When publishing goes wrong

"You are becoming impossible to work with," my agent told me over the phone one bleak day 22 years ago. I don't think I was being unreasonable; a whole year's work disintegrated before my eyes.

My latest book, "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" by Eugene Field had just been released by North South Books and the printing was a complete failure. My agent, the VP for the US headquarters of the Swiss publisher, was trying to let me know I was out of luck. This particular run of my book was ruined, and I had no recourse.

The worst part was that I had approved the F & Gs months before (called folded and gathered in publisher-speak. These are the proofs sent for the artist's review printed up like a softcover book). When an illustrator works on a picture book "proofs" get sent back to show you how the pictures will look once published. The artist and art director have the opportunities to make corrections before the book gets printed and distributed. In my case, I approved the proofs. They looked so good. In fact, they looked great. I was a little nervous doing a book in pencil with my last two in full color, but the copies I received put my fears to bed.

A few months later, I got a box of my books delivered.

You have got to be kidding me. I was mortified. Every page looked as if the illustrations were faded from baking in the sun for three years.

The cover looked beautiful. Opening the book, however, I flipped through the pages in utter disbelief. The whole f-ing book looked like someone spilled bleach on my pencil illustrations I had worked my ass off doing.

Here is the first page.

In the book compared to the original pencil drawing

Some things are too painful to face. My book was ruined and my agent was annoyed that I expected some kind of recompense to make things right. Apparently that wasn't going to happen.

"I'm becoming impossible to work with? What makes you say that? Maybe I'm pissed that you are taking such a cavalier attitude about my year's work and chucking all up to bad luck. Or maybe you think I should just get over it and move on? These things do happen?" I wanted to ask.

No one is more attached to a book than an illustrator. When I spend days on each illustration, I count on the fact that the publishers will see to it that my art reproduces well. Their name is on every book they release. One would think it would be to their advantage to make sure it looks as good as it can; otherwise, why bother sending out the proofs?

When "The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat" came out, I wasn’t expecting any surprises. What's the insurance policy for a botched printing job? As far as I can remember, my pencil drawings were sent to a new printer overseas at the last minute, and I never had the chance to approve their copies. Maybe they didn't bother with this crucial step. But it had a horrible impact on me as an artist. Someone fell asleep on the job, and obviously the publisher didn't feel like investing enough time or money to fix it.

This book never sold well, and I’m sure it’s because the illustrations were so washed out.

On the dust jacket flap next to the original

See the red tape on the bottom? Those notes indicate the percentage of an illustration's size reduction for print. At the time I was working about one and one half times larger than the pictures would appear in the book.

Look at the difference. The original looks a little dark here due to the outdoor light. But the ranges and depths of the greys are missing entirely

Another faded double-page spread

What a difference. So much is lost in the book. This original hangs in my hallway

When I was working in pencil, I made sure I built up layers of values (darker and lighter tones) to really make the image pop. These darkest darks were deliberately used to contrast with the white of my paper as the light areas. When I am using pencil, I make sure the illustrations are strong enough so that color isn’t missed. I used 6B pencils for those rich blacks - that's about as dark as you can get with graphite.

The book leaves out all the fine grey variances - the delicate shading on the boy's face is lost in the book

I had the best time drawing the marble on the mantle. Actually, all of it. I do love working in graphite on paper.

Book vs. original drawing

Having laid these drawings out for the purpose of this post, I find renewed enthusiasm to publish the book again by myself. I own all of the rights to my work so why not? I happen to have access to all my originals as well. I often sell my art from other books. I never sold any of these because I was so devastated by the way this book turned out. My perfectionism reared its ugly head and I couldn’t bear the thought of others thinking this book turned out the way I intended.

It took 22 years to be able to write about my bad experience with “The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat”. But I finally did it. And nothing happened; I didn't fall apart after all.

Here's what I think. I needed to take that long in order to give these illustrations a chance to live again.