"As an Illustration..."
Years ago—maybe forty or so—I had a neighbor who used those three words the way other people might say, “Ummmmm…” while she was assembling her thoughts before speaking. Oddly enough, it was about that time that I became an illustrator.
No connection, I’m sure.
What had happened was an aborted attempt at becoming a writer. I had spent a couple of weeks, struggling to write an article for a favorite magazine. When it finally looked alright to me, I stuffed it into a manila envelope addressed to Fly Fisherman Magazine. Before licking the gummed seal, I thought that it might help if there were some drawings to accompany my deathless prose. Ten minutes later, five little pen-and-ink drawings of trout flies were slipped into the envelope—and went off to the post office.
Several weeks went by.
Several anxious weeks.
Then a letter that bore the Fly Fisherman logo arrived. It held the usual rejection apology (something I’d been seeing since I began submitting poetry to The New Yorker when I was a callow youth). “The article wasn’t right for them,” however, the letter asked if I would accept $50 for the drawings?
Absobloodylutely.
I did a quick analysis of the time spent writing versus the time spent on the little drawings, and the relative amounts each earned.. $0 for maybe 50 hours of writing versus $5 per minute of drawing.
The conclusion was obvious: I was pursuing the wrong career.
Shortly thereafter I moved from the little wood-stove-heated cabin in the woods to NYC’s Upper West Side. I got a job as a night computer operator for a Madison Avenue advertising agency. It left my days free to schlep my portfolio from one art director to another, and—since the computer pretty much took care of itself—I could draw at my desk.
I made a deal with myself: I would devote five years to trying to make a living off illustration. After three, I was able to quit my “day job” and draw for a living. Most of my clients were editorial, though I did have occasional commercial work. I wanted to illustrate children’s books, so I sent samples of my work to every art director listed by the Children’s Book Council.
I did not get a single response.
Then, at a friend’s party, I was introduced to someone who saw some of my work on the wall and liked it. She recommended me to an agent who only handled writers and illustrators of children’s books.
I followed up on it, but there was no response.
Six months later, the agent called and said, “I have a book for you… do you want it?” I jumped on it. It led to doing three books. After some forty years, two of them are still paying royalties.
Gradually, I got tired of drawing—or rather, I got tired of not learning anything new from it. Thinking that I already had an agent, maybe I could write some children’s books. I wrote three of them—each one worse than the others.
My agent wisely declined to promote them to her clients.
By then, I was working as a designer of educational materials for The Culinary Institute of America. Since it was obvious that I was not cut out to be a writer of books for children, I decided to write about something that might even interest me.
Food, and food history.
Over the next couple of decades, I managed to be published in about forty books (some of my own, some as part of others’ books, a bunch of different food encyclopedias, a few anthologies, etc.).
About seven years ago, I began writing fiction—something I never could have imagined during the years of writing non-fiction. Not willing to start beating down the doors of more literary (read: “respectable”) publishing houses—or trying to find an agent to do it for me—I resurrected my old training as a designer to publish the new books, all by myself. There are about a dozen of them now.
None of them contain illustrations (other than photographs).
Last week I was talking to someone who had seen some of my writing, online. She wondered why I had never shared any of my illustrations, on substack or anywhere else. The simple answer was that it had never occurred to me to do so. I told her that she could see the covers for two of the children’s books on Amazon.
Then I visited Amazon’s page and discovered that the only ones that it posts are the low-cost paperback re-issues—that had covers done by a different illustrator. If she only saw them she would have no idea what my work was really like back then.
I’ll try to make up for that now (starting with the two book covers she wouldn’t have seen):
Prismacolor pencil; Client: Harper Collins
Black-and-white pencil (prisma) drawing;
the same technique used in all the interior illustrations in those books
Ink and airbrush; Client: Quest (for an article about artists living, tax-free, in Ireland)
Ink; Client: Rod & Reel (for an article on angling literature)
Ink and pre-separated color; Client: Holt, Rinehart & Winston (for a textbook)
Ink; (for an unpublished children’s book)
Ink and pre-separated color; Client: TV Guide (for an article about super-bowl snacks)
Ink; one of my old Christmas cards
Ink and pre-separated color; one of my old business cards
Paid subscribers to these substack pages get access to a complete edition of my novella: Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. They can also read the first part of Unbelievable, a kind of rom-com that forms around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful. Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get them for free!
Also, substack pages (older than eight months) automatically slip behind a paywall—so only paid subscribers can read them. If you’re interested in reading any of them, you can subscribe, or wait until they are re-released in book form (something I’m in the process of considering).
Meanwhile, it is easy to become a paying subscriber (just like supporting your favorite NPR station). It’s entirely optional, and—even if you choose not to do so—you’ll continue to get my regular substack posts—and I’ll still be happy to have you as a reader.