Uma Krishnaswamy illustrates books for children and grown-ups. She enjoys creating parallel words in pictures in styles and fashions picked up from all corners of the globe. To create a happy mishmash of colour and animals, humans and lines, birds and carts and whatever can be thrown in!
She has loved those little pots of paints from the time she was small, so even today, she refuses to throw out dried up, unusable paints, simple because they look so cheerful on her work table.
She collects children’s books all the time and discovers many interesting artists and illustrators, every day, on the internet.
She also teaches Visual Studies, as History of Art is the all-time favourite subject.
She bakes cakes as she adores the smell of vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon.....and the cleaning up of crumbs afterwards. Good music helps immensely when struggling to illustrate difficult passages.
After, or in between work, she escapes into the world of books and movies, and insists on having loads of fun with her friends and family!
She was awarded the Charles Wallace Trust Arts Scholarship 1997/98 and has also received the Small Study and Research Grant (India) 2005-2006 from the Nehru Trust.
The story is set in the time when humans and animals had to live in water – there was no land anywhere.
The rescue of a tiny moonbeam creature from the river leads to the creation of the beautiful Warli art.
A baby tree grows in the midle of a dust path and is soon a huge tree surrounded by traffic.
Two stories from the evergreen Jataka tales that teach valuable lessons