Once I immerse myself in the drawing phase, the writing part of me shuts up and I get into that flow where visual ideas just seem to show up of their own accord. The two strands, at the finish, are going to synthesize into a whole. It doesn’t matter which comes first, words or image, because my books are going to have both. So, I mostly use writing to generate ideas. (Judging it and rebelling against it did not prove to be helpful.) So, I have gradually come to make peace with, and maybe even relish, my own process. It’s taken me a while to accept that there are different ways of getting ideas out and onto paper. That has always seemed like the way artistic process is supposed to work. It looked like drawing was his connection to inspiration, to his internal idea factory. His hand told him stuff about his interior life. It was more often a turning outward, not inward.Īt the Sendak Fellowship, it seemed like my friend Rowboat Watkins, like my college friend, also used drawing to bring forth ideas. I was heading toward being a visual artist, so why didn’t I draw all time? I started carrying a sketchbook and drawing regularly. Anyway, my friend’s dedicated drawing practice was a rebuke to me. In high school, I used to carry around a sketchbook everywhere I went, but I wrote in it. Is this something you discovered during the Sendak Fellowship, by chance? Or earlier?Īntoinette: When I was in art school, my best friend always carried around a sketchbook and drew everywhere she went. It’s taken me a while to figure out that this is my particular process. Then the drawing side kicks in and fleshes things out. I think my idea machine is on the language side of my brain. I get ideas, and then I sketch them out to communicate them. I generally don’t use drawing as a way to come up with ideas. I don’t think of myself as an illustrator per se, but a visual communicator or a visual storyteller.

I do want to ask about this, which you typed to me in an email when we were chatting earlier:

Jules: Hi, Antoinette! I’m not going to ask you about how the story of Wait came to you, since you covered that in the Horn Book Q&A and the Q&A at Publishers Weekly. I thank her for visiting, and let’s get right to it. Today, Antoinette talks all about the book and its evolution her experience as a Sendak Fellow the fine art of being content with discontent her upcoming picture books (with art from each to share!) and much more. Last month over at BookPage, I reviewed Antoinette’s newest picture book, Wait (Neal Porter Books/Roaring Brook Press, July 2015). Author-illustrator Antoinette Portis joins me this morning for a lovely, long chat before breakfast.

Froodle by Antoinette Portis