Lines of Emotion in On a Magical Do-Nothing Day

            Beatrice Alemagna’s On a Magical Do-Nothing Day tells the story of a young girl who learns to see the magical in the ordinary world on a single, rainy afternoon. Using gouache, oil paint, collage, and wax pencil, Alemagna creates a hazy, muted backdrop for her neon orange jacketed protagonist to interact with. and embellishes the physical and emotional details of this world in the use of representative lines.

            Of particular note is a two page spread wherein the young protagonist hides from the driving rain under a tree. The canvas Alemagna sets up for her line work is comprised of rainclouds rendered in hazy washes of grey and blue gouache, and stands of trees in browns. The protagonists rests under the largest of the trees, her legs stretching long and low beneath it. Over the top of these washes, Alemagna adds detail in wax pencil lines that suggest physical manifestations of what the protagonist is feeling. She says “The rain felt like rocks were hitting me” (Alemagna), and the rain appears as dark grey lines bisected and ending with circles. A similar, but more dense line of circles runs along the protagonist’s raincoat from her eyes, tying the rocky rain to her own tears. Alemagna also uses lines to create visual interest and texture in her trees with small, compact ovals, consecutive waving lines, and skinny vertical rectangles in dark brown. The trees participate in Moebius’ code of capillarity, which states “an abundance of [squiggles or bundles] often signals vitality or even a surfeit of energy, rendering the scene crowded, nervous, busy, as if each line were a living organism, part of a giant audience” (Moebius 142). This explosion of nature frames the grey clouds on either side, and lends the natural world the protagonist is trapped in more overwhelming. These lines do double duty and also serve as emotional representation. The protagonist says “I was a small tree trapped outside in a hurricane” (Alemagna) and the capillary lines of the trees bleed into her body, manifesting her ‘tree’ feeling visually. Her oversized legs are filled with parallel waves, while her back and shoulder are absorbing the skinny rectangles of the tree she leans against.

            The linework in this illustration from On a Magical, Do-Nothing Day exemplifies how emotions in the text can manifest nonrealistically within artwork, and how embellishment lines can do more than what it says on the tin. Without them, the image would not function.

Works Cited

Alemagna, Beatrice. On a Magical Do-Nothing Day. HarperCollins 2016

Moebius, William. “Introduction to Picturebook Codes’, Word & Image. vol. 2, no. 2. 1986.

Stats: CIP Fall 2022, Laramie Hearn. Installment #1: Artistry. 408 words.