JK Rowling Drawings Could Fetch $600,000 at Auction

Just a few days ago, it was revealed that a JK Rowling hand-illustrated book of The Tales of Beedle the Bard will go to auction at Sotheby’s. It will likely bring in $600,000. See that story here.

What I’m most intrigued about isn’t the price tag of this rare volume, but the drawings themselves. My first memories of JK Rowling and the Harry Potter books is actually not of reading the series of novels. I saw a TV interview with the author years and years ago and she described her writing process, which included drawing the people, places, and situations that she featured in her stories.

I was incredibly struck by that part of Rowling’s process. The illustrations that are seared in my head are the ones she did of Diagon Alley’s entrance.

She made several sketches showing the brick wall that hides the magician’s shopping mecca swirling and reforming to reveal the way in. The author also did several other drawings in the 1990s when she was in her manuscript days, attesting to the fact that her stories came alive to her in images as well as words.

As a writer myself, I find it incredibly inspiring and affirming when another writer understands that making visual images is sometimes just a natural extension or parallel of the written word. I know that isn’t always the case–many artists say they “can’t write” and that’s why they make art, but mostly I believe that our creativity will out–that creativity wants to be expressed in all the ways we know how, and that one way of expression is often a gateway to another, so cheers to all the ways creativity comes out in your life today!

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