AT LAST! Basic Artwork Completed For DFTS!!!

It only took us about 3.5 years--and many unforeseen obstacles--but David has completed the basic line art for this graphic novel!

Here are a couple of snapshots I took of the pencil work to the next-to-last chapter of the book, as they sat on David's drawing table at the time. They're all inked and they look beautiful!

Now to finish coloring the book... David is helping out on the coloring. We hope to get this last burst of work done quickly--and well. More updates soon!

Old Time Songs

I am working hard (furiously) to ink the last few pages of the book....

Meanwhile, if you're a fan of old time music, I'd like to point you toward Martha Burns' kickstarter campaign...
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1226502260/martha-burns-solo-cd-of-old-time-songs
Her voice reminds of me Iris Dement's.

-David

America Salutes the Carter Family

A Northwest musician named Markly Morrison contacted me a while back about doing the cover art for his Carter Family tribute album, America Salutes the Carter Family. I'm excited to announce that it's been released! And, yes, I drew the cover art. And my collaborator Frank Young kindly colored that art...

You can sample the album and order a copy by clicking here.

The album is a collection of Carter Family songs as sung by northwest bands, encountered and recorded by Markly. You can read more about it at the link above.

A portion of the proceeds will benefit Rita Forrester and the Carter Family Fold. Rita, a grand-daughter of Sara and A.P. Carter, suffered a horribly tragic house fire two years ago. It took the life of her husband, Bob Forrester.

We Made It--Thanks to You!!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Wow! We raised $8523.00 in our Kickstarter campaign!

This show of support means the world to David and I! We can't throw a party for the 150 folks who became supporters of our Kickstarter campaign... so how about a couple new color pages?

This notable page introduces the adult Maybelle to the world of the Carter Family-as-musicians! The fella with the fiddle is Poor Valley postman, Price Owens.

This page shows Sara and A.P. going to their first, abortive recording session, for Brunswick Records' mobile unit in 1925. They travel by horse-cart to nearby Kingsport, which was already an industrial center of the area.

We hope you enjoy this new sneak peek at our work-in-progress! We'll be hard at work on the completion of this book--now we can breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the drawin' board (and colorin' computer)!

Dear Friends--You ROCK!

David and I have just learned that we've not only reached our Kickstarter goal of $5,000--we've exceeded it!

We could not be more moved and grateful for the terrific outreach of support for DON'T FORGET THIS SONG. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you!

To celebrate, here's a couple of recent pages of finished colored artwork. (No dialogue yet, but the images are mighty nice to look at!)

First is a page from Chapter 8, in which Maybelle's guitar genius absolutely flusters Price Owens, the fiddle-playing postman who sometimes jammed with A.P. and Sara, in those gentle days before recording fame...

Here is a page from Chapter 5, showing the aftermath of the wedding of A.P. and Sara, and their travels to their new home in Poor Valley. Sara comments as she places her Autoharp on the bureau, "There... now it feels like home."

We hope you enjoy seeing these finished pages. We're working hard to finish the book this year. Your overwhelming show of support has us both really jazzed! Thanks again...

Help Kickstart the Carter Family Graphic Novel!

David and I have launched a campaign on kickstarter.com, to help us out as we work full-time-plus to complete this elaborate full-color graphic novel! Click HERE to check out our Kickstarter campaign!

There's a five-minute video about DON'T FORGET THIS SONG and its history. It was beautifully directed, and assembled in the Blender 3D graphics program by James Gill (who is my talented improv partner on THE JIM & FRANK PODCAST, which you can sample at Jim's link above).

Thanks for taking a look--and if you can help us out, thanks times ten!

Here's another look at some of our finished full-color artwork from DON'T FORGET THIS SONG. Kickstarter "backers" will get an exclusive online look at our book over the next month.

This Kickstarter campaign ends on October 10, 2011--so be sure to visit the Kickstarter link today!

Coloring the Carters: An Epic Scene of Celebration

David and I are turning out finished pages of Don't Forget This Song as fast as we can. In my role of colorist, I seldom get off easy. David's ink artwork is remarkably intricate, and has much to keep the observer's gaze affixed. You're invited to explore every nook and cranny of his artwork.

All of those nooks and crannies need to be colored. The good news: I enjoy coloring. It is satisfying to see ideas I've been carrying around in my head suddenly made literal. We've spent a long time living with these pages in their rough form. Seeing the inked line artwork for the first time is always a delight to me.

Here is one of the most detailed and epic pages of the book (so far). Apologies for the lack of dialogue. The text is written. I don't lay it in until we've assembled the layout in InDesign.

This page depicts the celebration at the wedding of A.P. and Sara Carter. As the newlyweds waltz to the accompaniment of a Virginia string band (joined by their friends Buff and Mae, who are just rehearsing for their own wedding day), friends and family of the gifted couple comment on the scene.

The dialogue is amusing, and shows a variety of reactions to the unique personalities of A.P. and Sara.

David designed this intricate page, and, as you can see, the placement of the figures took a lot of thought and care. When the page was given to me to color, I went through a similar process. I had made a color rough, with felt markers, on the pencil thumbnail sketch of the page, back in 2009.

The page went through much refinement since then. My color guide was merely a suggestion of what would go where. It was a challenge to distribute the limited palette of our color scheme throughout a scene of over 40 figures. I had to be careful to vary the colors, and not to run the same colors too close together.

Thanks to the versatility of Photoshop, I'm able to change colors, de-saturate them, and tighten up my work after I've laid the basic "coats" down on the digital page. There sometimes seems to be no end of fussing, fiddling and fine-tuning that I do to these pages. This one, in particular, required a great deal of the Three Fs!

The bottom row of panels was something of a relief, after having spent hours laying in colors on that huge top panel. Large medium-shots of the characters offered a bit of a break, in comparison to the tiny spots of color demanded by the large main scene.

I'm happy with the overall results, and I hope you'll enjoy taking a gander at this page. It's a real show-stopper.