Riyaaz – May 2021

Riyaaz

May:2021

This month’s sessions were nothing less than the stuff an illustrator’s dreams are made of! After gathering some of the basics needed to put together meaningful and evocative compositions in the first month, May’s sessions opened with an interaction with the Slovenian artist-par-excellence, Ms. Manica Musil: that stories form an integral part in the holistic development of children is acknowledged enough but how about making those stories transcend the space of the pages of the book? Making the book-form as a boat to suspend oneself in the river of stories, instead of mere baggage, is something Musil’s picture books attempt and succeed at. Ms. Nina Sabnani’s session on her films and books—another session on the history of illustration in India was a lucid summation of the evolution of illustration, as well as the figure of the illustrator in the subcontinent’s context—took this aspect forward as she spoke about adapting the various, indigenous, performative ways of storytelling to the space of the book.

Her sessions helped bust the overwrought oral-written binary; it is possible for orality to flourish in the space of the books and a written work finding felicity in performance. Mr. Allen Shaw’s session stood as a breezy interlude but in its gentleness lay the most mundane and important of questions: how to be an artist? Or, what are the sincerest and rewarding ways to live as an artist? These indispensable ponderings were punctuated by Ms. Paro Anand’s sessions on writing. She helped the Riyaazees understand the process of writing a story, down to the minutest detail, and generously reviewed each of their submissions. May had a sumptuous seeing-off with Mr. Sushil Shukla’s session on understanding texts, an aspect which makes all the difference between a good illustration and a one complete