Krishna Chavda ’08, Illustrator

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing. My parents are both architects. I’d take their stencils and make my own floor plans or cross-sections of houses. I’d put in furniture and put people in them.

I grew up in Tanzania, in Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital. I moved to the United States when I was 13, and I went to boarding school.

My parents are both Indian. I was actually born in the United States. My first travel experience was to Tanzania when I was 2 years old. It’s been pretty much nonstop ever since.

People always ask me where I’m from. I say, “Do you want the long story or the short story?”

In college I felt I had to be a certain kind of artist. I deviated from what I was comfortable doing. In grad school I came full circle to where I was back in high school.

I guess I would describe it as this loose, sketchy freehand. I really enjoy working outside. Everything I do is pretty quickly drawn. Or maybe it’s just because I’m impatient.

My junior year I went to Italy for a semester abroad. That’s when I realized I wanted to do illustration. I was in Florence. It was amazing.

Drew has a New York semester on contemporary art. Two days a week we’d go around New York or New Jersey, going to studios and talking to artists. I don’t think any other school I was looking at had anything like it.

Nanu Illustration, that’s my doing-business-as name. Nanu is a nickname my family calls me. It’s from the Gujarati language. It means little, and I’m the youngest in my family.

In my perfect world, I would be a full-time freelancer for editorial illustration and possibly advertising. Right now I’m just building it up. I just started working at Trader Joe’s. They’re training me to be a sign artist.

I stumbled upon The New Yorker cover competition. I thought it would be a fun way to keep myself occupied. I read about their mascot, Eustace Tilley, that he was this prissy guy. I just thought it would be funny to make him look like a drag queen. They emailed us and said, “You won.” All 12 winners are featured on the website.