Writer, Artist and Illustrator, by Caroline Lawrence

Today, I am excited and honoured to host a guest post by Caroline Lawrence. She's a lady I've admired for a while and I've always been impressed by her generous spirit and fun nature, not to mention her writerly prowess. But here she reveals another facet and I want to thank her for allowing me to reveal it to you:

Writer, Artist & Illustrator by Caroline Lawrence

The first ‘A’ I ever got in school was for Art. And when I was in high school my parents wanted to send me to Art School in Paris. Who could turn down such an offer? I did. By then I was hooked on history and Classics, thanks to a book I read on my gap year. So I said ‘No’. Besides, although I can draw, I am not compelled to paint or draw. Writing was my dream job and now that I’m lucky enough to be doing it as a living, I’ve discovered my art can also contribute to the overall product.

For my Roman Mysteries, I drew the little scrolls at the head of each chapter and a few other things like the handsome orator Flaccus making ‘the gestures’. 

But I am also lucky enough to have married an artist. Nearly twenty years ago I married a graphic designer named Richard Russell Lawrence.

Unfortunately, four years after we got married, he tore an artery in his neck bowling cricket for fun and had a massive right brain stroke. The National Health was great but he was in hospital for an entire summer. The stroke didn’t affect his speech or writing, but it did cause his graphic design business to completely dry up.

A stroke cuts you right down but then there is a gradual improvement. Over the past fifteen years Richard has regained his visual-spatial skills. He and I have been collaborating on maps and plans for my Roman Mysteries.

Here’s how it works. I give him a sketch and primary sources. He does a rough version. I make changes with my red biro and give it back. He implements the changes and brings it to me, and so on. We work in different rooms of our riverside flat and he sometimes claims he feels like a dog playing fetch. I throw the stick and he brings it back. Sometimes as a joke he brings his artwork in his mouth and drops it on my desk and pants.

Richard has been getting better and better at maps and so I started to ask him to do more ambitious projects, like a view of the Villa of Pollius Felix in Sorrento, 

 

or the Circus Maximus in AD 80, or a Roman chariot as it would have really looked. 

I was so pleased with his work that I asked him to do chapter headers for my new series, the P.K. Pinkerton Mysteries. This probably started when he drew P.K.’s Smith & Wesson’s Seven-shooter, a small pistol popular in the early 1860s. I now love collaborating with him on these headers, each of which has something to do with the chapter. I can remind myself of the story’s arc just by looking at the 50 chapter headers.

Perhaps our best collaboration came when I wanted to compose an image of my 12-year-old boy-girl misfit hero Pinky. I found the photo of a Native American on the internet, flipped it, stretched it and bumped up the contrast. Then I copied the slouch hat from the cover of The Outlaw Josey Wales and stuck it on the photo of the stretched Indian kid. Finally Richard traced it with his special pen. Voila! P.K. Pinkerton, private eye!

I reviewed Caroline's latest P.K. Pinkerton Mystery, The Case of the Good looking Corpse here. 

Thanks, Caroline, for sharing this with us.