This Is How I Draw...Picture Book Art and it's Process

Book mail is always a delight, especially when you least expect it. 

I hadn’t yet signed up for Pratham Book‘s 'One Day, One Story' event, so I opened the envelope with curiosity and then…

This is How I Draw...a wonderful book on the process of creating illustrations.

I sat. 

read. 

looked around me. 

really, looked. 

listened.

a fly on the wall.

breathe.

sigh.

in delight.

marvel at the magic of this book.

magicians sharing their art.

teaching through their art.

to look beyond the obvious.

to sort through a galaxy.

to be a borrower.

…to just be. 

For my students, however, it would be learning their process. 

7 illustrators sharing their secrets. 

Each one’s process is so different, yet one thing is common...noticing the details around us. And for that, it calls each one of us to slow down, to marvel at the mundane, the everyday, to see the possibilities in the normal. To develop the skill to spin magic with just these, to be able to notch up your imagination step by step, to ground all those flights of fancy with research.

Children all want to be ‘authors’, comic book creators, and illustrators. I get many handmade made delightful books offered to me in the library, I also get ‘published’ books created by the children that have been listed on Amazon(!!) by parents. 

What this book does is to help children and hopefully their adults to see that there is a process to creation. This ability to create needs to be nurtured and nourished, to be honed and practiced. And that even the best creators sometimes need guidance, or collaborate with others in the making of a book. That creation often requires teamwork.  

This book left me delighted. I have a plan, for which I need two more copies, and I have been storming the Pratham Book’s website, to no avail…yet. I wait…EAGERLY!

Idea coming up soonest!!