I created the grid on an A3 size sheet and was surprised to find I could still use a ruler fairly easily, which is not so much an observation as much as it is a remark. The actual exercise, which came next, I did not want to continue on the sheet of paper, having only a rough idea of what I wanted to make and realising I might waste a lot of time and paper figuring out how to go about illustrating them efficiently, so I switched to Photoshop for the fourth exercise.

I also realised, much to my horror, that I took longer to draw a grid on photoshop than I did on paper. Nonetheless, I managed to make one. The place I chose to draw around was, after much consideration and thought, my grandfather’s museum, which contained the life and history of the local deity and other deities in the Hindu religion. I’d been there very often as a child, and I basically knew my way around it like the back of my hand. Still, recreating those moments and sights would be a challenge; after all, a child may notice details but not necessarily specific scenes from his memories. It isn’t very well documented either, there aren’t many photographs of it on the internet, so that sort of worked to my advantage, gave me the challenge I was looking for.

Box 1 was basically a series of exhibits representing the local deity in various stages of his life. Not particularly extraordinary but it stayed on as one of the most vivid memories I have of the museum.

Box 2 Is an image of my grandfather and I praying to the Elephant God Ganesh, something he religiously did and had me do every day we went to the museum.

Box 3 is an image of the museum cinema hall, where they’d run films produced and written by my grandfather about the values of God.

Box 4 was another installation, a dynamic one with a particularly fascinating gear mechanism that I never forgot. It basically had children walking in circles around a statue of the monkey God Hanuman, who eventually emerges in the flesh from the ground after the children have circled the statue a certain number of times. According to my grandfather, this was one of the trickiest installations he’d ever had to produce.

Box 5 was the office where my grandfather and his staff would do most of their work which involved a lot of paperwork and sending a lot of emails. Another thing I never forgot.

Box 6 was this S-shaped walkway in a particular section of the museum, on the side of which was beautiful miniature model of a Buddhist temple in Tibet. It always got a lot of attention particularly because it was coated in gold or something similar in appearance.

Box 7 was another very vivid installation, which was basically a recreation of an event in Hindu mythology, where the Lion God Narsimha broke out of a pillar in defence of a young child whose father threatened to kill him over his faith in the God. Of course, the story was a little more complicated than that, but the lion suddenly popping out of a pillar always caught passersby off guard, you’d often hear a yelp or two from that section of the museum.

Box 8 was the biggest and only outdoor exhibit. I wasn’t completely sure how to illustrate it, but I think the subject of the scene would be the people reacting to the exhibit. It was basically a pond or tank of sorts with at least a thousand koi fish, with a bridge running right through the middle of it. Of course, this school had grown over several decades of care, and rather systematically, everyday at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. my grandfather would feed the fish amidst his busy schedule as the director.

I was actually confused as to how increase the level of detail in these images considering I didn’t want to waste much time. I then remembered my approach towards creating storyboards which was basically just adding a rough idea of the lighting which usually elevates the image severalfold, and so I decided to go ahead with that. I added words and expressive punctuation for that punch comic strips have. I used dramatic lighting to direct attention to the subjects in each box. The only box I wasn’t able to effectively elevate was the last one although it does have a bit of a comic effect.