On a snowy winter afternoon, a coyote slipped from the microwild that surrounds my home as I struggled, unsuccessfully, to capture a decent picture. (I coined the term microwild while drafting the book The Light Between Apple Trees to describe fragments of nature that are large enough to sustain plant and animal biodiversity.) Moving behind a patch of chamisa, the coyote was plainly visible to the eye yet elusive on film; the resulting shots looked like Cubist art. After the creature departed, I spontaneously began to sketch the animal.
A wily predator, the coyote plays a central part in my forthcoming work, The Grassland Queen, which invites readers into the lives of North American grassland animal communities through the narrative of the long-billed curlew—the region’s largest shorebird. Having spent years in the field observing curlews’ predators, such as coyotes and foxes, I continued refining my coyote drawing from memory, from field sketches, and from my Cubist-style photographs. I had just finished a round of manuscript edits and, by comparison, drawing felt like a form of meditation.
The deadline for submitting artwork for The Grassland Queen loomed. I had intended to send in long-billed curlew photographs, but I learned they would not appear in color. I then examined them more closely; though some were striking, black-and-white images would not deliver the emotional resonance I sought. I wanted readers to sense the intimacy I had felt while watching the curlews. After years of grassland research and treks through curlew habitat, vivid moments from the birds’ lives remained fresh in my memory.
But should I dare to draw the curlews themselves? I had loved art in high school and even won a few national prizes, and as a naturalist I regularly produce field sketches—yet those drawings were typically for my own reference. Preferring not to overthink the act of drawing, I decided to run quick experiments to test whether I could convey my perception of the curlews. So I halted analysis and began sketching. Time was pressing; the book would move to production the following month, and I had to deliver the artwork within three to four weeks at most.
My first three trials at sketching curlews fell short. As days progressed, I grew more determined. Mornings prove to be my strongest period, and when I began bringing curlews onto paper in those early hours, it became evident that drawing was taking precedence over fieldwork.
Gradually the curlews responded to my pleas and appeared. Perhaps the many hours I had spent seeking them among the grasses helped; regardless, a change occurred and the curlews began to guide the process. I entered a state of pure drawing where the pencil moved unimpeded by thoughts. Despite years of studying the birds, I felt both exhilaration and a hint of unease at seeing their eight-inch bill take form on the page. What does that bill signify? Indeed, it aids in probing for crustaceans in winter, yet what deeper meaning resides in that crescent-shaped arc?
I find comfort in working with pencil and paper. At book signings, readers often comment on my handwriting, and I joke that the nuns from the Catholic schools I attended taught me penmanship. I’m not sure I have a precise memory to support that claim, but those nuns were rigorous about our work, and there was certainly no grade inflation. I cherished quiet rooms, slanted wooden desks, and the discipline of writing on paper with an ink pen and a gleaming nib. We refilled the pen with a dropper. In my home study I kept a shapely inkpot filled with royal-blue ink; my mother laid a sky-blue cloth on the desk, and I would occasionally smudge ink onto the fabric. Even after clothes came back from the wash, the tablecloth bore ink-streaks like thunderclouds. Those writing tools left a lasting impression on me. When I was eight, I began composing poetry.
While drawing curlews, I found myself surrounded by my tools once again: the silver-and-blue Staedtler case holding twelve Mars Lumograph pencils, the white haze of an eraser, and Kum’s stainless steel pencil sharpener. I’m not fetishizing these materials. John Steinbeck used Black Wing pencils and prepared to write for the day by sharpening his stock; in his journals he notes how fingertips ache after long hours with pencils. I hold a soft 5B pencil dear, which helps me finish my drawings. Henry David Thoreau made pencils, and he strove to improve American pencils over their European counterparts. A stint in 1840 at the Harvard Library revealed that mixing finely ground clay with graphite allowed Thoreau pencils to be graded from soft to hard. In 1844, he devised “a grinding machine that produced exceptionally fine graphite powder—the key to a strong, even point.” Thoreau knew there is nothing like the right pencil. I share that belief: the perfect pen or pencil can open the creative space I subconsciously sought as a child, when ink, not ice cream, brought me joy.
Soon drawings spread across my desk, piling up day after day. That spring I was slated to speak at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival, and a publicist was tasked with dropping off a few copies of a magazine in which I had given an interview. In the midst of drawing, I stopped going out and invited her to my studio for tea instead. After she enjoyed rooibos tea and left the magazines, she passed by my desk on her way out. The sketches were stacked in a neat heap by then. She paused to look, and there was nothing to do but offer her a glance. “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. I had only shown these paper curlews to close family. Suddenly she was awestruck, as if speaking to the curlew chick itself, and in that moment I realized these drawings would become the book’s artwork.
In the days that followed, my desk filled with pencil marks rather than ink, and I found myself dreaming up coyotes instead of Himalayan jackals, and curlews instead of tropical birds. Remarkably, the act of drawing animals day after day for roughly four weeks—engaging only with paper, keeping the computer out of sight—felt like tracing a bridge back to the child who adored forests and, for some reason, found real delight in royal-blue ink.
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The Grassland Queen: An Avian Love Story in the American Plains by Priyanka Kumar is available from Princeton University Press.
