Behind the Scenes Q&A: DALMARTIAN by Lucy Ruth Cummins

Ever since her first book A Hungry Lion (or A Dwindling Assortment of Animals), I’ve been a fan of Lucy Ruth Cummins. Her writing is always clever and her artwork is inventive and free (dare I say Bemelmans-esque?).

She has a new book out today: Dalmartian. I talked with Lucy about how the book was made.

Travis: Hi Lucy! Dalmartian has one of my favorite covers I’ve seen in a while – was this the first concept you came up with, or was it a long journey to get to this final cover?

Lucy: This was the first and only concept I presented for the cover! I wanted something heroic, and after I drew him in profile, nose slightly aloft, nothing I could imagine captured the feeling as well as this drawing did. Without directly looking at reference, my brain was sort of trying to channel a Soviet-era Laika portrait, the first dog in space.

The next stop was the typography—after I found this particular font and set the title, my husband Jon told me it felt deeply in the original Dune-iverse, and I didn’t mind that one bit!

The real kicker on the cover and throughout is the Pantone neon green—I’m very lucky to work with Chava Wolin as production manager on my author-illustrated titles, she knows how to nail color and printing and production in general, and she makes me look so good every time.

Travis: Can you remember the initial inspiration for the story?

Lucy: Just before that first pandemic summer in the spring of 2020, we were living in our Brooklyn apartment with our then 4-year old son. After two months of lockdown without an easy way to get to some grass, I decided we needed to relocate. I grew up in central New York, and my class had taken a field trip in 1994 to Cooperstown, New York, to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I vaguely remembered that it was a pretty little town. So I Googled it up, found a rental house that was used in non-pandemic times for visiting little leaguers, and reached out to the owner and asked if he’d take a tenant for the entire summer, June through August. Since no little leaguers were coming, he took my offer and we drove on June 1st with our car packed to the brim four hours north to a 1900s farmhouse that we’d only seen pictures of.

Cooperstown is surrounded by beautiful rolling green hills and farmland, and there’s a period where whole swaths of it are buried in sunflowers. The light is unreal—it truly is and was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen, and it felt especially fortuitous to be able to spend the summer there, when so much was unknown. Both my husband and I were working remotely, which was very lucky. We spent our non-work hours walking barefoot in the grass, following crickets, and picking berries with our son. We watched one particularly large spider build and rebuild its web in our son’s window over and over again, as we waited and watched the news and wondered if the world was ending. 

One day I was riding in the passenger seat as my husband drove, and as we passed the Chevy dealership on route 28, I thought of the word “DALMARTIAN.” I said it out loud, and said “I think that’s a book…” and wrote it in a note on my phone. And that’s how I got the inspiration from the story, working backward from that word. 

We moved back into our apartment in Brooklyn in September so our son could start kindergarten, and I developed the story during a week in December that I’d blocked out to think about that word.

Travis: How did you make the art for this book?

Lucy: I do all my sketching in pencil, and when I have blocking I’m happy with, I bring my pencil sketch into Procreate and work with digital line to get it to where I’m happy.

Then depending on the page, I output my drawing, light box it, and use ink washes, or charcoal, or plain old pencil to work up another layer of texture and dimension that I scan and add back in digitally.

Travis: The most important question you will be asked today: What snack puts you in peak creativity mode?

Lucy: When I am beginning to sketch a book, I always go to the Variety coffee shop in my old neighborhood, superstitiously. I get an iced latte if it’s above 45 degrees Fahrenheit out, and a warm latte (not hot, specifically), when under 45 degrees, and a peanut butter cookie. When I work at night, I like to have a bottle of beer and aged cheddar cheese and Ritz crackers.

Thanks for taking my questions, Lucy! Dalmartion is out now.

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