In the Sounds and Seas and Chicago Zine Fest 2012

After four months of cramped fingers and extreme anti-social behavior, In the Sounds and Seas: Volume 2 is finished!

I picked up the books from Salsedo Press in my zipcar on Monday, March 5, after a night of extremely literal stress dreams in which I had forgotten to scan & submit a whole 5-page section of the book. The anxiety was for nothing: the books are lovely. As always, I can say nothing but complimentary things about the work done by the good folks at Salsedo. The books are printed crisply, bound with precision and the turn-around time is very fast. More than the high-quality production, it is a genuine pleasure to work with the people at Salsedo, who are helpful, interested and patient with a sometimes-nervous artist. If anyone in my little reading audience ever finds themselves in need of high-quality offset printing or bindery work at a reasonable price, I could not recommend Salsedo more heartily.

Once the books were in my hands, I could focus on preparing in earnest for Chicago Zine Fest, where I planned to debut the second book. Late last summer I started building a model of the Spray, a historic sloop that Joshua Slocum sailed solo around the world in the late 1890s, the first person to accomplish the feat. I built the model partly to have experience building a ship (which is an important part of the action in Volumes 2 & 3), partly to have a model to help with future illustrations, and partly to use as a sign at book events. At the beginning of the week, when my books were in my hands, I had a finished if undetailed body of a ship, a pile of fabric and some embroidery floss.

...and if anyone ever tells you that this can turn into a finished model in 3 days without losing sleep, they are dirty liars. I hand-embroidered the name of the book series on the main sail and finished the boat by Thursday night, giving me Friday to finish carving the blocks for an upcoming invitation project and assemble my wares for Chicago Zine Fest. 

Early on Saturday March 11, the morning of Zine Fest, I packed up my rolling cart full of books, cards, table cover and my ship and headed to the train.

First noteworthy lesson of the day: model ship sails catch the wind just as effectively as their full-sized counterparts. The main boom broke from the mast and swung about wildly in the morning wind which, while nerve-wracking, was an easily mendable problem. A few touches of super glue at the event and all was back to normal.

The spaces at Zine Fest were allotted by the half-table, so my 2' ship took up the lions share of the 3' table space. I displayed a copy of each volume on book stands, offered a trade on my Assassin's Elan for $3 or zines or food a good joke, and gave out business cards, candy and flyers for my upcoming linocut workshop at Evanston Print & Paper.

This was my view the whole day:

In contrast with the frantic build up to the event, I had a really relaxed and wonderful time. I couldn't have asked for better neighbors in the thoughtful, talented and gobsmackingly prolific Cristy C. Road and the hilarious crowd behind Macklin Brundage's punk zine distro, all of whom were generous and friendly and fun to spend the day with. I also made out like a bandit: through trades and a few purchases, I left the event with a dragon's horde of inspiring independently published books and comics.

See for instance, among all the talented folks, the lovely work of Sara Drake, Talya Modlin, Cathy G. Johnson, Kevin Budnik, Edie Fake, Rebecca Mir and friend & fellow Texan Marian Runk.

I met some intimidatingly talented people, learned from and taught folks about various production methods, heard some pretty great jokes and left the event energized and optimistic. After spending so many months in isolated production, getting out into the world with my book was a wonderful experience. If I could do an event like this every weekend, I would in a heartbeat.

Now that the book has Officially Debuted, it is available for sale on Etsy! You can buy it individually or as part of a full subscription. I have also offered a partial subscription for people who bought the first book but want to jump on the discount bandwagon. Full pictures of the book are listed under Books and Comics.

* * * As always, thanks are in order to my husband Tom, without whom I physically could not have met these deadlines. He cooked meals, stayed up with me on late nights, and cleaned up our little apartment enough that I didn't die in a hoarder's avalanche through these last few weeks of mad making. Thank you to my mom Lori for leading by example, showing me my whole life that the best way to do a thing or make a thing is to jump in head-first, to my dad Jerry for making drawing a shared game, to my siblings Katie and Will for their encouragement and support, and to all of my friends who have been patient with me through these months of absence and silence. My fingers might have drawn the book, but it was a community effort. Thank you all.

Illustration Process: Composition Troubles

The illustration work towards In the Sounds and Seas: Volume 2 has gone remarkably smoothly--so smoothly, in fact, I've hardly given myself the time to write about it here. While each page of V1 felt labored in some way, burdened with making decisions of style and format that would affect the content of the rest of the project, I was able to jump into production of V2 with delightfully little friction. No composition struggles, no clogged pens, and no worries over how to draw hundreds of tiny bunnies. Wonderful!

That was the story, at least, until last week. The action so far in V2 revolves around the character who was revealed at the end of V1, walking through the coastal village, through the woods and to her home/workshop. The rest of the chapter takes place in the workshop and hints at the plans she is making that will carry her through the rest of the story, all of which revolves around the boat she is building.

In the chaos that had grown in my studio prepping and shipping etsy holiday orders, I had lost track of the composition mock-up I built to guide me through this book. Given my good fortune thus far I confidently started illustrating anyway:

And I abandoned it here. The action of walking toward the door of the workshop is not very important and doesn't need to take up more than half the page. The function of this spread is the reveal of the boat: the boat is central to the action of the remaining 5 chapters, and if I'd kept this composition the boat would have been a footnote on the bottom third of the page. No good! So I started over:

With this do-over, I minimized the action of entering the house, and intended to reveal the layout of the house and dramatically introduce the boat in construction in the bottom panel. As I inked the page, I grew less and less satisfied with the composition. Each spread that I have completed so far feels exciting and well made, and this one falls flat. The action of entering the house is still primary, the angle in the bottom panel reads a little forced, and as soon as I started filling in the long panel of water in the middle I realized it was lazy filler. Further, the boat is still not emphasized as the important information on the page: in many ways the boat is the primary character of the series, and this composition doesn't convey that at all.  I abandoned this page as well.

Frustrated at having spent so many hours drawing and inking pages that will not make it into the book, I spent a full day drawing spread composition after composition in miniature to try to work out the best way to tell the story these pages needed to tell. In doing that exercise, I realized that I was trying to accomplish too much, too literally, and in too little space. The whole workshop doesn't have to be laid out dollhouse-style; the important reveal is the boat. So I started again:

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Success! I still want to do some more work on the light/dark balance on the recto page, but what a relief to be able to move on. After two weeks of sketching and penciling and inking and failing, I am very happy with this spread. Keep your fingers crossed that I get back to my old rhythm, and move forward quickly and well. Time's ticking toward my mid-March completion deadline!

New Prints in the Shop

Well this is exciting: new prints in the shop! Halloween weekend was spent in an exhausting marathon of type-setting, ink-mixing, block-carving, print-making, paper-trimming and podcast-listening. The impetus for studio time was a dwindling supply of CTA Announcement Series prints, but we here at Monkey-Rope Press have a hard time doing things by halves. Why only print 6 two-color prints when I could print 14? Check out our new stock:

Twas Brillig, a typographic tip of the hat to Lewis Carroll;

 

Cheery and fun Good Morning, Sunshine and Good Morning, Glory;

 

Reprints of ALL the CTA Announcement Series, including brand-new black-and-silver "Inbound Train" (previously only available in blue and brown), and prints of the linocut train design in black, silver and blue;

 

Three brand-new bibliophilic prints;

 

And finally, some holiday cheer: Jolliest of Jollies and Merriest of Merries!

I also took the opportunity while taking pictures of the new prints to re-shoot old favorites. Be sure to stop by the shop to see old prints in a new light!