Picture Novel pt 1

Last Thursday, beneath the noise of neighbors shouting at one another from their porch/rooftops and rush hour traffic speeding past my apartment I completed the novel I've been working on for the last 9 months: The Final Transformation of Alabaster Johns. Clocking in at over 230 pages (half illustrations, half text) completing the project was exhausting but wonderful.

This post is the first in a two part post about the process of going from script to illustration especially when there is no literal description of the image.


After going through several drafts of the script to the point where I feel (and others who have read it) that it represents not only the narrative flow, but also the emotional tone of the story I begin to draw out thumbnail ideas. I do this on the script for two reasons: 1. it allows me to see the flow of images with text side by side 2. if a line does not work with the image or a line of text strays from the narrative tone then I can cut it right there and re write.

Writing and illustrating a picture novel is like making a movie in a way being that it follows one importoant principal: show them first, tell them if you must. For a story that is very emotion driven - almost like illustrated poetry or lyrics - this is even more important.

Next post I'll conclude this will showing some final images and write about being ok with cutting a chunk out of the story.