As a medium, picture books fascinate me. I like the way that they build layers of meaning into the pictures and words and how stories are told through the combination of both. I decided to explore this medium and write and illustrate a picture book of my own. The story is set in a small town in Kerala and is inspired from personal experience. It is about a boy called Jishnu who is scared of the dark but learns to overcome his fear when he notices that there is a lot to see once his eyes adjust to the dark.
The illustrations are based on the idea that it is possible to mimic a landscape by using miniature parts of it. For example, the texture of a branch is similar to the texture of the main trunk of the tree. The images were created by arranging leaves and sticks on a blackboard along with paper cutout characters and then photographed. The fireflies and the other lights in the story were added in Photoshop.
