Happy New Year!
Here at my office, we’re celebrating with fizz, per tradition: our first story of 2008 is about seltzer.
Today’s illustration is by the delightful Vanessa Davis. I had to crop her drawing closely to fit it on our home page—and, of course, there’s that nasty brown stripe with the type over it—so do visit the story to see the complete piece: Eli Miller’s Seltzer Delivery Service.
Most of the illustrators I’ve worked with send two or three sketches, and then I either pick one for them to finish or choose parts from multiple sketches to make one Frankendrawing. So this case was typical, in that Vanessa sent three drawings. What’s not so typical is that I didn’t choose the one I liked best, which was a wooden box full of seltzer bottles. It was a watercolor, and the way she’d painted the transparency of the bottles where the different colors of glass overlapped was just gorgeous. But we had already published and republished another article about seltzer, using pictures of multicolored bottles both times, so I felt that something different was in order. I also liked the way the emphasis in this drawing is on the delivery guy, which is more representative of the story.
At the same time, I had another reservation, which is one that I’ve often felt: “I like this sketch so much—how could it possibly be improved? What if I don’t like the finished drawing?” So far, my concern has been unjustified, and I’ve always been even happier with the final drawing than with the sketch, no matter how lovely. But . . . but . . . that possibility of disappointment still arises with each new assignment. I’d have hated for that to happen with those lovely glass bottles.
So, here we are. I like the final piece a lot, of course, but my heart is still with the rejected sketch. Sigh.
Way back in the Wayback Days, I bought an oh-so-retro seltzer bottle and a heap of CO2 cartridges. Very “Thin Man”, very “Holiday”, very “Bringing Up Baby”. And one day I brought that bottle, filled with water and all charged up, to work — and squirted a young woman working under my nominal supervision. Because everybody thinks seltzer-squirting is a laff riot, yes?
No, I learned, they don’t. Sometimes even the most easy-going people get really irritated when attacked by a damn fool wielding a fizzy-water cannon.
Um. Sheila. I could have told you that that wasn’t a good idea.
I expect I should have told myself that it wasn’t a good idea. I was old enough to have known better — which is to say, I was not seven years old.
I do like the drawing as it appears with the story itself (which I also enjoyed).