Normally, the term “illustrations” makes me feel mildly ill. The word seems to mean “redundant pictures.” So I don’t usually do them. People will often call my drawings, especially those that accompany my prose, “illustrations,” but-at the risk of coming off as a pretentious prick-I don’t think the term is accurate. My drawings are meant to do something different than the words. Augment, not repeat, or even interpret. They develop together as a single piece, not with one subservient to the other (and to me, “illustration” implies images in service of text). Many writers have asked me to illustrate their work, and I’ve always refused. But collaborations, collaborations involving image and text, is a different story. This is where the drawings and text grow from and build upon each other. I’m not so interested in taking someone” manuscript and adding some drawings. It’s most exciting when anyone involved can introduce anything – sometimes I’m writing, sometimes drawing, sometimes both. That’s some of my favorite work. The first time I did this was when Kristen Iskandrian and I created our comic “5 Cats.” Johannes G. and I have been chipping away at a project like this for years (that will realistically continue for years more). Tim Wood and I do all kinds of stuff like this, with absolutely no strict definition of medium. Catherine Kasper and I created a book this way. Working with J.A. Tyler for the last few months has been a real headspin, sending my drawing off into some truly ugly places (we’re in the homestretch on this project that we’re calling Glimpse, and we’re pretty excited to show it off).

But some people, other than me, can illustrate. And do it well. Really well. Like the refined and talented Joshua Korenblatt. So when he asked me to illustrate Elyse Lightman’s essay “The Birdhouses” for his journal /One/, it was a challenge I couldn’t refuse. And Elyse’s images are so crisp and vivid, it was a comfortable place for an illustration hack like me to start. Check out her words (and my pictures, in service to those words) here.