Roughs to Final Art

💌 Roughing it out

My Studio, pre clean.

Dear Powells,

Where did March go? I assume that before I went to bed on February 28th I must have accidentally eaten a bewitched apple and been asleep ever since. The house is clean and tidy, so I can also assume that the 7 dwarves are responsible for that – Stefan certainly won’t be! – although my studio is a mess, so either Grumpy threw a tantrum and the other 6 decided to leave or they chose not to meddle with my artists space.

I had a nice sleep peppered with dreams which come back to me now in jumbled, half memories: I went to Bologna where I saw lots of friends and a beautiful Beatrice Alemagna exhibition but forgot to eat tiramisu; I went to a funeral which left me reflective and ponderous, and needing to retreat for a while; one of the books I illustrated made it to the New York Times Bestseller list and there was a dream where I began an innocent internet search for a one man wedding saxophonist but ended up booking an 8 piece jazz band. I have awoken to find that it’s now spring and all my clocks are an hour behind - that’s probably one of Grumpy’s jokes, he’s a hoot!

Studio mess

That hopefully explains why there was no Substack activity in March. To bring you up to the present moment, as I write this it is midday on a rainy Friday. For just shy of two weeks, I have been working intensely roughing out a middle grade and a picture book. I tend to go at roughs much like Edward Scissorhands takes to an overgrown shrub: manically, with intense focus and wearing black PVC. Once I have procrastinated for several days – my pathetic attempt to disguise the fact I am terrified of beginning – and I eventually settle into it, ideas come thick and fast.

7 ideas for one illustration (The Swifts written by Beth Lincoln)

I become fully absorbed in my roughs and prefer to wrestle the beast all at once. I can try anything up to 10 different compositions for each illustration. I work quickly–trimming, snipping, shaping, shaving bits off, adding bits in, joining bits together–until I get what feels instinctively like the best and only solution.

The process of roughing out must take more energy than I usually expel as I find I need more food than usual (Victoria Semykina confessed the same in her wonderful Orange Beak talk last week which reassured me I’m not just using it as an excuse to be greedy) and I took to ending each day with an Amaretto-on-the-Rocks with a dash of lemon, whilst lunging in the lounge to loosen the hip flexors after a long day spent at the desk, imitating the shape of a Cyrillic letterform.

When the roughs are complete I review them, send them off, use a big black marker to cross them off my To-Do list, feel instant relief, quickly followed by a desperate urgent need to be out of the house.

And that is why, if you happened to be passing The Cool River Cafe in Matlock at 12:21 today you would see me sat in the window, fishing out a small fly from my newly delivered tea with a spoon and looking relieved.

Powell x