Caterpillar Publishing

We’re back after a delicious whirlwind trip to New York City! I hope all of the SPXer’s had a great time; I’m sorry to have missed it.

It was a great honor to meet David Small and his wife Sarah Stewart on Tuesday night after David’s presentation on Stitches with his host Jules Feiffer. The book is his first graphic novel after a long career as a children’s book illustrator, and it looks to be a wildly successful addition to the canon of the genre. It is deeply powerful in its silence and masterfully drawn. I enjoyed hearing his thoughts on walking the line between absolute fidelity to Truth and telling a cohesive story. David’s and Sarah’s combined energy and shared passion as a powerhouse creative couple is very encouraging. Good luck on your tour!

"Cut the adjectives-- they tell you what to think."

After a day or two of recovery, on January 25th, I sat down at my desk to begin composing a “long drawing” about Egypt, in the tradition of a 25 foot drawing that I did while living in Rome. I had anticipated that the project would be a few feet long and take about a week’s time, and I would then recommence the projects I had left in December when I went home to Christmas break. But Egypt had other ideas, and I immediately discovered that a long drawing was all wrong. ‘Longer!’ a voice demanded. ‘Panels!’ It said. ‘No!’ I cried, ‘I have to do a thesis project! I’m already behind! GO AWAY!’

But the voice just didn’t listen to me. ‘You have to draw it out! Think of what you saw, what you learned, what you thought about…’

Now, about three weeks later, I find myself closing in on finishing the thumbnailing for a graphic novel. Am I crazy? Probably. Yes. Most definitely. But tackling this isn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I am leaning on our 4,200 photos and all of my notes and sketches to draw out the things I remember, impressions and thoughts, wisps of conversations and my experience in a new culture.

This is my first test drawing, seeing if I could steal some style from Baudoin of L’Association (“Steal from the best!!” Thanks Alec!) and approach this story in a whole new way. It’s just the beginning, a little scratch at what I want to do with it. How do you capture thoughts on paper? Sear a reader’s soul with ink? How do you convey the experience of the spirit on the desert edge of the world? I don’t know. But I am determined to finish a first draft of this story by February 23rd, one month after we returned, so that I can put it away for a time, that it may resurface with clarity later.

But I am filled with renewed hope in what the arts can do.

About two weeks ago I wrote about a potential project based on my travels in Egypt, and promised to finish thumbnailing the pages for a full length story by February 23rd. “Did she finish?” asks one. “Is it brilliant?” asks another. “Can I read it right now Katherine? When will it be available on Amazon? Will you be doing a promotional tour across America?” That last part, I am quite certain, no one is asking.

The answers are as follows: YES! February 17th (5 days EARLY!!) I finished, printed and bound a 186-page booklet of a thumbnailed graphic novel. NO! It is not brilliant. Not even close. I’m lucky if half of it is even legible to anyone but me. BUT! I think I know where it is going, and that was really the point of the journey: to see if anything was there underneath the mental snapshots of our two week trip, and I think I’m onto some good leads. Tim Stout (my wonderful, talented husband) sat down with me on Sunday and helped me to extract the POINT (theme) of my story from a certain thumbnailed sequence I’m rather attached to, and I’ve spent the week diving into the pencils based on what I’ve learned about that same scene. I am excited about the road ahead over the next two months as graduation closes in. By May I should have a solid idea of where this project can go, and some sample finish pages to show for it. And, in the meantime, I will continue to do shorts, to try out different styles and approaches to cartooning. I will post excerpts from the process as I go.

Here is a sample thumbnailed spread from the Midpoint. This was executed by drawing with a wacom tablet and using photos from our trip to create page layouts on my computer:

And here is a sample thumbnailed spread from the latter half of Act 2:

This method of working has treated me very well. Using photos feels a little like “cheating,” but, hey, I took them, right? They are placeholders for drawings until I get a little farther along, but when trying to get through 10 pages a day, it was one of the best ways I found to keep moving. “Hey, I already composed this image– in a photo!– so I’ll borrow from myself. Thanks self!”

We’re in the thesis homestretch!! This semester is going by so fast I can hardly believe it. I’ve finally started a binder with empty plastic sleeves to hold the drafts of my Egypt project, moving from the full 180+ page thumbnailed rough first draft into the penciling stages for a section of the story. Here’s a sample two page spread from the section I’ve been working on this week:

Above is a spread of my initial thumbnails, executed on the Wacom tablet and printed to fit on 8.5X11 paper.  They are clean, but really boring: see all those medium “two-shots” I am using? This is fine in an early writing stage, but I think the panels can do a lot more to tell the story. So using a light box I then put a new sheet of paper on top of the thumbnails and do a first pass at penciling, which looks like this:

There is a lot of mess and clutter, I’ve taped in new panels, struggled with the perspective of the lounge chairs on the cruise ship, all the while trying to focus on composition, composition, composition. “What is this panel doing for the story? Can it be cut? Do I need more information? Do I need all this dialogue? Is the story moving forward? How’s my pacing? Where do the word balloons go?  Why would a grown person spend so much time filling in little boxes with pictures?” I then scan in this drawing and use the Wacom tablet again to clean things up, resize, and drop in some Google Sketch-Up lounge chairs to get them to look right, and print it again:

Now I’m pretty happy with this spread. I stick it in my binder on top of the first two drafts and keep moving forward. This is pretty much ready to pencil onto Bristol board with blue pencil, so that I can ink on top of the blue lines and delete them in Photoshop. This week I’ve done about 9 pages like this, a scene that falls in the latter half of Act 2 of my story. I’m hoping to get through about 30 pages like this, and then ink and color a sample by the time the year is through. Back to work!

Here are a few panels from a section of my Egypt story I’ve been working on this week. I think I’ve finally figured out how to select a few key short stories from the long 180-page first draft to make a “mix tape” of events that will build to equal a complete narrative. Making the components work together while dealing with separate themes has been tough, but I think I’ve made some good progress.

I am sorry for the delay between posts folks; I should be back to two per week really soon. Enjoy!

Welcome to Hieroglyph! This chapter of my graphic novel will be launched as a webcomic next week, to be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. See you then!

After two years of labor and hundreds of pages, my time as a student at The Center for Cartoon Studies has drawn to a close. I can’t believe how fast it has gone! The transition into life as an alumni will be a little terrifying but very exciting, and I am looking forward to whatever lies ahead.

In the meantime I thought I would share with you my final thesis project, tentatively entitled Hieroglyph, a graphic novel about an American artist traveling through Egypt. Part travelogue and part creative non-fiction, the story is based on sketches, drawings, notes, and comics from my 16-day tour of Egypt in January 2010. As part of my graduate thesis at The Center for Cartoon Studies I wrote the skeleton for the full graphic novel (about 100 pages in length) and completed a 19-page sample chapter that falls in the middle of the book. I plan to spend the summer working on bringing the writing and drawings to a more finished level so that I can more seriously explore publishing options this Fall. I’m very excited about this direction for my work; the challenges of this project have already pushed me harder and faster than anything before it, and I am excited to continue this process of creative discovery!

These drawings were done in pencil with layered watercolor beneath the line work in Photoshop. It’s been a very satisfying way to work, allowing me to maintain the immediacy of the line and adjust/redo the color as necessary.

This is the last page of repeated work from my roughs stage, posted through the spring months. Never before seen pages starting next week!!

Sorry that this is a day late, folks! I didn’t have access to the internet yesterday, so for this week I’ll post Wednesday and Friday. Enjoy!