Illustration • Character Design • Visual Narrative
Illustrate a children's introduction to prayer and devotion addressed to Ram — a deity whose significance in Indian religious life is both intimate and vast — in a way that honours the emotional depth of the tradition while remaining accessible and warm for a young reader.
Ram is one of the most morally complex figures in the Hindu pantheon — a god who is also a son, a husband, a king, and an exile. For a children's book, the challenge was to hold that complexity lightly: to render him as someone a child might feel close to, without flattening the weight of what he carries.
The images are organised around intimacy rather than grandeur. Ram is never shown as unreachably divine. He is shown in relationship — with Sita, with Hanuman, with the world that receives him.
The images are organised around intimacy rather than grandeur. Ram is never shown as unreachably divine. He is shown in relationship — with Sita, with Hanuman, with the world that receives him.
The visual register is gentler and more domestic than the Hanuman Chalisa illustrations — quieter in its palette, slower in its compositions. Where the Chalisa demanded energy and movement, this project called for stillness: the particular quality of a space where someone is being prayed to, and where the prayer is heard.
Prayer is, among other things, the act of making yourself small enough to be held. These images try to make that smallness feel safe.
Project: My First Prayer to Lord Ram • Publisher: Adidev Press • Studio: Studio Apara • Scope: Full Book Illustration
