Becky Hawkins

Book Illustrations

Added 2021-08-28 22:02:21 +0000 UTC

Hello! I'm back. As promised, here are the illustrations I did for Emotional Labor: Why a Woman's Work is Never Done and What To Do About It. And here's photographic evidence of me being relaxed last week:

The book illustrations were a fun drawing challenge because I wanted them to look expressive and energetic, like someone had vented their feelings directly into a sketchbook. But they also needed to be clear, especially when there were lots of small icons or specific locations in one drawing. Part of my process was doing as messy a sketch as I wanted, and then digitally fixing things like anatomy. (If I'm not thinking about it, everyone I draw has extra-short legs and asymmetrical arms). I also did about four different versions of "Noticing is a Skill," moving around the characters, trash can, table, and cabinets until it looked like a real room, but nothing was being blocked from sight.

The author and I also wanted to depict characters with diverse races and body sizes throughout the book. The cartoony style I was working in presented a challenge, since people tend to read extra-simplified cartoon faces as white. And I'd originally tried drawing using only outlines, with no areas filled in with textures or black ink. But when I showed my early drawings to people, they interpreted anyone whose hair wasn't textured or filled in with black, as blonde. I didn't want to draw "simple cartoon faces plus occasional OTHERRR eyes and OTHERRR hair," so I worked at finding a balance of providing just enough detail. I also wanted to be mindful of what could be read as a negative stereotype. For example, I didn't want any illustrations of men to be read as "lazy/inept fat person" or "disengaged POC father." So, those are all things I thought super-hard about in the middle stages of drawing this.

I had a ton of fun amalgamating old anti-suffragette cartoons for "Men Suffer Under Suffrage." It also felt good to switch gears and embrace an extra-detailed, extra cross-hatched old timey style. The angry exploding heads were my other favorite thing to draw. Drawing has always been a way for me to vent, so I tried to channel that. I hope you enjoyed looking at these!

In local news, I reprinted SuperButch Issues 1-5 this week--thank you, day job, for having a big printer--and restocked our local comic shop, Books with Pictures. Barry redesigned the back covers for the earlier print issues of SuperButch so that they all match now. They look great!