What do they do?
You mention Hansel and Gretel and the image that always pops up in my head comes from a book my brother owned as a child. It had a beautiful illustration of the evil witch’s charmed cottage, with gingerbread windows, ice-cream walls and a beautiful roof made of the most delicious of cakes and breads.
After all these decades, through the passing of which one has forgotten so many things, I’m surprised how that one small picture has endured, as has that huge beanstalk Jack climbed, or that ancient Chand-er boori (old woman of the moon) from that Bengali classic for children, Thakumaar Jhuli (Grandmother’s Bag).
For Suddhasattwa Basu, painter and illustrator, who studied fine arts at the Govt. College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, and has also illustrated Nature Watch by Khushwant Singh, and To Live in Magic by Ruskin Bond, illustrations for children are “very different”, from other kinds of art. “Work done for adults can be pretentious. In fact, the more pretentious it is the more acceptable it is to grown-ups, who cannot see straight, and are always trying to read between the lines. Children are different. If they like you they’ll tell you. Any communication to them has to come straight from the heart, clear, direct – it has to have a sense of innocence,” says Basu.
Delhi-based freelance artist Partha Sengupta took up drawing for children after he was unable to forget the beautiful illustrations in the Russian books his brother used to get from College Street in Kolkata. Every story for ‘little people’ should have a picture he says, one that gets into a child’s head. “Today, many people, especially new entrants work on computers, but that’s not the same as manual drawing. A computer will have a fixed style. I have an image in my mind and I feel I am best equipped to use my hands to draw it,” says Sengupta.
A love of reading got both Basu and Sengupta interested in art. Basu’s mother would present him books thrice a year, “though we were not very rich, almost lower middle class,” he says. So, he would get his first book during the Bengali New Year, the second one would arrive on his birthday, and the last one during the Pujas.
Says Sengupta, “A child’s imagination works differently. The work should be realistic, simple, colourful and catchy.”
Another crucial thing these artists have to remember is the child within them. “I may be illustrating for a business magazine, doing something for a ministry, or for children, but the child within me is always jumping. You can do nothing if the child is dead,” says Basu.
“I keep observing children, the way they play, the way they can’t seem to do without each other, their expressions,” says Sengupta.
Source: HT Horizons
