From the Desk of George Rex
A blog for my silly thinkings, ponderings, musing and other miscellaneous “-ings”.
I hope you liked this week's post! I ended up buying the fancy Moleskine - in fact I drew this comic in it! What are your favourite ways to get your ideas down? Do you prefer sketchbooks or individual sheets of paper or digital? What's your favourite sketchbook to use?
Have a lovely rest of the week if you can!
Gx
This week I have just a short little comic for you about some of the other ideas that are floating around inside my head.
Sorry, it's kind of an abrupt end to this week's blog comic. A lot of my time is being taken up with prep work for my very first real-life scary-big comic convention (more on that later).
Hopefully one day I'll get around to writing all these stories I have in my head. I would love to illustrate science and non-fiction stories as well as a ridiculous adventure/fantasy tome.
What kind of stories do you write?
Gxx
I have always loved art in its many mediums – particularly drawing (comics) and writing (comics). I've dabbled in music, I tried my hand at printmaking, I even once made a nifty fish-shaped knick-knacks dish (it was a cartoony fish, giving the knick-knack owner a thumbs up, of course). I've tried sculpture and installation but I can't say that I was, hmm, successful.
My mother is always a whiz at most things crafty. Where I would fix a broken zip on an overall dress with several button badges, she would sew in a new zip. Where I would blutak the crack in the broken vase, she would plant a succulent in it. Where I would throw away that pair of old jeans with the awkward hole in the crotch, she would craft them (with the help of paint and glitter) into nifty bags and quilts. Where I would knit a scarf that gained so many new stitches that it had doubled in width by the time I'd finished, she would knit me a rad knitted vest (with a design to make it look like I'm wearing a tie).
And where I couldn't see that Rob had any interest in creating art, she would see Rob's many abilities to create art out of the most ordinary of objects. Mum would see what she calls Rob's 'Artisms' (like art and autism smooshed together) all over the place. And once Mum pointed them out to me I couldn't not see them. Here are a few of the highlights from over the years.
Now that Rob lives in full-time care, I don't get to see these Artisms anymore, as you need to spend lots of time around Rob to really get to know him and to experience his creations.
That's one of the things I miss most about having regular doses of Rob in my life: the moments when you just stumble across a pile of things, arranged just so, that you know Rob has carefully thought about and placed.
That's it for this post. Catch you next week when I write about all those other ideas I have floating around in my head and talk about my addiction to buying sketchbooks.
Gx
Hello hello hello!
I've been thinking about how much my comics-making has changed this year when it comes to writing and planning, which got me thinking about how much my drawing process has changed too.
This led my brain to the blue pencil and why it is a thing in comics making. If you're a seasoned comics nerd you will know all about the blue pencil - if you are new to the game you may not know. If you want to find out more about blue pencils and how the pencil (blue, lead and otherwise) has played a part in my comics life so far, read on...
Thanks for reading, pals! Have yourself a really lovely Wednesday; not many people give Wednesdays the time they deserve.
Gx
I've always loved putting together an outfit, although it wasn't until high school that I admitted this. I remember talking to my Dad once when I was about 10 and I was very adamant that I would never wear make up or care about how my clothes looked. His response was 'Just you wait, in a couple of years you'll change your mind'. Well, he was wrong about the makeup but he nailed it with the clothes. I love colour coordinating my wardrobe and finding items that match perfectly together. I love op-shopping and finding the perfect cardigan that I've been searching for, and having 10x the same pair of shoes but in different colours so they can go with different outfits.
For Rob's part, his tastes were less narcissistic than mine and focused around comfort levels. I have always claimed that I would choose comfort over style but I don't know if I'm entirely telling myself the truth.
But although I'm pretty happy with how I dress now and I think I manage to tread the line of comfort and lookin' good, there were many painful years of trial and error (mainly error) to get to this point. Let's start at age 8 (Gina) and age 6 (Rob).
Next up we have ages 10 (Gina) and 8 (Rob). Desperately not wanting to look like a girl (but still being proud of being female), I took to wearing baggy oversized clothes and imagining myself as a much more adventurous sort than I truly was. Being a spy was a big one. I would fawn over the 'Spy Gear' in the David Jones and Myer toy sections (they seemed to have the best spy gear range) that I couldn't afford. In particular I wanted a 'Spy night glove', which was just some lights you'd clip to your hand so you could break open safes and the like in the dark. My Dad decided that we could make one (so I could learn about batteries and science stuff) instead of forking out dollars for something that would inevitably break, get lost or thrown out. I still have the glove today.
Rob favoured the simpler approach of a bright pink body tube. He would shuffle around the house wearing nothing but this thin tube of material. It was pretty hilarious.
13 (Gina) and 11 (Rob). First days of high school are always daunting and scary. Still a proud tomboy, I would soon find out how mean girls can be. I was pretty okay on the bullying front; I had enough friends that even though I was low-level bullied until year 12 I managed to get through reasonably unscathed. The thing I most remember about my first day at school was that when I was washing my hands in the girls' bathroom, another girl came out and started screaming that a boy was in the bathroom and then laughing at my face. For some reason it didn't much bother me. Maybe because having Rob as a brother had instilled in me that everyone is different and it doesn't matter what we look like or how we act, we are all just humans.
Rob, for the most part, loved school. He would run out to the bus when it came by to pick him up and for a while pretty much wore his school uniform everywhere (not just at school).
15 (Gina) and 13 (Rob). My tomboy phase, although spanning several years, came to a head when my body hit puberty. Most of my fashion of this era consisted of baggy open button-up shirts over tee shirts and cargo shorts. I was inspired by the fashion sense of Gordo from the popular children's show Lizzy Maguire.
Rob's tastes weren't dictated by popular culture; instead he went for the more natural look.
17 (Gina) and 15 (Rob). Everyone has a hippy phase, right? Where you just really like flares and corduroy and vintage kitsch kitchenware? I was chatting to a pal about the various fashion phases I've gone through and she talked about how the style of the 'hippy' was a way I could experiment with my femininity but still be kinda scruffy like a tomboy. I thought she raised a good point.
Rob around this time grew very attached to some 'happy' pants I bought on a whim at the kind of store that would sell beaded bracelets, incense and tarot cards. They were made of a patchwork of crazy patterned materials and Rob loved them. He even started wearing them to school instead of the uniform pants.
Rob (18) was most famous in our family for co-opting our father's leather jackets and transforming them into works of vegemite art.
Me now (25). It's scary to think about my age. About how much I wish I'd already done with my life and how many things I want to do before I turn 27 (which is a special number to me) and when I turn 27 I'll basically be 30 and isn't that when you're supposed to have your life together? That seems to be what the movies tell me. Either that or that you shouldn't lose the child in you or shouldn't wish to grow up too fast? Maybe I need to watch BIG again.
Anyway, I'm pretty happy with my ability to dress myself now. If I was able to just decide on one style I really like, I'd be able to downsize my wardrobe. But somedays I want to look a bit fancy in my culottes and cardys (see below) and sometimes I want to wear dresses and denim or check shirts and cotton skirts. And sometimes it's jeans and a t-shirt or it's nothing.
Sometimes I think if I just stick to buying a limited amount of colours then I'll be okay. You know, just red, blue and green. And black I guess. Oh and mustard yellow. And you can't forget purple or the occasional orange. And you know sometimes brown can look really nice. You see my problem!
Basically, my choice of what to wear these days comes down to "Can I draw that?" If I can't draw it, is there any reason for me to have it?
That's it for this post. I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into some of the many fashions I and my brother have had.
xx
You may have noticed that in the past few posts I've been writing about going through a bit of a flat patch or, if you want to go all '50s horror movie on the idea, 'The Slump!'
So with The Slump hanging over my head -- or more specifically in my head -- I thought it was time to get my thoughts out onto paper. I grabbed a book I've been using to keep track of thoughts and things to talk about with my mentor Pat and started writing what I'd been feeling. BUT THEN I COULDN'T STOP. It just kept coming out. Because this was originally just going to be something that I would send to Pat and not share online, I didn't pencil anything or even plan what I was going to write. Sometimes I think I managed to pull it off and then some pages maybe not so much. Anyway, here it is, in all its glory.
Halfway through writing these thoughts I kinda wanted to stop. I wasn't really sure where they were going and not knowing when the comic would finish made me start feeling flat. But I pushed through with a few pitstops to breathe and think about what I was writing and once I'd finished (despite it not being the best thing I've ever drawn or written) I was so glad to have done it.
Even though I would say the process of making something is maybe sometimes more important than the final product, it sure feels good to hold a finished thing in your hands. Even if the very next day you think it's terrible.
Hope you guys are doing well. Can't wait to write you again real soon!
Gxx
Howdy there!
Sorry I've been a little incommunicado the past few weeks -- lots of travelling, script editing and figuring out where I want to go next with the book. Not knowing if I'm picking the right path to go down and trying to find that spark of inspiration that tells my brain I'm doing the right thing.
This is just a little comic of a time about a month ago when I was feeling low. It's only recently that I've been able to sit down and actually write down some of these feelings. They are not new feelings but they are getting more acute as I grow older and could see myself as a parent.
This comic by no means covers all the feelings or thoughts or worries I have around having children or how lucky I feel about the way my parents brought me up. But that is for exploration another time.
This year has been a huge learning curve for me when it comes to writing and drawing comics but something I think that is less tangible and possibly more important is having the time to think about my life growing up with my brother and just stewing in the feelings that come with that. Sometimes it's so hard to think about the future and what that means for me and Rob and sometimes it's so hard to think about the past and everything that my parents and I and Rob have been through. It feels lonely and tiring. My head fills with the pain of sadness and makes me want to stop writing.
But just because it's hard does not mean it's not worthwhile. I love Rob and I always will. I love him for all his obsessions and strange habits. And I like to think that if he could, Rob would love me back for all the same reasons.
I know other people are out there just like me and just like Rob and I want them to know, I need them to know it's okay, I'm out there too.
xx
Those who have met me for longer than, say, 10 minutes will know that I am a worrier. I'm also a planner and an organiser. Although these qualities can bring on little spells of anxiousness, for the most part they help me achieve my goals in a timely fashion.
I make lists of what I need to get done, what blog posts I'm going to write, and what my goals are for the future (both comics and life related). I write daily, weekly and monthly lists. And this year I have even written a general all-year plan.
I think about things I want to do before I turn 27. I think about skills I need to gain to improve my comics. I think about things I want to know about to make me a more interesting person. And then I write lists about them.
I use colours to indicate which day I complete the tasks on my weekly studio To Do lists, so I can track how much I get done in one day. All these things are great and all and even can help me to remember/put straight all the ideas and things I've got to get done. But at the moment I don't feel like I have enough things on my To Do list to justify the time I put into them.
As part of finishing off the first draft of my script (read the post about that here), I've kind of ended up in a bit of a post-project slump (unfortunately, I haven't even finished the project, just a draft of a section of it). I know I've done quite a lot of work towards my graphic novel book and there is nothing wrong with wanting a little break or breathing space from the work. Working on a personal story like Oh Brother means that some days in the studio are quite emotionally draining. The work gets me to think about a lot of things to do with my brother, both past and future, that scare me. It feels weird finishing off something big, the biggest thing I've ever done (in comics), and I feel a little lost.
So I've been taking a break while waiting for feedback from a variety of people I've asked to read my rough draft script and during this break I've been in a limbo of wanting to do more work on Oh Brother and wanting to just draw stuff for fun. In the past week I've had a huge urge to write something fictional or to start experimenting with different art mediums (coloured pencils being a favourite at the moment). But I feel guilty for wanting a break from the work, for wanting to get out of the studio and sit in cafes and sketch and think about fantasy worlds and just draw things I really like drawing (instead of having to draw my brother or me over and over again).
It's not like I don't have things to do. I have plenty of emails and a few commissions that I'm finally catching up on. But the To Do lists seem to mock me; they are filled with days sitting at a computer and my body just wants to get out there and draw and experience the world. And then the guilt comes in and I get stuck in this middle zone of not sending emails and then spending time out at cafes thinking about the emails I should be sending, not enjoying being out in the world.
At the start of the year, I had it all worked out. I put in wiggle room (just in case I couldn't do things as quickly as I thought I would). I sent the outlines to my mentors, proud as punch and determined that I would finish the whole book (final art and everything) by the end of the year. I would achieve this while working part-time and playing roller derby and seeing my friends and family occasionally. My mentor Pat's first email told me not to rush the book. That I shouldn't worry if I didn't finish it by the end of the year. And I soon realised that he was right. By March/April I had changed my overall plan to finishing the final art for part one of the book, along with the scripts for parts 2 and 3. I would be able to get that done no problem by the end of the year. And again I soon realised that no, if I still wanted to work part-time, play roller derby and ever leave the house/studio to see daylight, I would either need to cut down my goal or cut out another factor. This was when I realised that I wanted to make a go at drawing comics full-time and took 6 months Leave Without Pay from my work.
Since starting my leave from work a couple of months ago, I have hung out with Pat and worked on my written script, learnt how to thumbnail and then completely thumbnailed my script, and created a 100 page readable rough draft of part one of my comic. I felt like I was on track to complete my goals for the rest of 2016. I felt like I had made the right decision. I have loved being in the studio full-time and wish that it's what I could do for living. But then I worry that turning making comics/illustration into something that I rely on for money will take away the magic or worse I won't be able to be self-motivated enough to keep finding work. But sometimes when I think about going back to an office job I just can't imagine me doing that right now.
However, at one recent feedback session with two comics pals (Greg Holfeld and Robin Tatlow-Lord), they suggested that maybe I shouldn't jump right in and do finished art for the whole of part one, but rather maybe pick a section/story and just finish that as a sample and then send the publishers the full draft and the sample story with finished art. This was good advice, or at the very least something to think about. Unfortunately it meant that I couldn't just jump straight into my plan of doing the final art for part one. I needed to sit down and figure out what to do next.
And that's pretty much where I'm at. Not sure which way to go and waiting for feedback. Not sure about what I want to do in my near future. Knowing that in January I head back to a good office job and that I would be crazy (from a stability point of view) not to want to go back. But I just can't shake this feeling that I need to try to make a go of drawing comics for real. It's not just something I want to do, it's something I feel like I need to do.
So, while I wait until that moment I finally decide what I'm doing next (which I'm sure will change regularly), I will keep writing lists upon lists, trying to figure out what I need to get done today, this week, next month, in five years, until I figure it out.
I even write lists of the all the points I want to cover in my blog posts about goals and To Do lists.
Phew! Sorry for such a wordy post. I promise to have some more illustrated ones soon.
Stay classy folks,
Gx
This post is all about how I got from the starting point of having the idea for a graphic novel memoir about growing up with a brother with autism to where I am now: holding my first draft manuscript of part one of Oh Brother. Here's the step-by-step process.
Step 1. Filling your belly with tasty beverages.
A good drink to start the day is important to me and my brain processing. It gives you a chance to sit and think about what you've written, a chance to ponder. Also the act of making a cup of tea (boiling the kettle, steeping the leaves) helps to get my brain in the right frame of mind.
Talking about what stories I want to tell or discussing what I'd written that day over a cuppa with a friend helped me to figure out if the story made sense or hit the right emotional tones.
Step 2. Setting up shop.
The first thing I did was pick a colour for the notebooks and sketchbooks that I would be working in. Colour is important to me and having all my notes and stories, sketches and ideas about Rob and autism in books all the same colour just makes me happy. They look so good on the shelf together.
When setting up what I was going to write, I decided to make a list of different types of stories or things I wanted to talk about in the book. Each category had a different coloured post-it:
Yellow // Happy or Funny stories
Dark Blue // Sad or Fearful stories
Lime Green // Questions I have or Questions I get asked
Red // Over-arching story themes
Purple // Stories about carers or Rob going into care
Light Blue // Misc. stories or facts about me and Rob
This was a great starting point, just getting all the stories I possibly could down and then expanding on them when I started...
Step 3. Writing 15 minutes every day.
To start off with I found it hard trying to get myself to write. I would also be put off by 'not being inspired' or expecting to write for hours at a time. But I soon realised that wasn't how I worked. I like to do things in little fragments of time and waiting to be inspired to write just meant that I was also drawing other silly nothing comics. So after a recommendation from Mentor Pat to do my important brain work in the morning, and reading someone else online talking about forcing yourself to write for 15 minutes no matter how bad you think it is , I started a new routine.
The first thing I would do after I got to the studio each morning (after making a cup of tea, obvs) was to sit down and write for 15 minutes about whatever stories I could think up about Rob. Sometimes I barely managed to scrape in the 15 minutes, really struggling to get ideas out, and sometimes I would write for up to 40 minutes.
Sometimes the ideas were terrible; sometimes awesome. Sometimes they were okay and the next day I would use my 15 minutes to re-write the passage, having had a day to think about and refine what I was trying to say.
Step 4. Drawing one illustration every day.
As well writing something every day, I drew something every day. I wanted to fill the book with diagrams that would demonstrate what it was like living with Rob and help to illustrate his cheeky personality. You can read my previous blog posts with diagrams here, here, here and here.
While writing things down helped to get the stories clear in my mind, drawing the characters and places helped to figure out how I was going to portray my brother and parents. (I've already drawn myself a bunch of times and I'm all over that).
Step 5. Writing a script. With, you know, words.
After a few weeks of writing every day I thought I should start collating the stories into a script form. I found that the stories generally fell into three broad categories: 1) Communication; 2) Obsessions; and 3) Fears. I decided that these would be good section dividers for the book and I would focus on part one, Communication.
Having never written a script previously (because I always draw my own work and my previous comics have been so short that I only needed to jot down a few dot points at most), I had to sort of play it by ear - I had no idea what I was doing.
But I needed to have something written down as I was heading on a two week trip to learn from my mentor Pat about his process and he was going to need a script to read, give feedback on and help me edit.
Step 6. Editing the script and learning about Pat Grant's thumbnailing process.
When I got to Wollongong to meet up with Pat all I had was twelve pages of written words and a few character illustrations. In the first couple of days Pat read, pulled apart and discussed my script.
I took a notebook along with me with a heap of questions for Pat about comics making and in particular how to do thumbnailing. He kindly obliged by responding in comic form.
Thumbnailing, for those who haven't heard of it, is the process of rough drawing the comics panels generally smaller than the size they will be printed at so you can get the general idea of what image you need in each panel, camera angles, characters, layout etc.
By the end of the first week of hanging out with Pat I had fully thumbnailed my script using Pat's method of drawing all over the printed page with lots of arrows and reference numbers. I love this method of thumbnailing. I'm never looking back!
Step 7. Drawing a first draft manuscript (or readable thumbnails).
Once I got back from visiting Pat with my new thumbnails under my belt, I was pumped and ready to start the readable thumbnails. Readable thumbnails to me means taking my script and thumbnails and turning that into comics pages, so a reader can get the general idea of what the final book will read like. It's a mock up of the final story.
I found this process very interesting and surprisingly easy. It wasn't a walk in the park but having already done preliminary thumbs it was fun working out how the individual panels worked on the page. Also knowing that this wasn't the pencils or final art meant that I didn't have any hang ups about whether it was the best thing I'd ever drawn.
I didn't let anyone give me critical feedback while I was writing the draft as I didn't want to put any doubts in my mind (battling my own double talk was enough). But the moment I finished I opened the floor to anyone who wanted to read it to give me feedback.
After a little while I realised I was having trouble with showing different emotions for the main characters in the story, so I created an emotion guide for each of the main characters. This has already been useful in this first draft so I'm sure it will continue to be in the next two chapters.
Here are all the pencils I used to draw the 100+ pages of chapter one.
Step 8. Finishing part one, bound and ready for feedback from pals.
Then, 6 weeks later, I had the very first part of my very first graphic novel. I keep all the pages in this folder to keep them safe from harm. It's also pretty exciting to hold a big folder that holds all my comics. It reminds me how much work I've put into this book so far. Also this neat folder looks exactly like something from Harriet the Spy, so that's another win.
I scanned and edited the pages ready for printing (with formatting and proofreading help from Owen). After a little mis-printing mishap at Officeworks, I now have 7 bound copies that I will send out to mentors and some family members and then await feedback.
When the feedback comes back, I will edit anything I need to and then start the final art for the chapter. Which is both awesome and scary.
Mostly awesome.
And that's it. That's how I got to this point.
Phew, that was a long post.
xx
Something I've never been good at is drawing backgrounds. I've barely started trying to apply the Eddie Campbell rule to my comics (you must show a character's feet at least once per page), let alone drawing elaborate crowd scenes or detailed mystical world building. Not because I don't want to (I can imagine in my head exactly what I want things to look like), more because I lack the technical skill to draw it.
But as I've drawn and read more comics I've realised that the panels I'm really happy with and the artists I really like have something in common: they gots backgrounds.
So going into making my first full-length graphic novel, I wanted people to get a feel of the area I grew up in and the type of people my family are; I wanted the reader to be able to fall into the world of the book; and most of all I wanted it to feel Australian.
I don't have a lot of confidence in scene setting and one of the main questions I brought to my mentor, Pat Grant, was how to help the reader feel like they are in the same world as you. Pat took me on a tour of his hood and we took turns drawing a scene from the area. It turned out like this:
We still have the final colouring to do. The little bit of colours that have been done were by Pat.
When I got home from visiting Pat, fired up with a new mission to capture my childhood neighbourhood, I walked around the main suburbs where I spent my time as a kid and a teen taking photos and feeling a touch nostalgic.
I got myself into the studio and came up with a variety of scenes that I feel sum up the places I visited, walked past and loved. Here are the scenes that have made it into my thumbnail draft of the book so far.
I also realised that I could use these scene-setting breaks in the story to expand the main characters in the book too. I could show not only snippets of toys and bedrooms but also items that describe different people's takes on the same issue.
Mum will always be a pen and paper gal.
And Dad is a techno-lover from way back.
I also used this as a chance to try to replicate a few family photos - we have quite a few as dad got on board the digital camera train early on and we are pretty much a family of visual learners.
Now that I've set the scene, I think I'd better show off some of these thumbnails I've been working on!
I'll talk about my writing/drawing process and where I'm at with the script in the next blog post.
xx