Shabd Manch - A Festival of Letters - Illustrator Sonal Goyal
Our young aspiring artists of Class III were introduced to the fine art of ‘Illustration’ through an interactive session with the accomplished children’s book illustrator Sonal Goyal.
The children were eager to share their thoughts on art, their love for drawing and expressing themselves creatively. When Sonal Goyal shared that she was a non-stop doodler who, in her growing up years, didn't leave a white sheet uncoloured, she made an instant connection with many children in the audience.
“Art has no mistakes!” “Sand, sun, tubelight, all can be subjects for art”, “Nature is the best artist”
is how students shared their bond with artistic pursuits. A student’s question “How is illustration different from art?”
moved the session into a discussion on the processes, nuances, techniques and challenges of illustrating.
Through use of a PowerPoint presentation, the illustrator shared how some of her most popular characters - Tinku the dog in ‘Goodnight, Tinku’, Potli the octopus in ‘Potli - Savior of the Sea’ and Elephant bird etc. - came to life. She described the joys as well as the pains of being an illustrator who uses the nature outside her window by the desk as distraction and inspiration.
Sonal Goyal initiated an exercise of creating a drawing to bring out the essence of the story narrated to the children by their group didis. The children explored the skill of creating an image that speaks a thousand words and opens itself to conveying the gist of the text.
The process of words and illustrations working together to tell a story had become clearer to the children after interacting with Devishi, a friend in class VII whose story Sonal Goyal had illustrated, and it helped them tremendously in the activity.
The students raised interesting questions for the illustrator - “When did you know that you wanted to become an illustrator?”
, “Did you ever take an art class or is it a natural talent?”
, “Which was your first illustration to get published?”
, “Is making illustrations hard? What is the most challenging part?”
The questions were many and were answered with patience.
Warm, approachable and interactive, the illustrator’s words left an impression on the students of Classes II and III on how a classroom project experience can lead to the realisation of their journeys towards becoming illustrators and writers themselves.