I’ll take any opportunity to talk about how I love working on editorial projects because they bring so much diversity of subject matter to my desk. I love knowing just a little bit about weird naval traditions, ‘Big Cannabis’ (yes, really.), and book club/ book review favourites that can go right on my TBR list
Because of the short timelines, these projects are an opportunity to keep things fresh and try new approaches/imagery. The downside to this kind of work is that for the most part, I don’t really develop any relationships with specific writers or their bodies of work. There are obvious practical reasons for having the illustrator liaise solely with an art director that I won’t get into here but I am actually very thankful for. This boundary between writer and illustrator is also most often the case in book publishing (people tend to react far more surprised when I say this about children’s books!) But I’m curious what illustration might look like if it was an active collaboration with a writer.
The closest I’ve come to feeling some sort of collaborative closeness is my work for Nina McConigley’s column Township and Range in High Country News magazine. I’ve been illustrating for the column since its inception in July of 2022, as long as Nina has been writing it, I think.
I was putting off this newsletter because I was waiting to hit the one-year mark of illustrating Nina’s column. I realized last week that it is 2024 (!) and the anniversary approaching this May was not mine and Nina’s first but SECOND of working together on this column. Yikes. Time
Nina is an author and professor at Colorado State University. She’s of Indian and Irish descent and lives in Wyoming. Her short story collection Cowboys and East Indians won the PEN Open Book Award in 2014. A play based on the book has been commissioned by the Denver Center for Performing Arts and will be on soon!
I didn’t know Nina’s work before I started illustrating her column and we’ve never met but strangely, I’ve gotten to know bits of her life through her deeply personal column. I know her as someone who’s very attached to the Juniper tree by her house, a lover of the landscape she lives in, a mother to two adorable daughters, someone who loves poetry, thinks deeply about her beliefs, and enjoys bird watching.
Every new column now feels like part of a strange, charming multimedia pen pal project we’re taking part in, moderated by Art Director Bear Guerra. Each dispatch brings me a little insight/perspective/idea from Nina’s life that I get to bring my own interpretation/perspective to through the illustrations. I don’t know how long the column will run but I hope it goes for a while because I’m enjoying myself thoroughly!
Below are all the images from the column so far. You might have seen them on Instagram but they’ve never really appeared together as part of the same project. As the illustrations go on, Nina and the people in her life get a little more specific, although I’m not going for straight portraits, especially where her kids are concerned. I tried to approach the landscape similarly in all the pieces so that there’s a throughline, even if my approach to other subject matter changes. Easter egg: the juniper tree that appears in ‘Rooting a New Life Under a Juniper Tree” can be seen in the background of the last image where the family is gathered around a stove.
Thanks for reading this (short) edition of The Drafts! This week I sent off just under 100 pages fully coloured of the graphic novel I’m illustrating! Publication is a long way out and I’m excited to finally be able to share full images and details when the time for that finally comes.
My new book with Suma Subramaniam, My Name is Long as a River is available for preorder! It’s out in just 2.5 months!