Melissa Grant Writes

I decided to get an image of Cloudia drawn.

Do I need it?

No.

Do I want it?

Yes.

I’ve had a visual in my head for a long time and wanted someone who doesn’t draw in stick figures like me to interpret it.

So, I went to The Medium, a local graphic design company that helped redesign my regional news blog Living Snoqualmie. One of the owners, Josh Tuininga, had reached into my brain and dragged out EXACTLY what I envisioned but didn’t have the artistic ability to express.

I hoped he could do the same for this project.

Cloudia is newly 11, tall for her age, green-eyed, pale, freckled, with wild, frizzy orangey-red hair. She is always wearing a gray hoodie and jeans.

ALWAYS.

Her dog, Gloom, is a 25-pound, scruffy black Schnauzer-Poodle mix.

I wanted them in their PNW environment, with some story elements represented (more on that later).

I also had a style in mind.

Sharing custody of an imaginary eleven-year-old turned out to be more difficult than I expected.

I emailed Josh and told him what I was looking for. He replied that it sounded cool, and after some back-and-forth (ok, ok, I changed my mind fifty times, sorry Josh), we decided on the project’s scale and style.

At first, I wanted the image to be from the front and in a painterly style but quickly realized drawing her face would be nearly impossible and possibly very expensive.

Since this drawing was essentially for me at this point (book-cover styles come and go, so I can’t assume what a publisher will want if it ever gets that far), I didn’t want to break the bank yet.

We decided it would leave more to the imagination to have them walking away, and I decided that since I liked Josh’s style before, I would let my style choice go and have him interpret the drawing in his style.

He got started, and I got my first image of Cloudia and Gloom.

One thing I wanted for my character was for her not to be Disney princess-ish.

No Rapunzel-like hair. Frizzy and wild.

No normal proportions. Weirdly gangly.

And since Benji got into my head early on, Gloom should be as scruffy as possible,

Like last time, Josh got into my head again.

Mostly.

Cloudia’s physical appearance is based on mine. I was WEIRD-looking at 11. In fact, I resembled a chimpanzee; my arms and legs were so out of proportion to the rest of my body.

I’m not kidding.

It was bad.

I was so tall, so young, that my parents had to get me a state-issued ID to prove I was actually 11 so they didn’t have to pay adult prices for me at movies.

The first Cloudia drawing I got back didn’t have nearly enough weird girl energy. So I pushed back and asked for more leg, more hair frizz.

 I got more frizz and a bit more leg, but it still wasn’t enough for me.

I wanted praying mantis.

I got slightly tall kid.

So how far do I push this?

This is what he does for a living.

While I think of myself as creative, it’s not the visual kind. I was concerned I would one: tick him off or two: go too far and have to rein it in again.

I mentioned it again to Josh and he said he didn’t want to push it too far because she would read too old.

I thought, well, yeah, that did happen.

However, since the whole state ID concept is not introduced as an explanation in the book, and how would you know that anyway, seeing the image?

What? Not everyone knows what’s going on in my head?

Well, that’s rude.

I decided not to be a pain in the ass.

You were right, Josh.

Grumble.