Samidha Gunjal's Suddenly Cow- A guest blog

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You can see Samidha Gunjal's latest artwork in Suddenly Cow, a picture book written by Sowmya Rajendran and published by Ms Moochie books. Read ahead to find out more about Samidha's creative journey with the book. 
I first met Karthika Gopalakrishnan( Project Manager, Multistory Learning Private Limited)during Shantiniketan residency workshop two years ago. We co created a story book (unpublished 2015) since then I wanted to work with her until one day I got a call from Karthika! It was around the same time last year and Karthika asked me if I would be interested in illustrating a book for MsMoochie books. She told me that title was ‘Suddenly cow’. It was an immediate YES as there has to be a cow in the story. I really enjoy drawing animal for children stories.
Suddenly Cow is a story about Anu, who hates Upma, and this cow who keeps appearing suddenly from nowhere! It’s a simple but beautiful story written by Sowmya Rajendran for her cute daughter, Adhira,who loves all things ‘suddenly’.
I read the script and started exploring with drawing style suitable for the story, where the characters are from urban Indian family. We experimented 2-3 drawing styles and decided to go with googly eyes as it’s more expressive and best suited for the story.
Exploring character styles for the cow was real fun as I took inspiration from a real cow that we have. I have recently moved to my hometown, a small village where we live in a farmhouse surrounded by fields. I have seen the cows and their symbiotic friendship with egrets and mania birds since I was a child. Hence I decided to add this to the story while illustrating. Previously I took marina bird but then we finalised on egret as it’s behaviour around cows is very animated and it looks nice in contrast with brown cow.
The main challenge was time, as it was immediately after birth of my son. But I really enjoyed working on this book as I was also looking at the story from mother’s point of view!
My favourite spread from the book is when the cow suddenly enters the classroom and licks away math sums from the black board and everyone is laughing except the math teacher! I also like the fact that the egret keeps following the cow everywhere which gives possibilities of parallel story line about their symbiotic relationship.
It’s a great book to start conversation about food habits using FB incidences from the book ‘Suddenly Cow’.
Buy a copy for yourself here.

 To visit my online portfolio, click here.
 To follow my work on Instagram, click here.

To know more about Ms Moochie Books' mothership visit Websites: www.blps.in | www.iloveread.in | www.MsMoochie.in






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