Some of my friends have perhaps seen my older post "My Sketch and the Fun I have with it!". In that post stuck some versions of a sketch I've been doing for a few months ... until now that it has become something palpable. The cover of my novel FOOTPRINTS IN THE BAJRA.
But I just thought it'd be interesting to see those sub-sketches again alongside a few cover options that were thrown at me, by the publishers as well as my dithering mind. But I soon realized what I actually wanted, and I rooted for it, successfully!
This was one photographic option, but I realized these are paddy, not millet, in a parched land!
This was definitely pearl millet (bajra), but this option looked very boring too me; even with the ominous red sky, it seemed to have no soul or drama. People who know me, they know I prefer both!
This photo above is the same when I was tinting it red-pink...
Cedar sent me this photographic option. A girl walking through some crop field. But the locale looked non-Indian, certainly non-Bihar, and not even remotely any closer to my story and the protagonist/s. Too stiff, too transliterated, too predictable. Nope!
These ones below are the versions of the Madhubani drawing I was starting to visualize as my cover. So you have upside down, truncated, full drawing...
Oh, don't miss the gun! I had to labor HARD to make it look like a country gun!
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And of course, what you see below is the original B&W sketch when I started working with it ...
Images: from the Internet; drawings: by Nabina Das
5 comments:
Very neat to see the options, the evolution, the decision.
Quite a process - involving and exciting.... Thank you for sharing it.
Tim, thank you! It was quite a journey, satisfying at the end!
Priti, I realized I had plunged into a deep spot but you know, somewhere this really pleased me -- to see my art being recognized by the publishers :)
nice, like the yellow, reds and black
thank you Anu!... My one-time brush with a master craftsperson/artist of Madhubani art in India taught me WHY these colors are important for the representation of a particular cosmogony. I tried imitating it. Not quite the real thing obviously, in absence of natural dyes, but it's a satisfying result :)
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