Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“They go to school most mornings …”
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I love any post with the phrase “shooting stars and gumdrop Martians.”

I’ve a review over at BookPage of Rowboat Watkins’ Most Marshmallows (Chronicle, April 2019). That is here at their site, and here at 7-Imp today, Rowboat talks about the book and making the art. I thank him for sharing.

 



 

Rowboat: There’s a bullied marshmallow character in Rude Cakes, whom I’ve always liked, and the idea for Rude Cakes came from a dream that a different character (a bullied poodle) had in an older story I’d written that didn’t go anywhere. In that older story, the bullied poodle tried to make himself dream about tough things in order to make himself feel tough in real life. So, he dreamed about rude cakes, who kicked each other on purpose and never said sorry. He also dreamed about burnt marshmallows — and hammers and boxing gloves and flowers with mustaches, etc.

 

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I was going to write a story about burnt marshmallows, who were kind of naughty, because that seemed fun. But it also seemed too much like writing about rude cakes, so I scrapped the idea.

Then, I started wondering what marshmallows might dream about if they had dreams. I mean, if bullied poodles can dream about marshmallows, why can’t marshmallows dream about poodles? Or whatever, right? So, I roughed out a wordless story, showing what a marshmallow dreamed about. [Below is an image from that dummy.] For whatever reason, that story never worked. So, I tabled it.

 

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It wasn’t until I started randomly taking pictures of things for Instagram (bane of my existence) and started sometimes building things out of construction paper (and Sculpey and acorns and cake sprinkles), which I have always loved, that I realized maybe it might be fun to make a book about marshmallows — where they weren’t drawn, but where I used actual marshmallows and built everything out of construction paper and acorns and cake sprinkles, etc. I knew I wasn’t a photographer, but I figured that, if I just treated it like how I was building and photographing stuff for fun, maybe some of that sense of play would come through in the finished pictures. This is when I was just playing around and procrastinating and not working on something else that felt too hard to work on at the moment. That is where the fun and magic happens. When something doesn’t mean anything at all and just feels pointless and nothing is at stake and there are no rules or mean voices in your head.

That was when I decided to revisit the marshmallow story.

 

Playing around in 2015 (before it was a book idea)
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Playing around (before it was a book idea): Barbershop Quartet
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Playing around (before it was a book idea): Cars
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It’s still largely a story about marshmallow dreams, I guess, but it also became a reminder to myself (and maybe others, too) to not be constrained by what you think you know or by who or what you have been told you are allowed to do or be. For instance, I am not a photographer. I never have been. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t allowed to try to make a book where all of the illustrations were photographs of things I’d built out of stuff I like playing with. Whatever I didn’t know about photography (like lighting — ugh, lighting!), I would figure out (or make up) along the way.

 


Early sample cover
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Early mock-up of title page spread
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Final title page spread, sans text
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The motto at my college is/was “Question Authority.” I have never been very good at this. I’m a quiet rule-follower by nature. But I have always admired people who are zesty and live their lives boldly — even though, if I’m being totally honest, those kinds of people always scare me. What I like most about the book is not that some marshmallows dare to dream big and adventurous and/or heroic things for themselves, but that they also dare to dream/do the very thing they have been explicitly told they are not allowed to do.

 


A final spread, sans text: “Most marshmallows don’t grow on trees …”
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A final spread, sans text: “Most marshmallows are mostly born
to one sweet parent or two …”
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One reviewer of the book called the ending jarring and said the misguided presence of dragons felt like pandering. I am not exactly sure who me and my dragons are pandering to, but the dragons are central to the final act of rebellion (and joy and self-discovery) at the end of the book. Because the book, silly and sweet and rambling as it may seem, is also kind of a call to arms. To oneself. To wake up. To be bolder and zestier than you think you are capable of being in your otherwise squishy life. I fail at this daily. Hourly. Minutely. And I am as squishy as they come. But there are moments when I forget to listen to all of those voices in my head telling me what I don’t know. And those are the moments that I live for, because that’s where all of life’s magic lies.

 


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Before It Was Even a Working Book …

 


From the sketchbooks
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From the sketchbooks: Gumballs
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From the sketchbooks: Stamps
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Sketching while in Japan …
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Sketching while in Japan …
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Creating the Tree Spread …

 


Original sketch
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“Cutting lots of paper leaves …”
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“Making acorn marshmallows …”
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“These leaves were too big and floppy …”
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Creating the Stroller Spread …

 


Original sketch
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“Making a stroller …”
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“They are smaller than you think …”

 


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“Making paper flowers …”
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“Planting and arranging the flowers …”
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Creating the Bus Spread …

 


Original thumbnails for bus spread
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First paper bus
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Back of first paper bus
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“Experiment with home-made light box before deciding not to use one …”
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First paper backpack test
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Second paper bus with opening doors
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Testing the lighting on the second paper bus
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Testing the lighting …
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Creating the Rocket Spread …

 


Original sketch
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“Starting a paper rocket …”
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“Lots of little paper rivets …”
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“Flying rocket and earlier, rejected rocket …”
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“Making shooting stars and gumdrop Martians …”
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* * * * * * *

MOST MARSHMALLOWS. Copyright © 2019 by Rowboat Watkins. Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco. All images here used by permission of Rowboat Watkins.