The New Yorker: Jack & Della

An illustration for the latest story from Pulitzer prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, for The New Yorker magazine.

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Concept sketches

The first note I was given when I accepted the assignment was that the illustrations in fiction/poetry side of the publication always tried by all means to avoid depicting the faces of the characters of the story. So most of my ideas were about using the various inanimate objects mentioned in the story to create a mood or allude to some kind of narrative. Because of the short turnaround time (about just over a day), I knew I had to veer away from something too complex. I was really confident about the first 2 ideas because I had drawn elaborately detailed china before, so there would be less problem-solving involved, and because it relied so heavily on line work I knew I'd be able to come to an elegant solution fairly easily. The third idea came out of a desire to show a little more variety, and was more specific to the story and also quite character-inspired. However, it was the idea that I was the least confident or excited about, because at no point in my brainstorming or sketching did I ever feel like I had a grounded sense of how to bring all of the elements together in a visually-pleasing way, and I expressed that to the creative director (Nicholas Blechman). Because here's the thing: a full-page illustration in the New Yorker doesn't feel like the smartest place to be experimenting with ideas or executions you aren't sure about.

So, obviously that was the idea they went with lol. He asked me if I wanted to give it a go, and I just kinda laughed to myself and said what the hell, let's give it a shot.

Refined thumbnail sketch

My attitude to illustrations has been that if I can't produce 2 reasonably clear thumbnail sketches of an idea that give a clear sense of composition and technique, then I haven't actually solved it yet, and that that's something I HAVE TO resolve before proceeding to the next step. It can feel like an unnecessary time-consuming step, but I think it actually saves you more time and headaches in the long run. I knew that I wanted to do this traditionally first, and add any colouring in digitally, so that meant sketching the thumbnail in the same medium that I wanted to use for the final.

And I'm really glad I decided to that because this step illuminated most of the things that felt undecided about the thumbnails, and the flying pages also gave the drawing a much needed sense of movement in my opinion. It still felt a little unwieldy and potentially a lot to have to do within the alotted time, but I was feeling good about my odds.

But I was also too close to it, and this is where working with a really good or experienced art director comes in, he liked the refined composition, but also removed a lot of the elements that were making the piece feel cluttered. I think I would have felt like I would be interfering with the hallowed story by doing that, but he could see that we'd fulfilled our obligation to the amazing story, but now we had to make sure that the final illustration was as beautiful as we could make it. And with a really solid and grounded road map in front of me, I set off to executing the final drawing.