Inside 'My Name is Long as a River'

An email from the past.

[I was on holiday so imagine you got this email on Sunday the 4th of August]

It’s been a couple of months since My Name is Long As a River came out and I’ve been nearly totally absent from the internet which is bad for advertising the book I’m told. Here I am to rectify that speedily.

My Name was a tough book for me and I’m still not quite able to put my finger on why. It wasn’t challenging subject matter (emotionally or drawing-wise), was well within my wheelhouse and the writing was so lush and rich! Still, I struggled with making sure each spread. was something I could be proud of. I do think I’m coming around to the final product as I see it in other people’s hands (strange how that offers a fresh perspective). This isn’t really an “inside” My Name is Long as a River so much as a “behind the scenes”. Most of this post will be images that didn’t make it in the book and roughs for images that did.

Character Designs

Before we started, there was a lot of back and forth between me, Elizabeth (the editor), Mary-Clair (the Art director), and Suma (Author!). Suma had a very clear vision for the characters so we did some character art to start just to make sure I had the look of both Paati and Kaveri right.

Paati’s design draws from my own paternal grandmother who is Telugu and so not far in origin from where My Name’s Paati (My aunts are going to read this and say “Is she blind?”). Kaveri originally looked a lot like my friend Anoushka but now looks a little like me X my cousin Alia who I drew a lot when she was a baby and so now all young Indian children I draw have some of her DNA.

Cover Ideas

A hill that I will die on is that the back of a head can hold a lot of emotion and tension! You don’t need to see someone’s face to know how they’re feeling!! In every set of killed sketches, you’ll find at least one back-of-head focused one. I’ll get one of these approved some day!

Part of this image eventually became the case cover! If you have the book you can find it if you remove the jacket. I love a small, intimate moment for a cover.

This was for the case cover originally, I was trying so hard to sneak a little front-and-back family photo onto the case.

Interior Sketches

Most of the sketches look exactly like the final art but here are a couple of spreads that went through a lot before we nailed a final image.

1. Jayalakshmi

   This is the spread where Amma explains the meaning of her name to Kaveri since Kav has it as part of her long name. Amma’s name is Jayalakshmi. Originally the spread had Paati explaining this while shielding Kaveri from the rain and was just this simple image of them walking through puddles.

   

   Eventually, the dialogue was given to Amma (which made more sense) and the editors wanted to bring in some magical realism to illustrate the Jayalakshmi of it all so I arrived at this giant lotus situation:

   

   The final image has Kaveri sitting in the goddess’s lap. I still love Amma and Kaveri's image in the lotus (rather than Kaveri and the goddess) because it feels more intimate and subtle.

2. The Dreaded Crowd Scene.

   Okay one thing about me is that I will always get myself into a situation where I have to draw a big Where’s Waldo-type crowd scene and I will always regret it. For this spread, I tried twice to pitch something that wasn’t a Where’s Waldo crowd scene, and eventually my editor literally said “let’s do a Where’s Waldo type crowd scene” and I couldn’t escape it. Here are the killed ideas:

   

   I actually like this one with spots of the family enjoying themselves framing the tiny box of text + the landscape of the river on the facing page but I get that we don’t get a sense of the festival.

   

   I also liked this image of the family wading through the crowd with an insane amount of page real estate taken up by dosas. But alas, ‘Where’s Waldo’ will win every time.

3. Train!

   Lastly, this train image with spots became a more sweeping spread. When they use the word sweeping in the blurbs for a book, one feels they have to deliver a sense of “sweeping”ness you know? Anyway. This vertical train shot with bands of colour is also something that I’ve been shoehorning into many sketch submissions for some reason. I should just paint it on my own and get over it.