Joan Reilly and Mastering the Art of Drawing Julia Child

As a worthy finale to our Lady Chef Drawing Challenge, itself a warmup for the upcoming fourth issue of Whores of Mensa, we offer you three drawings by New York artist Joan Reilly.


Joan has a redoubtable history in the comics trade, having been part of the Hi-Horse collective - comprising Joan, Howard John Arey, Bishakh Som, and Mome star Andrice Arp - since its founding in 2000. She is also a regular at in Brooklyn.




Here’s what Joan has to say about the many drawings of Julia Child she’s done over the last few years:

“The very first Julia image I made was done in the style of a Russian icon, and I was inspired to do it as a birthday present for my husband, who has been a huge fan of Julia Child since he was a kid.
Early in our relationship, we started watching DVD's of her old shows, and marveling at what a fantastic and funny person she was. Then I became fascinated enough to read her biography, "Appetite for Life," by Noel Riley Fitch, which is excellent.


When I was invited to create an installation for the Opolis show, curated by Jason Little, in which cartoonists were challenged to tell a visual story using a 3D model of a city block, I chose to tell the story of Julia's life by re-creating pivotal scenes and housing them in models of the buildings were they occurred. So the black-and-white line drawings of her at different ages were character studies for that exhibit, and then the color scene of Julia having dinner in China with a bunch of servicemen is one of the scenes I created for the installation.”








Thanks, Joan!

PS If you want to read more about Julia Child, Random House has a fantastic group of primary source documents - scouting and editors' reports - on Mastering the Art of French Cooking here.