Artist Priya Kuriyan credits the famous author for her colouring book dedicated to animals
The Royal Bengal Tiger was a challenge to create for Kuriyan. The national animal of India and Bangladesh, it has been classified as endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature since 2010
Another colouring book hit bookshelves recently. But, this one stood out because of the cause, and the larger picture. Priya Kuriyan, children’s book illustrator and animator, created Ever After, a colouring book to put the spotlight on species that are either extinct (Dodo, Mammoth) or are on the verge of extinction (Forest Owlet, Rhino, Royal Bengal Tiger). With intricate illustrations, colour is bound to infuse new life into these species. A glossary of the featured animals at the end of the book, makes for an engaging collectible for kids and adults. Extracts from an interview with Kuriyan:
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The extinct Mammoth reached a height of 13 feet. Climate change might have contributed to its extinction
How did the idea of this colouring book emerge?
Tina Narang, the commissioning editor at Scholastic approached me asking if I’d like to do a colouring book for young adults. I’d seen a few colouring books in the market earlier but I hadn’t really paid much attention to them. I thought it might be an interesting project to do. Initially, I had planned this to be a colouring book based on a make-believe world of fantasy and science fiction, around the same time, I was reading Amitav Ghosh’s new book, and listening to some interviews and lectures where he mentioned how artists and writers are not talking enough about the realities that our world is going through in terms of the environment. It made me think of how true this was even in terms of children’s books. So, I decided to make a colouring book about species that our planet is on the verge of losing and have already lost. Naive as it sounds, I thought it would be poetic to slowly infuse life into these drawings through colour; imagine and hope that these animals could survive on our planet — forever.
Priya Kuriyan and Amitav Ghosh
Tell us about the research for this art project.
Well, there is a lot of information available on the websites of well-known organisations like WWF, National Geographic Magazine, PETA, etc. Towards the end of the project, Scholastic’s research team helped verify and add information in terms of statistics.
Which design was the most difficult to create? Why?
Perhaps, the first page? It’s always the first one for me as that’s where I have to crack the way the book will look. In this case, it was the one with the Royal Bengal Tiger.
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