A few months ago, when I first started playing around with the idea of telling Dad’s story by integrating graphics and text, I really had no idea where to begin. So, I did what I usually do when faced with a big task and not enough information - I held my breath, closed my eyes, and plunged in.
I quickly realized several things.
My hand lettering is dreadful. That, however, is something that can be addressed by either a) a lot of practice or b) making use of the tools in comic strip creation software
I had no idea what kinds of digital tools existed when it came to laying out graphic novels, adding text, etc. (Watch for a future post where I talk about my first fumbling attempts to use Procreate, Adobe Fresco, and Canva).
My drawing skills needed (let’s be honest, still need) a LOT of help.
Those three things were solvable, though, with a bit of effort. What wasn’t so obvious was how to tell the story, what details to include, what the story arc would be, how much of me and my relationship with my father needed to be included, and how much should just be about him and his life.
The kinds of memoirs I love to read are more personal than strictly biographical - as in, we get a glimpse into the emotional lives of the main players rather than just a play-by-play account of dates and events.
While basic facts need to be included, to me what’s much more interesting is the human side of the story - you know, the vulnerable messy bits that aren’t necessarily immediately obvious to outside observers.
So… with all that in mind, I took my first tentative steps and created a few pages that started to explore the very earliest memories I have of me, my dad, and our experience of art…
While these are crude and won’t ever make it into the final manuscript, these earliest efforts (done in Procreate, if you are wondering) gave me hope that with practice, solving the text problems, patience and persistence I might be able to find my way to a style/method that could tell our story in a fun way.
I’ll post some more of the early days experiments over the coming days and weeks because it’s kind of cool to see how things have already evolved even though I’ve only been working on this for a relatively short period of time.
And, of note, I wouldn’t have come even this far had I not taken those first, tentative, messy, incompetent steps.