NIRZARA VERULKAR, ILLUSTRATOR

Meet Nirzara Verulkar, a commercial artist, animator and founder of a design studio called Drawing Chime where she illustrates and writes children’s stories. Nirzara has illustrated six books, some of which were selected for the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (Singapore).

“Art as a medium of expression inspires me” says Nirzara, and the idea of expressing something beyond words….in the form of an illustration or poem makes her feel very calm. Other than that, food is her big inspiration and she spends her time illustrating different recipes.

Nirzara’s philosophy is simple – she aims at illustrating local ideas and colours in a way that that they have a global appeal. She loves to experiment with forms, lines and patterns and tries to use these elements to create different looking layouts and environments.

Having weathered many storms, Nirzara has come to the realization that life has its own way of teaching you lessons. She has been thrown completely out of her comfort zone, abandoned, made felt unwanted for a long time especially because she is a girl. This impacted her life deeply but her work guided her through the most difficult phases and the inner light and warmth of her passion is what keeps her going.

For aspiring illustrators only just starting their journey, Nirzara says the one technique that helped her the most as she started out – was to work on self-portraits (thin, fat, young, old) and this helped her illustrate her books as well. She also suggests you toughen up, as people can be overly critical of your work without knowing the effort that has gone into it. Finally she adds, “Know your worth even if the world doesn’t!”