S.B.

S.B. is an artist and author known primarily for her playful criticism and her anthropomorphic graphic novels. Her writing, published in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, Artforum, and elsewhere, has been widely anthologized. She studied drawing at the New York Studio School and the Art Students League and has lectured at Parsons School of Design, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the American Psychoanalytic Association. This is her first book of sketches from life.
book cover with drawing of a sleeping child

I AM DRAWING YOU
A Mother, a Child, a Sketchbook

Hardcover, 264 pages,
color and b&w ills, $39.99
ISBN: 978-0-88214-206-7
E-book, $9.99
ISBN: 978-0-88214-229-6
(August 2026)
The best moments of my life have been spent drawing my newborn son in my arms—or rather in one of my arms. (I needed the other to draw.) Drawing such a tiny model—one whose head was no bigger than my hand, one who was part of me only months before—felt surreal and was surreal. It drew me in and drew me out, demanding both attachment, the super-connected state of bonding between child and caregiver (defined by psychologists Mary Ainsworth and John Bowlby), and detachment, the spaced-out, zoned-in state (described by drawing educator Betty Edwards) when you become so absorbed in transcribing what you see that you forget what you think you know about it.
—S.B.

Depiction as connection device. S.B.’s exploratory drawings help establish contact. Another kind of mother and child reunion—seeing and feeling through line and form.

—TERRY WINTERS, artist

The only thing I don’t love about this project is that I didn’t have it twenty-five years ago when I was struggling as a new mother.

—LINN MEYERS, artist

One thing about portrait drawing is that the artist can connect deeply with the subject—even more so if the subject is your own child. Nothing could be more powerful! Congratulations to S.B. for this wonderful book

—BETTY EDWARDS, author

drawing of nursing child
 

drawing of child with teddy bear
 

drawing of baby legs