How to Draw (Food)

The sumptuous appeal of drawing what we eat. Plus: Studio Ghibli's food on film, Felicita Sala's illustrated recipes, hex #E2C712, and more.

Howdy, friend.

I just returned from a two-week trip to Taiwan. It was my third time there, and on every visit, I’m reminded why it is the greatest food country in the world. Food is a big part of my life, easily lost in its tastes and textures. There are multiple meals I can recall at a moment’s notice, remembering each bite. Food brings me places, reminds me of all my travels, of my family and friends. It’s nostalgia-inducing in a way little else is.

And it got me thinking, wrapped in blankets while a winter storm rages outside, drinking hot homemade soup out of my favorite orange mug, about what drawing can do. Forget making comics, or getting complicated life stories on the page. At its heart, drawing helps the reader lose themselves in the work; it takes us somewhere else—a core memory unlocked, perhaps. There’s a long history of rendering idealized food in animation and comics acting as a passageway for the audience to step into the narrative. So, in this issue of How to Draw, we’ll explore the limitless potential of what drawing food (versus photographs or real-life renderings) can offer us.

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Here’s to full bellies, friend. ♡

– RJR

"Food is everything we are. It's an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It's inseparable from those from the get-go." —Anthony Bourdain

When I was a kid, I was the pickiest of eaters. Famously, my second-grade class once made vegetable soup together in an enormous cauldron. We were all served some and encouraged to eat while it was still hot. Back then, I H-A-T-E-D onions. So I sat there at my desk, picking out every single onion and laying them out on a paper towel. After a while, the rest of the kids moved to the reading corner to hear a story. Meanwhile, I was still at my desk, plucking out those pesky onions, one at a time, determined to finish my soup at any cost.

It took me years to expand my culinary horizons. When I was young, meals were just a way to get nutrients crammed down my throat—my parents don’t “enjoy” food the way I do now. It was my first trip to England that changed things: I was eighteen, had just graduated high school, and was staying with relatives southeast of London. I vowed to eat anything they put in front of me. I think back to that small dining table a lot: boiled cabbage, English-style tea with biscuits, lamb shanks and mint jelly, Sunday roast with parsnips and Yorkshire pudding, mincemeat pie and grilled fish.

I knew, then, what must be so glaringly obvious to most: To some degree, you can only understand a culture and its history through food.

In Taiwan the best foods I ate—and am still thinking about—were simple: (1) clay oven-roasted chicken (翁瑶鸡), (2) knife-cut noodles (刀削面), (3) fresh-picked custard apple (釋迦果) and (4) savory soy milk soup (鹹豆漿).

I tend to draw the food I eat when I’m visiting somewhere. Photos never turn out, so it’s a fun way to revisit the dishes, like a sort of food diary. This time, though, it got me thinking about why illustrated food often looks more delicious, more appealing, and quite frankly better than its real-world counterpart. As proof: Look at these stills from various Studio Ghibli films.

Ramen from 2008’s Ponyo:

Or bacon and fried eggs in 2004’s Howl’s Moving Castle:

And the delicious simplicity of this bento box from 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro:

I’ve also been a long-time fan of the work of Felicita Sala, famous for her illustrated recipes. Here’s a fave:

And here, an excerpt from Lucy Knisley’s delectable Relish:

Illustration—and animation—allows an exaggeration of features to make the food more visually appealing. The colors can be pumped up, you can add shading and shine and texture, and suddenly, these larger-than-life presentations look more delicious than their real-world counterparts.

Illustration allows liberty to control every aspect of the food’s appearance—we can give it an idealized presentation, not bound by the limitations of reality. Everything can be piping hot, steaming, ready to be eaten. Even if you’ve never had ramen rendered exactly like in Ponyo, you can imagine the steam from the bowl, the noodles, a hot broth. It’s an easy way to identify with the characters in these movies, to cast them as human: They hunger, we hunger.

This gets to the truth of what drawing is—and can do: Distill complex ideas into simple visual narratives that transcend language barriers and cultures.

A drawing of a tomato can be more than just a tomato: You’re suddenly thrust back into your uncle’s garden helping to fix his raised beds, learning how to keep insects at bay, tasting the freshness of a plucked fruit or vegetable as the juices run down your chin and into the grass around your sandaled feet.

Or: You could read a graphic novel in a language you don’t understand and, I’m guessing, still piece together the narrative, feel the emotions, track the character’s journey. A whole world can be realized in a single panel. Histories. A shared visual language that prompts the reader to recall, to remember. This is the beauty and power of drawing.

In your drawings, think about the heightened reality you’re looking to capture. On the page, we’re not just reproducing the likeness of food—a photo can do that—so how can you lean into the drawing itself to give the food something novel compared to its real-world analog?

So, I thought it would be fun to illustrate a recipe from my family: tomato bread. This recipe was passed down the English side of my family, a variation on Welsh rarebit. It’s a deceivingly simple dish, but one I crave often, especially in the winter months. It reminds me of my English grandmother and traipsing through the countryside among giant hedgerows and lazy country roads.

The ingredients you’ll need:

And here, the simple directions:

1. First, slice the tomatoes and lay them in a buttered pan. (There is no right amount of butter, but I tend to use extra because I’m a glutton.) Cook the tomatoes until they’re soft and browned, flip and cook the other side, too. Make sure to season both sides of the tomatoes with flaky sea salt and fresh ground pepper.

2. While the tomatoes are cooking, get yourself a slice of nice bread. I prefer sourdough not only for the taste but because it holds up well to being piled upon. Butter the bread, and toast it in your oven/toaster/toaster oven until browned.

3. Cut yourself some thin slices of sharp cheddar—you’ll want the sharpness of a cheddar to cut through the umami of the rest of the dish. Splash the bread with some Worcestershire sauce (to taste). Like the sharpness of the cheddar, the Worcestershire sauce will add a sourness that cuts through the richness of the other ingredients. Next, lay down your cheese, and toast the bread in the oven until the cheese is melty and semi-runny.

4. Once the tomatoes are finished, pile them on top of your bread and dig in.

What I’m reading:

• Graphic: On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

• Graphic: In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee

• Graphic: Parasite: A Graphic Novel in Storyboards by Bong Joon Ho

• Graphic: PTSD by Guillaume Singelin

• Nonfiction: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin

A perfect panel:

• Star Wars: Visions – Peach Momoko #1

The color I’m obsessed with right now:

• hex #E2C712 – “Gold Tips”

News:

• I’m thrilled to announce I’m teaching a 6-week ONLINE workshop with WritingWorkshops.com. Beginning Tuesday, February 13, each week we’ll discuss different aspects of graphic memoir, including how and why we create our avatars and other characters, how the form differs from traditional memoir, script writing and comic drafting, culminating in each student creating a fully-realized short comic by the end of class. We’ll be doing a lot of sharing, looking at some fantastic examples of graphic memoirs together, and unpacking how to get started on this storytelling journey. Find details here, and if you have any questions, feel free to message or email me.