the ways in which its attributes are brought to relief without having to furnish the entire paraphernalia that would muffle the space meant for the reader to feel around the text. This space, as Ms. Ghoshal’s presentation on layout emphasized, is as much to be explored on the pages of the book as between the words, a good illustration with not-so-good placement is a lost cause. A session each on how to untie and sew

through a text visually by her and Mr. Kulkarni underlined the importance of striking a balance between the specific and the general as a literary text, on account of making no truth-claims, comfortably straddles between what is and what could have been, the latter being a goldmine for illustrators and illustrations alike