Brianna's Honors Capstone Project

Post-Grad Update

2010-05-22T16:56:00.003-04:00

I graduated!

There I am, with my roommate and fellow Honors student Meg, celebrating after the Honors Convocation.

Since then, I've been at home in PA, job hunting and catching up on bad television.

This morning, I mailed one copy of my book to Scott McCloud, and another to Top Shelf Productions co-founder Brett Warnock. Both should get to their respective locations (Scott's in California, and Brett's in Oregon) a week from now. So we'll see what, if anything, happens with that. Who knows? Maybe a week from now I will be updating with very exciting news!

Until then, I'll be watching bad television.

The Present(ation) and the Future

2010-05-05T21:40:00.002-04:00

I gave my Capstone presentation today! I don't have any pictures from it to put up, but I can say that it did go very well. I prepared some slides of my process for a few spreads, and used those to talk about the project as a whole, as well as my London experience. I was nervous at first, so I cracked a lot of jokes. Bill came (I was happily surprised-- I thought he'd be grading sophomore work today), as well as Kate, Allie, Chris, Meg and Kelsey, even Meg's parents. (After the presentations, Meg's parents took me and her out to dinner-- delicious!) It was such a supportive group of people. After I got into it, I felt really at ease, especially with such a great group there with me. I got a lot of compliments. Afterwards, the Honors representative who was monitoring my room and had sat through my presentation asked if I was selling the books, and when I said I wasn't (I don't feel right selling them when I got them all for free) she said she would have liked to buy one for her granddaughter. I told her I'd just give her one. I think at this point, it's time for me to share all the positivity I got through completing this project.

Which brings me to the future, or my ideal future for my book. In my most wild pipe dreams (I don't actually smoke a pipe of any kind-- it's just a figure of speech, hehe) I would love to submit this book to Top Shelf Productions to at least get an opinion from those in the comics profession. Top Shelf has published some of my favorite independent comics, including Blankets (and a whole bunch of Craig Thompson's other work) and the work of Jeffrey Brown, who writes autobiographical comics about relationships. I have his first book, Clumsy, and it is really incredibly honest and touching. Though he doesn't draw as gorgeously as Craig Thompson, it doesn't matter because you get attached to the stories and the characters-- it's so easy to see yourself and your own relationships in his work. (I was given Clumsy by my ex-boyfriend, and I found tinges of our relationship in the book.)

Actually, reading Brown's book Clumsy has helped me rethink the extent of my own project. While I find myself drawn to autobiographical comics, I didn't see my own project as anything more than something self-indulgent until recently. Rereading books like Clumsy helped me realize that maybe there is more to my own project than just a stack of books to sit in my living room. So next week, as I'm distributing many of my sixty copies to family and friends (and that Honors advisor's granddaughter), I will also be sending a copy to Top Shelf. If I do and nothing ever comes of it, fine. But if I don't, I'll never know.

Success!

2010-05-01T12:52:00.003-04:00

My books are here!!

I have a whole box of them! Check it out!

I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but the print quality on these pages is drool-worthy.

The title page! It's real!

Flipping through...

One of my favorite spreads.

I'm absolutely ecstatic with the way this came out. I've been getting a lot of compliments, and I'm really proud. We'll see where this project goes after this, but even right now I am so happy.

Proof I'm Awesome

2010-04-23T18:50:00.003-04:00

This morning, the SU Publications Office let me see a proof of my final book so I could approve it for final printing. It's even better than I anticipated! And, I have pictures:

The front cover!

Look how thin this is compared to my dummy or the binders with the original artwork.

The first spread! It's not perfect bound yet, so each of the pages was loose in the binding. You can't really see it in this shot, but the print quality is amazing. I'm so excited to have sixty(!) of these in less than a week.

I'm No Dummy

2010-04-13T22:33:00.006-04:00

Big news! I handed in my final document to SU Publications (thank you Clare Merrick!) They required files from me today, but also a dummy so they know what the final book should look like. So I printed out every page individually, cut them out and taped the corresponding pages into spreads (ick), and then proceeded to place them in an order that I liked. This was a fun process in a way, because I got to spread them all out on the studio floor and see them all together:

And then Allie took some pictures of me doing my best impression of Harper's Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch:

And then I decided on the final layout:

After I decided on the layout, I spent forever taping the spreads together in the right order. The result is a hoopty but serviceable dummy for the printer so they have a reference:

I decided I wanted the cover to look like the cover of the sketchbook I've been working in to emphasize the impromptu and personal nature of a lot of these stories. So the cover and back cover is literally just my actual sketchbook, which I wrote on in white-out and then scanned in using my roommate's scanner.

A couple of my favorite spreads in dummy form:

You can see how the pages don't quite line up, thanks to my shoddy hand skills. But I handed it into the Publications office so I will be receiving the final copy in about two weeks, with a color proof sometime next week. I am so very very excited!

Going Digital

2010-04-10T19:48:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I scanned every page and then imported the scanned files into InDesign. Here is a screencap of what just a portion of my project looks like, at about 12% zoom.

This makes me feel pretty awesome.

Tonight, I will be messing around with the layout of the informational pages. I scanned in a bunch of my sketches from my original notebooks as well as the writing I needed for them, and I'm going to play around with that in Photoshop before importing them into InDesign. (I'll post those too, or snippets of those, as I finish them.) This will be the only digital manipulation this project has in it. I'm pretty proud of that.

Bill came into the studio while I was scanning this all, sat down, and said, "I can't believe you did this." I kind of can't believe it either.

No More Painting!

2010-04-06T19:20:00.002-04:00

I'm finished painting!!

My overstuffed portfolios of work for this project. The bottom one is entirely filled (that's 48 pages) and the top one is a quarter filled (12 pages).

Splaying the pages open to see all the pages in the first portfolio (which is balanced on my lap on a couch at studio.)

There's Allie in the background working diligently on a project for our major. I thought I'd be cute and photograph the painting she's in with me.

Now the trick will be finishing everything up in time for getting this to the printer on Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Happy April!

2010-04-05T11:38:00.005-04:00

Hello all!

April brings with it the completion (gasp!) of this project. It's a surreal feeling to be at the end of this, especially when I look back at old entries when I was just beginning the sketching phase. I'm actually very proud of this project-- its content, quality, and the fact that I followed through on something that has been an aspiration of mine for a while (to write and illustrate my own graphic novel). It definitely helps to have the supervision and support of professors and the wonderful people in the Honors Department to keep me going week to week. And soon I'll be posting an entire list of people I need to thank, because there are way too many to fit on half a page in my actual published document.

So since the deadline for getting this to the printer approacheth, this is my last week of painting content. (Wow.) So here's a glimpse of what's on the drawing board (painting board?) this week:

So tune in later this week for the last batch (wow, I still can't get over that!) of painting, and any more updates about actual publication. 'Til next time!

Color in London

2010-03-28T12:01:00.006-04:00

When I started this project, I knew I had to make my final product in color. I have a great fondness for pen and ink, and I think black and white work can be really beautiful if done well (take, for example, Maus by Art Spiegelman and Blankets by Craig Thompson), but I knew that I wouldn't be happy with pure black and white for my final product. There is so much beautiful color in places like London and Istanbul-- I thought I'd be cheating these places of some of their life if I only used black and white.

In this way, a lack of color can emphasize the feeling of missing such beauty. For one of my more recent spreads, I decided to experiment with color vs. black and white to get my point across. In this spread, my boyfriend comes to visit me in London, and I am eager to show him everything I have come to love. Throughout my time abroad, I was always so excited about everything I was experiencing, but there was always this pang of homesickness for the people I left in the U.S.-- a lot of times, that was my boyfriend. I wanted him to be a part of everything I was seeing and doing. And, for four days in March, he actually got to be. So I did have this feeling of the landscape of London getting extra meaning, or extra "life," from the two of us being there together. (Corny, I know-- what can I say, I'm a lovesick puppy sometimes.) So for this spread, I demonstrated how him being in London made everything that much more alive and colorful to me.

I started with a light grey wash over what I wanted to be black and white.

This is a close-up of that first panel: me waiting for him outside his hotel, in black and white because he's not with me yet.

Close-up on the first of three middle panels that sweep across both pages. This is an exaggerated field of flowers in St. James Park near Buckingham Palace. I really loved the visual of having these dull grey flowers suddenly blooming bright yellow as we walked by.

The final product for the first half of the spread. Here, you can see the color appears when we hug, and the three locations (St. James Park, the Millennium Bridge, and the Royal Festival Hall) all fade from black and white to color depending on where he and I are walking.

The second page of the spread works much the same way as the first, with color signifying where we are together. When we are hugging goodbye, the color is still there, but after we say goodbye the color disappears. In the last panel (shown directly above) everything goes back to being black and white, but there is a little hint of my new perspective on things: a bright yellow flower popping up out of the crack in the sidewalk.

Takin' Care of Business

2010-03-25T11:39:00.003-04:00

Hey all! I know it's been a while. Thanks to a combination of midterm projects, spring break, and a computer meltdown (my laptop needed a new logic board), my updating abilities were temporarily stunted. My apologies. But even though I haven't been updating, I have been working diligently.

No work to show this time around (process pictures and sketches from my time abroad will definitely be coming up very soon) but I thought I'd update about the general process as it is going right now:

After some editing, I only have six more pages to paint of actual artwork (so crazy to think I've only got six more to go!), then I will design the covers and the informational pages (which include things like "Author's Note," "About the Author," etc.) Then it will be sent to a printer in Syracuse through the very helpful people at SU Printing Services, and about two weeks after that I will have fifty copies of my own book to give to whoever wants a copy! (So let me know if you want one... or fifty. Haha.) I will be giving my files to SU Printing Services by April 13th, so all of this is happening very fast. I can't believe it's already almost done!

So keep an eye out for more updates in the coming weeks about progress. I leave you with this photograph that my roommate took of me working on one of my Paris spreads, and the caption to go along with it:

"This is a female Brianna in her natural habitat."

Happy March!

2010-03-01T20:07:00.002-05:00

Wow, I can't believe it's March already! Time flies when you're working hard, I guess.

Thanks to a freak snow storm that got us some cancelled classes, I was able to complete more than my weekly amount of pages. Now I'm up to 40 completed pages!

As most of my recent entries have been process photos from pages I've been painting, I thought I'd do something different to mark the beginning of the new month: As of the beginning of this semester, I was studying abroad a year ago, which gives me the interesting opportunity to look back at my sketchbooks and see what I was up to a year ago today.

A year ago today, I was preparing for my upcoming trip to Istanbul by attending the exhibit Byzantium at the Royal Academy. There were no artifacts from Turkey specifically, but the kids going on the trip got free tickets there so we could learn about the history behind the Byzantine Empire, which encompassed modern-day Turkey. Here are a couple sketches from what I saw there:

As you can see from the caption, the bust of Emperor Constantine, made in 325 A.D.

You might not be able to read this caption, so I'll write it here: "Votive hand holding a cross. Syria-Palestine, 6th-8th centuries." I wrote my own commentary running up the side there vertically. That says, "Though other artifacts in the exhibit were much more ornate, this one really spoke to me. I think it's the simplicity, and the human element-- like I could see the faith in crafting it."

So, there you have it: one year ago today, I was doing something much cooler than sitting on my couch blogging. But I hope you appreciate the blogging now. I think this is something I'll do from now until the project is finished if I come across something of particular interest in my sketchbooks. I'll be back soon, so watch for updates.

Good News and Good Painting

2010-02-22T22:27:00.002-05:00

Hello! Sorry for the gap in posting. But I'm back this week with good news: One, I'm over halfway done with painting. And two, Honors gave me the funding to print 50 copies of my book! So hurray!

On to the process photos. This particular page is the second page in a spread about this painting in the National Gallery, which I saw when I visited it with Chris over our spring break. The painting is of Parliament. It was a significant moment for me, as I explained to Chris: I had probably seen this painting in books a million times before and passed it over, but now I had stood where Monet stood and had seen Parliament in real life, and now I was seeing this painting... it stuck with me.

So, the following is my interpretation of the painting, and what it meant to me. I liked this page, because I got to experiment with using watercolors like Monet used oils-- not that I'm likening myself to him talent-wise-- and I got to play with a lot more color than I normally do. So I hope you like seeing it as much as I liked painting it. (I won't caption them all-- I think you can just follow the progression.)

Chris is saying in that speech bubble: "We'll have to come back here someday."

Notre Dame

2010-02-08T23:18:00.004-05:00

Before I get started, happy birthday to my mom! Without her, none of this-- my semester abroad, my artistic talent, this project, and my existence (heehee)-- would ever have happened. So thanks and happy birthday, Mom!

I've finished another four pages for this week, but I thought I'd show the process on one of them.

My reference photo: Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. Gorgeous.

Laying down light washes of color.

Filling in the secondary areas of color.

Adding some detail and shading with watercolor pencil and tiny brushes.

Getting darker with my shading.

The final page: completely painted, with pen outlines for the cathedral and text boxes.

It's amazing how something that takes so much time to make takes next to no time to post on a blog. Hehe. I think next time when I do one of these process posts, I'm going to include time stamps for all the pictures, so you know how long it takes for me to complete a page. But until then, I hope you enjoyed our little trip to Paris.

Happy February!

2010-02-01T21:12:00.003-05:00

So, it's been a little while since I last updated, so I thought I'd check in. Since my last post, I've finished ten pages. That means only 40 more to go!

I also turned in a funding application to the Honors Department for a grant that would give me money enough to print and bind a whole bunch of books, so keep your fingers crossed!

Now, onto some more process photos. Since you already know the drill, I'm not going to caption them. But here they are, for your viewing pleasure.

Hope you enjoyed these! More to come as I keep on keepin' on.

Process

2010-01-18T23:19:00.002-05:00

More process pictures!

The original photograph, taken from Waterloo Bridge on my last full day in London: the Thames River, the London Eye, Parliament and Big Ben there in the background, and the Royal Festival Hall where the London Philharmonia plays.

The carbon paper transfer of my pencil sketch onto watercolor paper, and the very beginnings of the watercolor wash for the sky and river.

The watercolor washes of the sky, water, and sand.

Starting to add some details: windows of the Royal Festival Hall, the silhouette of Big Ben, the staircase down to the beach.

Adding more detail: reflections on the water, skin, etc.

Adding more and more detail.

And finally adding inking around the edges of the watercolor panels.

Now that I'm back at school, the countdown has begun: I've got until April to paint 50 more pages, design a cover, and get this thing printed and bound. A daunting task, but I think I'm up to the challenge. (But encouraging comments are always welcome. Heehee.) See you next time!

Bon Voyage!

2010-01-13T12:32:00.003-05:00

Today is the one-year anniversary of my first day in London. So many things in my life have changed for the better since then personally and emotionally, and I owe a lot of those feelings to going abroad. Since stepping off that plane and navigating around a foreign city (albeit with the help of good friends and good staff at SU London), I feel like I can go anywhere and accomplish anything. It sounds cheesy, but it's true: going to London opened me up to (literally) a world of possibilities.

So this anniversary day got me thinking of all the kids from SU who are just starting their journey abroad. Best of luck to all of you. Be safe, but take chances. Explore. Go out in groups, but go out. Have fun. And you don't always have to go out to have fun-- know that sometimes it's okay to stay in with a book or a movie and some buddies. Take advantage of as many trips as possible, but don't forget that the city you're in is one of the most historically rich and culturally vibrant cities in the Western world.

And say hello to this guy for me. Tell him I'll be back to visit him someday.

Bon voyage and cheers to all of you!

Photo Reference

2010-01-12T11:50:00.005-05:00

As I keep painting, I'm excited to have more colorful stuff to post on here. Yesterday, I tackled painting this spread that you may remember from a few months back. As you may remember, each letter has inside it a different scene from somewhere I encountered along my travels. To accurately depict them, I used photos I took while in those places as a guide for sketching and, yesterday, for painting. Instead of showing the whole spread, I thought I'd share a more detailed look, along with the photo references I looked at while painting.

I'll show the photo, then the painting. The references are just that: references-- meaning that in some cases, they are very similar, and in some cases, the paintings are less exact copies and more just about the general idea from the photograph.

1) A gorgeous fountain in Regents Park in Late April:

2) A view of the Blue Mosque from the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul:

3) The London Eye reflected in a puddle near the Hungerford Pedestrian Bridge, taken my first day in London:

4) I.M. Pei's pyramids outside the Louvre in Paris.

Hope you enjoyed these little glimpses-- I want to save the spread as a whole as a surprise for when the book gets published. I've got more painting to do this afternoon, so keep a look out for more frequent posts as I go.

Page #1!

2010-01-11T12:51:00.005-05:00

Finally, process pictures!

The photocopy of page 1 laid out on watercolor paper with carbon paper for transferring.

The carbon paper transfer on watercolor paper, ready for me to paint.

The after-image on the back of the carbon paper itself. (Not really a part of the process, I just thought it was neat.)

Painting! A base layer of red. (In London, I lived in a brick building painted bright red with complex white molding. And I decided to paint it all. Haha. As my mother said, "You certainly didn't give yourself anything easy.")

Starting to add some grey tones to to the street and windows.

Some lovely greenery in the windows now, plus getting the background

Painting some lovely irises. They actually grew on our flat's terrace, and bloomed just a few weeks before we left England. They made me very happy.

After adding some detail to the red brick facade and finishing the flowers, I go in with my Micron pen for lettering and outlining.

And voila! The first peek at the first page.

As always, comments are appreciated. And there will be many more like this to come, so keep checking back! See you again soon.

Walk Around the World

2010-01-06T14:36:00.005-05:00

Work is going slowly but surely here. To distract myself from the monotony of carbon paper, I've been making my way through the many graphic novels I got for Christmas. This morning, I was reading The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman, and I ran across this quote:

"My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance."

This quote brings me back to my first day in London. We had gotten off the plane and taken to our hotel, then went to our school for a few information sessions and a meet-and-greet. Then, the entire afternoon was ours to do with whatever we wished. They warned us not to go to sleep until that night (to get over the jetlag appropriately), so a nap was out of the question (even though I so didn't want it to be.) So, fueled by adrenaline and curiosity, Allie and I set out on a walk.

I didn't have a phone. I didn't have much cash. My only ID at this point was my passport, which we'd been told was not a good idea to bring with you on casual outings (as it could get easily stolen). It was much too cold in London for a green pleated skirt, but I did have on my good walking shoes and my winter hat. All I had in my pockets was my camera, my notebook and pen, and a few pounds. And I've never felt so free, so unhindered, so curious. I felt safe, I felt inspired, I felt open. Reading Maira Kalman's quote took me back to that moment and gave me new energy to focus on my project. Because I want to share how London made me feel.

A photo from the walk I took with Allie my first day in London, when I was wandering around going "How did we get here?!" Look, it's Buckingham Palace!

So, Maira Kalman, can I join you on that walk around the world?

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T14:41:00.003-05:00

Happy 2010 everyone!

I apologize for the large gap in posting last month. December is a tough month time-wise, what with finals and the holidays. But the holidays brought with them a wealth of new, inspiring graphic novels for me to dig into: Chicken With Rice by the always-wonderful Marjane Satrapi, the first two hardback volumes of Y: The Last Man by Brian Vaughan and Pia Guerra, and the long-coveted travelogue by Craig Thompson, Carnet de Voyage. I also got a sketch diary entitled The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman. Lots of reading material with which to start out the new year.

2010 will see the completion of my as-yet-unnamed graphic novel, which will be a big accomplishment for me. It's crazy to think that in just five months, all the work that has gone into it will have yielded something real, tangible, published. And all of the steps leading up to that will be documented here, so keep an eye out as the year progresses. I've started transferring pages to watercolor paper via carbon paper (old school, I know) but I'm taking a bit of a break to spend time with family and friends for holiday/New Years festivities. I hope you all are enjoying a little relaxing time yourselves.

Here's to a happy and productive 2010!

Congratulations Craig Thompson!

2009-12-07T16:47:00.003-05:00

It's the last week of classes, so I'm pushing to get all my work done for finals. As such, this will be a quick post. Today I thought I'd share a bit of happy news indirectly related to my project.

I discussed earlier in my blog that my favorite graphic novel is Blankets by Craig Thompson. Paste Magazine just released its list of the 20 Best Graphic Novels of the Decade, and Blankets got #1! Apparently, I am not the only one in love with it.

Here's the link, if you want to read the rest of the list.

I have inked and colored pages, but that entry will come soon. For now, I've got to get working. See you next time!

To Editors and Friends

2009-11-30T09:50:00.009-05:00

Hey, everyone. Sorry for the gap in posting. I try to do it every week, but the Thanksgiving holiday sort of got in the way this time around. But here's an update, as best as I can give:

Two weeks ago, Bill and I tacked up every page of my finished and photocopied pencilled draft and went through it, spread by spread, to figure out where everything fit best and how to make things flow better, as well as other miscellaneous edits along the way. My spreads took up about the entire wall of the classroom, and Bill and I took about two hours going through them. I apologize-- I was so caught up in the process that I forgot to take pictures or video during it. Now those photocopies are circulating amongst people I've picked to edit my piece so outside sources can check for errors. (It's all well and good to edit yourself, but a fresh pair of eyes or two is always a good thing.) One of these days soon, when I get all my edited pages back and in order, I'll put them back up and take some pictures.

It occurs to me now that I'm giving this to people I care about to edit-- people who were there with me, or there in spirit. Yet, on this blog, I have shown very few (if any) pictures of these people who shared this experience with me. As sappy as this sounds, no experience is solitary, and trips are more than the places you see. So, in the spirit of friendship, here are some great snapshots of my wonderful friends.

From left to right: Janet, Haley, Allie, Julia, and Simi at the Queen's Larder all toasting to President Obama after his inauguration speech, which we watched in SU London's student lounge.

From top to bottom: funny-faced Haley, Janet, and Allie being silly at Absolut Icebar. It was our roommate Kate's birthday, and we surprised her by bringing her there.

Me and Allie at one of our favorite clubs in London, The Social.

We had a snow day early on in the semester, so Allie and I spent the day making delicious pancake creations, including these guys.

Me, Chris (my boyfriend), and our mutual friend Jackie on the Tube during Chris's four-day visit to London for Spring Break. (I met Jackie while studying abroad-- Chris told me he had a friend also studying abroad and that he thought we'd hit it off, and he was right.)

My birthday celebration at a tiki bar!

I miss London every day, but luckily most of these people I am still close with, and we have these memories to share. London wouldn't have been the same without them.

Sketchbook Edits

2009-11-12T09:46:00.003-05:00

Last night I had another weekly meeting with Bill, my advisor on the project, and he gave me the plan for next week: as I will at that point have all my first draft spreads pencilled, I am going to photocopy them all, and in our next meeting we are going to tack all the photocopies up on the wall for some serious editing. I'll make sure to bring my camera and post the pictures from that session on the blog.

In the spirit of editing, I thought I'd share some pages from my journals that have been pretty well worked over. At first, when I started my journaling, I was very careful to think about exactly what I wanted to say before writing it down so as to preserve the pristine paper in my cute little Moleskines. (Many artists I talk to say that expensive or very pretty sketchbooks are intimidating-- they feel they have to create something immediately beautiful inside. I definitely struggle with that too.) But I very quickly got over that, and learned that rearranging sentences, crossing out entire paragraphs, finding a better word, and changing my mind in the middle of a thought was part of the beauty and spontaneity of what I was trying to do. So here are some lovely, scribbly notebook pages, just for fun.

This is a piece entitled "Disasters"-- which, through all the edits, made it to the final cut of my graphic novel, actually. If you look closely, above the title, there is a little aside in which I say, "Before I begin: Bill said yes! I am making a graphic novel for my Capstone!"

This piece, also included in my final graphic novel (but seriously cut down) I wrote during my trip to Istanbul. This is probably one of the best examples of on-the-spot self-editing I could find in all my books.

Even as I was leaving England, I was still editing. This piece I wrote in London Heathrow airport and on the plane ride back to the U.S. (Up top you can see a sketch I did in the Heathrow waiting area of a mother and daughter sleeping on a row of seats, probably in between flights.)

So I hope you enjoyed these little edits. Get ready for some big ones next week. See you then!

Inspirations

2009-11-10T18:01:00.005-05:00

Hello and welcome to November! I've actually only got a handful of spreads left to do in pencil, then it's on to editing, coloring, inking, all that good stuff. But for now, I thought I'd share two of my most important influences in the world of independent comics.

I first discovered Scott McCloud freshman year of college when one of my professors gave us an excerpt from one of his books, Understanding Comics, as a part of a homework assignment. I loved his style-- the way he used comics to explain comics. That same year for the holidays, I got Making Comics (the third in his explanatory comics series) and read it cover to cover, and have read it many, many times since then. Aside from one class I took here at Syracuse called Narrative Drawing, I have not had any real formal sequential art training. Most of my understanding about comics as a storytelling medium comes from Scott McCloud. Also, fun fact: my freshman year, he came to speak to some students for a symposium. I couldn't go because I had a class at that time, but that same night, Art Spiegelman (who is certainly an inspiration as well) came to speak on campus, and Scott McCloud stayed to see him speak. So while I didn't actually get to meet Scott, I was in the same audience with him. Just a funny little circumstance.

While Scott McCloud serves more as a technical and formal inspiration, my most significant creative inspiration comes from Craig Thompson. I can't remember what I was doing before I read his graphic novel Blankets, but it really couldn't have been that important. Blankets is hands down one of the greatest books I've read of any genre. It really opened my mind up to the possibility that comics and graphic novels were more than just a medium for kids and superheroes. Craig Thompson uses the medium of comics to tell painfully and beautifully personal stories. His visual language and his visual problem-solving skills are amazing, and showcased wonderfully in Blankets. (He's got some other great graphic novels, too-- his first, Goodbye Chunky Rice, made me cry, and I've been trying to get a copy of his travelogue Carnet de Voyage for some time now, but it always is out of stock wherever I look for it. Also, he's got his longest graphic novel to date, Habibi, coming out in about a year or so. I can't wait!) Sometimes I worry that I am getting too personal in my own work, that I am too much in my own head and that no one else will be able to relate to what I'm putting down on paper. Re-reading my favorite passages from Blankets reminds me that even the most personal, intimate things can resonate with others. And if I can make something half as good as Craig Thompson can, I will consider it a great success.

And, because I think it would be a shame to post on this blog about my inspirations and not post something from my time abroad, here is a photograph of trees lining the edge of Dublin Port, decorated in shining blue lights. These felt so magical to me.

Please check out the links of the artists I mentioned, and please tune in next time for some more graphic novel goodness.

Wanderlust Revisited

2009-10-31T12:54:00.005-04:00

A few posts back, I outlined the process of how I edited and arranged a particular spread entitled Wanderlust. Well, since that post, it has gone through even more edits, so I wanted to share those with you too.

This is what it looked like at the end of my last post. But I still felt like there was something missing. I hadn't yet added text, and the funky frames weren't conducive to normal ways of handling text, so I felt I had to get a little more creative.

So those two shots are of what I ended up doing. They're a tad blurry, but you get the idea: I made the frames themselves into letters that spell out the title of the spread, and let the rest of the text wander freely as the frames themselves do.

I got the idea to make the frames into text from a few different sources:

1) Bill gave me the name of Marian Bantjes, a Canadian designer who does a lot of really amazing things with typography. You cans see her work at: http://www.bantjes.com/

2) A phenomenal DC Comics illustrator named Alex Ross, whose anthology book includes this as an introduction to the work he did for the Justice League:

3) Funnily enough, I believe I was also a bit inspired by the type for the London 2012 Olympics logo, because despite the controversy surrounding it, the type is chunky enough to allow for other images to be placed inside it. Whether or not I think the logo is any good is a different story (I don't personally think it is), but it is from London, just like my stories, and I think I was channeling that kind of type when making this spread.

That's all for now. More spreads to come later in the week. Happy Halloween everybody!

Before and After

2009-10-27T23:39:00.004-04:00

Before...

And after...

(Yes, that is a mostly-eaten bag of Tostitos sitting next to my watercolors and Micron pens.)

I need to go clean up this mess. Goodnight, everyone.

Inking and Painting

2009-10-27T22:51:00.005-04:00

Finally, here's a glimpse into the inking and painting process that I shall be embarking on more intensively next semester. Bill wanted me to try it out just to see how it would look. So I did. And here it is! (Well, parts of it... I don't want to give away the full finished version quite yet.)

He told me to pick a spread and experiment with it, so I picked a very early spread of my trip to Bath. The following photos show my process.

My goal with this graphic novel is to rely as little on the computer as possible for any drawing, painting, inking, or lettering. I am on the computer so much normally for my major and just for life in general that hand-rendering everything takes a long time but it is a nice reprieve from staring at a screen.

So, because I'm not scanning anything in or digitally painting, my first step was to use tracing paper and graphite paper to get everything from my pencil draft sketchbook to a surface I can paint on.

Once I got the graphite-copied version onto cold press illustration board, I began to paint. I am using watercolor for this project, because I really enjoy painting with watercolor but also because I think the medium lends itself to landscapes and dreams, both of which are featured heavily throughout my project.

I also like to use watercolor pencil, because they let me do some detail work and get a wider variety of colors (see the set of them in the right of the photo) while still getting that watercolor effect.

After I finished painting with watercolor and watercolor pencil, I added outlines to panels and text boxes using a nib pen and India ink. I like pen and ink because it has that flowy, not-completely-controlled feeling to it.

But for the actual lettering, I used a .03 Micron pen, because I didn't want to risk the nib pen bleeding everywhere and having the text be illegible.

And that's the process. It takes a long time, but I like the results. I'm hesitant to show a fully completed page on here because I don't want to spoil too much, but you can get a sense of what they're looking like from these photos, I think. Hope you enjoyed them! As always, comments are appreciated.

Mosque Drawings

2009-10-27T01:04:00.004-04:00

More of Istanbul tonight. I could go on and on about how unbelievable and gorgeous a city it is, but instead I'll just show you a couple examples of why:

Sultanahmet Cami, or the Blue Mosque. Absolutely breathtaking in person.

The Aya Sofya ("Holy Wisdom"), which was built in the 5th century A.D. by the Emperor Justinian, had the largest dome in the Western World until the Duomo was built in Italy hundreds of years later. It is easily the most beautiful and fascinating place I've ever been inside. (The inside will be a separate entry soon.)

My original sketch of the Aya Sofya as seen from the courtyard near the Blue Mosque.

And finally, the two mosques together in a layout for one of my many spreads about my trip to Istanbul.

More to come tomorrow. But for now, bedtime. Hope you enjoyed this, and goodnight!

Meryl Streep in Istanbul

2009-10-25T23:52:00.005-04:00

Disclaimer before I get started: No, I did not see Meryl Streep in Istanbul. But the title of this entry will make sense to you by the end.

So I realized I haven't really shown any new process photos of spreads I'm currently working on in a while, so here they are.

While in London, I took a weekend trip to Istanbul with about twenty other students and two guides. There, we had the chance to meet with a high school student who spoke with us about politics, religion, and social equality in Istanbul and in Turkey as a whole. It was incredibly interesting, and the discussion stuck with me, so I decided to include it in my graphic novel.

But as you will see below, my original spreads were:

crowded...

and extremely text-heavy.

A lot of my editing process is about "capturing the essence" of what I want to explain or illustrate with a particular story. Especially because each story only gets two pages in the entire book (not so in my original draft), the message has to be concise. And in order to make that message concise, there must be a lot of crossing-outing and a lot of moving-arounding of text, frames, and focal points. (See below.)

As Bill, my Capstone advisor, puts it: "There needs to be two of you. The creator and the editor. The creator can put in whatever she wants, include everything for the original draft. But then the editor comes in. And the editor is another part of you that's like-- who's that woman from The Devil Wears Prada?-- Meryl Streep. Your editor has to be like Meryl Streep. Comes in and puts her foot down."

Well, I hope all my scribbles and rewrites make both Bill and Meryl proud.

Greenwich

2009-10-19T23:15:00.008-04:00

One of my spreads for this week is based off of the first trip I took to Greenwich (which is surprisingly close to Central London). Greenwich is home to craft and antiques fairs, a pretty cool record store, lots of cute little shops, a beautiful expansive park that used to be a hunting ground for the royal family, and-- of course-- the Prime Meridian.

In the spirit of that spread, I thought I'd share some of my favorite photos from our Greenwich trip.

The Prime Meridian and its accompanying observatory are on a hill look out over all of London. It's a fantastic view.

This is the Time Ball (yes I know-- imaginative name) atop the Observatory. The sailors used to wait for the Time Ball to drop before they would set sail so they knew what time they were setting off on their journey. Women would stand on the docks and set their watches by the Time Ball, then tell the time to curious passers-by for money. My friend Janet thinks this is why we have the phrase "she wouldn't give me the time of day."

It's the Prime Meridian of the World. Seriously.

And there I am, making a fool of myself on two hemispheres!

I know I haven't been showing actual spreads that much, but they'll come more when they're in more finalized stages. And soon I'll be starting to experiment with how I'm going to ink and color the pages, so I'll definitely post all of those experiments. But hopefully in lieu of artwork this time around you do enjoy these photographs. See you again soon-- just from one hemisphere, though.

Lists and Brainstorms

2009-10-12T20:27:00.002-04:00

After getting home from London, I bought a pocket-sized spiral-bound sketchbook to carry around with me and make lists (often spontaneously) of what I wanted to include in my graphic novel. Some things were literal, like places I'd visited. Other things were more metaphorical, like emotions I felt or symbolism I placed on common objects. There were many, many lists... these are just a few.

This list went on for pages, but some of the things on this paget: Dublin, Istanbul, Solsbury, Stonehenge, rain, Underground, communication, loneliness, alcohol, newness.

On this list, I starred "independence"-- this is one of the most important themes to me, both in this graphic novel and in life going forward from my semester in London.

The top of this list contains some of the media I would like to experiment with when it comes time for coloring the spreads. I want to stay as computer-less as possible for this entire process, so the coloring will be done by hand using probably watercolor and/or watercolor pencils.

"Honesty": the most important thing in this entire project.

More Sketches

2009-10-12T00:31:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone! Hadn't updated in almost a week, so I thought I'd share a few more sketches from my time abroad.

Our school in London sponsored a day trip to Bath, where we got to see the old hot springs and baths, tour the town, and drink Bath spring water. (Which, according to a Charles Dickens character, tastes like "warm flat irons." Dear Charles Dickens, you were right about that one.) This is a sketch of the Great Roman Bath.

The fountains in Regents Park are absolutely gorgeous. I drew this sketch in late April (the date is in the bottom left corner) when all the flowers were in bloom and everything was so picturesque. My last couple weeks in London, I made it a habit of going to Regents Park and just wandering around. (Since I have no sense of direction, getting lost isn't that much of a stretch for me, hehe.)

This spread has two sketches: on the left is Allie sitting at the Ivy House, a pub near our school building. On the right is the famous author Philip Pullman. Allie, my friend Jackie, and I took a train up to Oxford to see him speak about his trilogy His Dark Materials. I took copious notes during his talk-- I will probably share some of them here soon, as I took a lot of his words as advice for starting my own writing endeavor, which has turned into this graphic novel.

On the top of this spread is another sketch from our trip to Oxford: Jackie sitting on the lawn of one of the many colleges on the Oxford campus. On the bottom, sideways, are some quotes from the Philip Pullman lecture we had just attended together.

That's all for now. Progress on spreads will be coming up in the next couple of days. But I hope you liked the sketches! And be sure to check back soon for more graphic novel goodness.

Firoozeh Dumas

2009-10-06T14:26:00.003-04:00

Hello and happy October everyone! I want to take this opportunity for thanking everyone who has commented so far, or made comments to me non-virtually. I promise I'm not trying to pester people-- I just really appreciate feedback. Keep the comments coming!

Now, onto the topic of the day. It seems that the universe is conspiring for me to meet all these inspiring authors this semester. First it was Marjane Satrapi (see the entry a couple weeks back). Today it was Firoozeh Dumas, an Iranian-born, American-raised female author of the books Funny in Farsi (which is now being optioned as a sitcom by ABC) and Laughing Without an Accent. My English class, called Reading Gender and Sexuality in the Arab World, had a Q&A session with her today, and she was wonderful-- very bright, very personable, and very funny. Though she is not a comic writer, she is a memoir writer, and had some great things to say about the writing process, inspiration, and writing from your own experiences:

"The thing I love about memoir is that you can write about any memory that is at the forefront of your mind." (I found this quote especially relevant, because my graphic novel is a kind of memoir that jumps through memories not in chronological order, but based on memory triggers and related themes-- or, to put it another way, whatever is at the forefront of my mind at the time.)

"I try to be sensitive to my subjects." (This is an issue for me because I am telling stories that involve real people in my life, and I have to be cognizant of the fact that they will also become characters and be portrayed to people who don't know them. It's a funny thing for me to draw my own family and friends.)

"No matter what you do in life, there will be people who criticize you." (This one's not just relevant to me, but I thought I'd share it because it sure is true.)

"If any of you ever writes a book, the independent bookstores will be behind you." (I include this quote because one of the goals I have writing this graphic novel is to eventually attempt to get it published by an independent comics company. She really spoke highly of independent booksellers and how they stand behind new talent, so this gives me some hope for the future after this process is finished.)

"I bet everyone in here has at least one thing that's happened to them that would make a really great story." (Let's hope so! Because that's exactly what I'm attempting to do.)

"If you have an eye for life, there are so many tales you can tell." (I just thought this one was inspiring.)

And here she is. Well, a sketch of her at least. I did this during the Q&A so all I had was my spiral notebook, hence the blue lines in the background of the paper.

So now I'm off to work on my layouts for this week, which I will hopefully post something on later in the week. Thanks again for the comments, and tune in next time!

Changes

2009-09-29T21:52:00.004-04:00

Working on spreads this evening has made me nostalgic. Thought I'd share two of my favorite photographs from my time there.

Taken from Waterloo Bridge on my first day in London, January 13, 2009.

Taken from the same bridge, this time on my last day in London, May 1, 2009.

How things change... seasons, skylines, viewpoints.

Wandering and Rearranging

2009-09-28T23:59:00.006-04:00

Hey all. It's been a week since my last post, and a crazy week at that. But I thought I'd share how another one of the stories is progressing.

My Honors advisor, Hanna, asked me while I was abroad, "How are you ever going to cure your new wanderlust?" Which got me thinking, and got me writing.

This is the original spread from my sketchbook, where I let my thoughts literally wander across the pages. Which led me to...

This. My original layout, all spread out across the couch in my apartment. Originally, it was five pages long. My challenge was to get these five meandering pages down to two, without losing the essence of the piece.

Just a close-up of two of the pages joining. Along with the swooping text and sidewalk-like panels, I added the element of me escaping the boxes and traveling outside of them-- this time I'm swinging as if the panels are monkey bars.

My solution to the problem of length was to cut the piece down-- literally. I took a pair of scissors (lent to me kindly by my roommate) and cut up my original layout, and rearranged the panels by hand inside the notebook where I am keeping all of my pencilled spreads. I copied the new arrangement onto the new pages, and adjusted panel sizes accordingly while I drew.

This is a close-up of what I ended up with. At this point, I had not added text, but every frame has a line of text to go with it. Each panel is a snippet of a different memory (from left to right): the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles in France, a bench at sunset in Hyde Park, trees in Green Park, the London Eye reflected in a puddle, and the pyramid structures outside the Louvre in Paris.

I'm sure there will be changes to this layout, as there are to every layout I will do, but for now this is where my wandering has led me. Keep an eye out for more wanderings to come.

Marjane Satrapi

2009-09-21T18:26:00.005-04:00

Today, Syracuse University hosted a symposium about cultural diplomacy and the role of the arts and technology in shaping culture and making a difference in society. Normally, I wouldn't have gone, but it was the presence of one panelist in the discussion that made the difference for me: Marjane Satrapi.

For those of you who don't know, Marjane Satrapi is the author and illustrator of the memoirs Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which are first-hand accounts of what it was like as a little girl growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and subsequently what it was like growing into adulthood escaping the war by moving to Europe. Persepolis has been turned into a movie, but first it was a graphic novel-- and a beautiful one, at that. She has been one of my graphic novel heroes for a while now, and the chance to meet her and hear her speak was too good to pass up.

Instead of telling you about the talk, or gushing about how cool she is (which I could easily do for quite some time) I thought I'd share some quotes from her from the panel discussion today, as well as sketches I did of her.

"The basis of making any work of art is narcissism. If anyone tells you differently, they are lying. But it is a good narcissism. For example, if I draw something, then people look at it and like it and that means they love me. It comes from narcissism, but you go and open it up [to other people]."

"If I could have Twittered what happened in Iran, I would have written something so sour... I needed seven years to sit and think about it. We need time to digest things."

"I smoke cigarettes. I show that in my book. American publishers told me, 'If we publish your book, our children will read it and become smokers.' Well, I was thinking, maybe if you publish my book, you children might want to become good cartoonists."

My copy of The Complete Persepolis, stacked on top of the sketches from today's discussion.

She signed it!!!

One last quote to think about: "For art, it is extremely important to be subversive."

Now, I'm off to work on my pencilled spreads for this week, reinvigorated by her words.

Random Sketches

2009-09-20T16:45:00.006-04:00

While in London, I filled four sketchbooks:

But not everything in the sketchbooks will make it into the final graphic novel. So I thought I would share some of my favorite sketches, and the stories behind them.

Often, I would draw people on the Tube. This was a woman on the Hammersmith and City Line reading one of the London tabloids. On the opposite page are some of my spring break musings about having the apartment to myself while everyone else was away on trips (I stayed in London), and also some of my thoughts about the imminent arrival of Chris, my boyfriend, to London (why I stayed in London for spring break, hehe.)

This is the first sketch I ever drew in England. Our friends Janet and Haley, both girls from my major, took me and Allie (my flatmate and good friend) out for a drink at the Queen's Larder, the pub near the SU Center. The pub predates the Revolutionary War (or, as the Brits call it, the War for American Independence), but when we walked inside the first night they were playing Otis Redding. We spent the night talking, laughing, and drinking hard cider.

In late April, we had a school-sponsored trip to Brighton, on the coast of England. This sketch is of a bunch of my friends relaxing on the pebble beach.

In early April, I went to get my hair cut in the Seven Dials area of Covent Garden. The buildings were all such cheerful colors-- neon pink, sunny yellow, bright blue. (Sadly, my pages are in black and white.) The left side of this spread is the exterior of the building where I got my hair cut, and the buildings on the other side of the street. The right side of the spread, with the windows on its side, is actually a very interesting story: the little circle with text in between the window shutters is a historical plaque saying that building was Monty Python's studio. And I love me some Monty Python, so naturally I had to sketch it.

I was having a bad day in early April, and took a walk to Hyde Park. It was a grey, misty day. I sat by the lake and drew the water, and the bridge in the distance. As you might be able to see, in the water it says "London calms me down."

Takeoff

2009-09-19T13:11:00.014-04:00

I figured for this blog, and this story, the beginning is a very good place to start. The very first thing I wrote about for my journey abroad was, appropriately, the very beginning of it: taking off from JKF airport in NYC and flying into London Heathrow. Before my semester abroad, I had only been on a plane a handful of times, and had never gone anywhere outside the U.S. Naturally, I was freaked out at the prospect of being thousands of miles away from basically everyone I knew and loved, on top of the fact that I was going somewhere completely new and foreign to me. So naturally, I wrote about that. But in a more poetic way than simply "I have no more bajeezus, for it has all been scared out of me."

Process pictures! (Just a note: I don't want to give too much away as to the actual layout because I want there to still be a "whoa" moment at the end when it's all put together, but I will share snippets of final pencilled layouts, just to give you an idea of what the pages are looking like.)

The pages from my notebook where I wrote my first thoughts, and drew a sketchy self-portrait reflected from the plane window. (I had a window seat, thank goodness.)

A couple panels from my rough draft version of this part of the story. Very literal, with me looking out the window of the plane, and very text-heavy.

A snippet of my first attempt for the final pencil draft. I edited the text very heavily for this attempt.

Working on the re-drawn pencil draft. I am keeping the final pencil draft layouts in a hard-bound black sketchbook, and working on them sequentially. The dimensions are 11x8'', horizontal.

Close-up on the second page of the Takeoff layout. I am trying to be less literal and work more with the metaphors I created in my writing, and I edited the text even more.

I'll leave you with those for now. It's still in the very early stages, as you can see, but I hope you like seeing how it's coming along! More on the way later.

Cheers!

2009-09-18T16:01:00.003-04:00

Hello and welcome to my blog. If you're here, chances are you already know about me and my project, but just in case...

Me:

Hi! My name is Brianna. Originally from the Philadelphia area, I am a senior at Syracuse University majoring in Communications Design and minoring in creative writing. I am also in the Honors Program, which requires an in-depth thesis project senior year.

My project:

I spent spring semester of my junior year studying design in London, and visited several other cities while over there. While there, I sketched, took photographs and video, wrote, and just absorbed as much as I could. This was all in preparation for my Capstone, which I decided (with some encouragement) should be a graphic novel based on my experiences abroad. Why a graphic novel? Well, two reasons. One, my major is design, so while it would be more expected of me to do a more design-oriented project, Honors Capstone is an opportunity to explore something in-depth that you don't normally get to do. Two, I am a huge nerd. So combine those two, and you get my ambition to write, illustrate, and publish my own graphic novel.

My blog:

This blog is for updates on my year-long process of writing, editing, sketching, inking, coloring, publishing, reminiscing, and sharing. Not all of it will be strictly process-driven-- I will also post about my inspirations, my time abroad, anecdotes, and anything else I feel is relevant to the project overall. Comments, questions, and encouragement are welcome and appreciated. I will be updating once a week, if not more, so keep an eye out for upcoming posts.

That's about all for now. Cheers!