Sometimes I pick up a pencil differently, with two fingers instead of three opposing the thumb. The hand draws less well without the full group I'm used to using. When you look at the hand it doesn't seem like all the fingers even have a job to do. A couple of them appear to be doing nothing, but if you remove one the line looks odd; interesting but looser, less clear, a bit drunken. The pinky finger never does anything, but I've never considered lopping it off. If all four fingers and thumb are used to write or draw they form a fist and fists have no fluidity of motion.

I like how the line looks close up.


















And closer up

Pretty Nice Company

It's flattering to be included with all these book cover heroes in this new collection from AltitudeSF. I owe much to the art direction of Susan Mitchell and Mr. Waters.

Orientation (a book of stories)

This is an instance of a sketchbook drawing finding a life in print. The pencil drawing has become a whole new metier, a new style for me since the cover of the John Waters book, which is nice because I think in pencil. So I can take a thought, darken the line a little or a lot, add color, shift color, create variations. I sent this pencil drawing to the art people at Farrar Straus and Charlotte Strick replied saying she had just the book for it. A book of stories by Daniel Orozco (Faber, 2011). (Faber and Faber is another imprint they publish.) I added the color to the faces, inserted a couple of women's faces (it had originally been just odd looking men), devised the colored type, did an FF colophon in pencil and a scribbled edge for the back and flap.

Now available in a store near you. (And, as one short story writer to another, the stories are pretty great.)

The End of the Book

I am writing about books these days, working on a book about books and bookstores as endangered species. About the book as something on paper you can (or used to be able to) hold in your hand. As something that doesn't require electricity, except after dark. I did this illustration a few years ago for Mary Parsons at the Atlantic. Looking at it again it could work as a depiction of the virtual library in which fonts and words are divorced from their protective covers. Once all the books are virtual they can all be burned with a flick of a switch. It makes me shudder. Booksellers and librarians are the curators of our culture. We need them.

Deciderer, Part II

I did this drawing in the messy, expensive aftermath of Bush's "victory" in Iraq. It's jarring to make a comical drawing of someone who created so much harm and crisis.

The Loafer

I notice that Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd are reviving a very useful anthropological study of Waspus Preppicus. Until I read it back in the 1980s I only knew chinos and loafers as my native costume, not understanding the class implications. I'd never visited the holy sites on Martha's Vineyard or in Westchester. I had gone to summer camp with children from Lake Forest and Winnetka but didn't at the time understand the sound basis for their scorn. I was like Nick Carraway. (As I've noted elsewhere, I went to the same college as the arriviste's arriviste, Jay Gatsby, though we never met, being from different decades.) Anyway, the Preppie Handbook opened my eyes. I still prefer chinos and I wear only loafers, always without socks. I have not worn socks with loafers since the late 1970s.

Bookish

This might be a self portrait. I have a lot of books and when the kids were small they played havoc with them, tearing valuable pages, spilling words and letters all over the floor and refusing to clean up the mess. Two year-olds never do, do they? This drawing appeared in the Atlantic among the book reviews. The art director was the estimable Mary Parsons.

Man With Book

I drew this with a dry brush and gouache at the kitchen table. One of seven or eight I did one evening while supervising homework. They appeared in the Believer magazine, but I've also visualized them printed large as posters for something or other.