A map of the book

Last year, for my first formal publisher's 

meeting I put together

this map of the project. 

It is a small guide for me to follow 

while working on the book.

A year later...

A year later and much has happened...

For one, Nani celebrated her 90th birthday in Casablanca two days ago. Although I couldn't be there physically, I managed 

(with the help of a very special friend) to have this card and a flowering plant hand-delivered to her.

A birthday card for Nani´s 90th

On the other hand, over the past year, a lot has happened

with this project. I finally have an overall structure

of the book. Though certainly it will change as I advance I think I am off to a solid start.

This is a little map of the chapters and structure of the book

I also have a color card:

The technique for this book is a mix of black ink pens for the outer lines,
colored with water color wooden pencils. I may add some colors,
but this is the general pallet

Sketches of sweets and spices:

Some herbs & spices that Nani in her recipes

Some spices that Nani uses for her sweets

Some of my favorites of Nani´s sweets

A couple of chapters planned and sketched out:

Title page for Chapter 1

Title page for Chapter 2

Add caption

And an imagined timeline of Nani's transformation over the years:

Nani in the different stages of her life

I have also decided to make this blog public today. 

In celebration of all these new developments.

So voila!!!

I don't have a launch date for the book, but I think it may be ready 

in the next year or in early 2016.

Happy Birthday Nani

it seems that Nani was born in 1924, or was it in 1923?

she also says the her real birthday is the 23rd of November but in school she once wrote December by mistake and it stuck!

just like Nani to be so playful about it.

In any case, two days ago Nani celebrated her 89th birthday with 

friends and family in Accra, Ghana.

I so wished I could have been there!

lots of love my super Nani

xxx 

k

Notes from Nani

Collecting Stories

Over the past few months, though I haven't been blogging I have had a chance to spend a lot of time in Morocco with Nani. 

I began a little book of notes, to jot things down

when we have coffee together. 
Here are some of the notes...

the idea for Nani and the initial sketches for her character

began in this little absurd alphabet flip book:

this was followed by the following sketch. It was a little game to describe 12 hours in the life of Nani...a domestic goddess par excellence with mythical indian super powers, and ever increasing arms to be able to cope up with all her daily chores.