I’m thrilled to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for fantastic picture book Nimesh the Adventurer, a debut for author Ranjit Singh who is a British children’s book author of East Indian heritage. Nimesh the Adventurer is a wonderful story about a little boy with a BIG imagination. Featuring striking illustrations by Mehrdokht Amini, the story begins when the school day has finished and it’s time for Nimesh to walk home from school.  But this is no ordinary walk home – for there are dragons and sharks and all manner of adventures to be had by little Nimesh, bringing the world around him to life in the most fantastical way!  It’s a wonderful celebration of the places our imagination can take us, and how magical the world can be through a child’s eyes.

It’s with great pleasure I am talking to Mehrdokht Amini today, an Iranian-born illustrator who has won the Children’s Africana Best Book Award and been nominated for a Kate Greenaway Medal. Her illustrations bring Nimesh and his adventures virtually leaping off the page!

Welcome to the blog! And congratulations on the publication of Nimesh the Adventurer. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to illustrate this story. Many thanks for having me here! I spent the best moments of my childhood in a small garden in a small city surrounded by glorious mountains in a far away land. I used to imagine that behind the mountains there was a magical land where fairies and jinns lived. Years passed by and I never set foot in the magical land behind the mountains. I grew up and learned that adults have more serious matters to deal with. That is, until the day I decided to become a children’s book illustrator. Once again I found myself in the parallel world of dreams and magic and now I had an excuse to be there. So I guess the reason I became a book illustrator is the sheer enjoyment I get from living in the world of fantasy. I still like to think that maybe somewhere in the darkest place in the world a dragon is fast asleep in a cave or maybe fairies are flapping their wings around my head right now.

As for how I came to illustrate Nimesh the Adventurer, this is my second collaboration with Lantana. I had worked on another book with them, which is called Chicken in The Kitchen in 2013, which won Best Book at the Children’s Africana Book Awards and was nominated for the Kate Greenaway Medal. So when Alice Curry the founder of Lantana contacted me to do this book for them, I was overjoyed by the possibility of working with them again.

The illustrations are striking; a mix of media, wonderful colour and pattern. Can you tell us about the methods you used? Thank you! For this book I tried to explore new techniques and adopt my style to match the playful mood of the story. It was really exciting because for years I had worked solely with digital software and this project allowed me to discover new ways of expressing myself through hand painting and collage. I have to thank Lantana for letting me explore the boundaries that I hadn’t crossed before.

As for my method, let me explain it through one of the pictures of the book. After brooding over the overall composition in my mind for some time, I started with some quick sketching with a UNI PIN pen just to make sure the composition worked for the spread. This is usually the most important part of the work for me because it is the foundation of the work and the basic ideas and overall composition is hardly changed in the next stages.

Then I started to work on each element of the picture separately and scanned the whole thing into digital files. Sometimes I shoot some photos or use my own photo archive for some details. Looking at some related pictures and doing an intense research also helps me to come up with ideas. For this spread I looked at lots of images from the Indian and Persian miniatures.

After taking all the materials into Photoshop I assembled them and finalised the sketch and then sent it to my editor for approval. After approval I started all over again going through each element on separate layers in Photoshop.In a detailed picture like this one sometimes I have to work on twenty to thirty layers, which is a complex process. But I also have to add here that after the approval of the sketch the rest of the process is really fun to do. 

What an incredible process. Thank you for your sharing this with us! Nimesh the Adventurer is Ranjit Singh’s debut picture book. It must have been exciting to work on this with him and also quite a responsibility.  Do you have a particular process when you are illustrating another author’s work? I don’t have a particular process but I prefer not to meet the author before the sketching stage because I worry about being influenced by the way the writer imagines the story. Once a picture is formed in my mind, whether it is coming from the writer/editor or my own, it is difficult for me to shake it off so I would rather feel free to imagine the story as I like in this stage. Occasionally I have worked with authors who have tried to control the visual aspects of the work and I have found it a bit difficult. In the case of Nimesh I really felt at ease with Ranjit and although we discussed some imagery through the editors we trusted in each other’s ability from the start.

Do you have a favourite scene in the story? Mine is the princess scene. I had a vivid picture in my mind for this spread from the beginning and the fact that its orientation is different from the rest of the images makes it more interesting for me.

I love your dedication at the beginning to all the “little ones with big imaginations”! How important is it to celebrate and encourage this in children? I think that childhood is a stage for imagination to flourish because children still don’t know about the laws of nature and fantasising about their surroundings often satisfies their curiosity. In a child’s mind it is easy to make a ladder and go to the moon, get into a serious discussion with a toy, and wait for the arrival of Santa. Sadly we lose this ability gradually when we start to learn about the facts of life and the law of causality.  In my view this period of imagination and fantasy is vital for a child’s mental development because the richer and more colourful it is the more creative the child becomes later in life. Books play a pivotal role in enriching this period of life for children.

I couldn’t agree more and I wish you every success with Nimesh the Adventurer! Thank you for sharing your inspiration and insight with us today.

Find out more at www.lantanapublishing.com. With thanks to Lantana Publishing for inviting me to participate in this blog tour.  Hear more about this wonderful story on the rest of the blog tour: