An Gúm
‘An Eala Órga’, is the title of our new book. Author, Gabriel Rosenstock’s retelling of tales from the tradition of India and illustrated by me & published by An Gúm.
It’s always a pleasure working with the An Gúm team: Méabh Ní Loingsigh / Pádraic Ó Farachtáin and Identikit Design. This is the 3rd book to date with author Gabriel and I love working with the collection of stories he brings to the projects.
The first was a book on Haiku, the second on African Folktales (Óró na Circíní ) tales from the African folk tradition. And this new one is stories from India.
]]]]https://www.siopaleabhar.com/en/product/an-eala-orga/
There are many short stories in the book with clever little twists. It begins with a story of the ‘Two-Headed Barúnda Bird’. The heads don’t get on that well and some bad choices are made. Then there’s the Golden Swan who takes pity on a poor mother and her two daughters and provides them with the gift of a golden feather. She revisits them from time to time with a single gold feather but the family get a little greedy. A plan is set in motion for a bigger financial withdrawal.
India is rich in tapestry illustration so I had plenty of references to study thanks to the Lexington Public Library.
I work closely with the designer, Mark Loughran. Once he has worked out the layout of the book it was clear how much space was available for the illustrations. I provide the pencil sketches and Mark included them in the first mock-up to the client. In addition I provided a finished illustration sample.
With some feedback we make the changes and additions and I moved ahead to completing the black line artwork. When it was approved I went ahead and completed the illustrations in colour. My work was done and Mark continued to fine tune the project & prepared everything for print.
