Original Art Sundays No. 361: Sharp Invitiations: Esther's Hands, p. 3

 Here we go with the next page of Mother's story.

This is another text heavy page. There's a need to communicate a lot of information in a short time to get to the part that's essential to this narrative.

While the whole family history is challenging and always full of surprises (as noted by my sisters in their genealogy research), I want to keep this about the prime foci of this book: class issues, trans issues and domestic abuse survival. To tell that story (my story), I must leave out a lot of peripheral matters, no matter how interesting they are. Distill the story to essentials.

There's also the issue of ethics. I talked this chapter over with my sister, who is very private. I will only include the names of siblings and other relatives when absolutely essential to the story. 

Art notes: I could have just used photos again here, but I wanted to spend some time hand rendering from reference. The bar scene is obviously pure speculation, since I only know in very general terms when Dad and Audrey met, and not under what specific circumstances. I debated giving her a pseudonym, but since their subsequent marriage is a matter of public record, I didn't see any point. More about her in the next chapter, the one on Dad. The point here is to quickly establish the foundation for my relationship with my Mother as it pertains to the issues in this book.

Art and process: the old school photo border on the top image isn't part of the original photo, but I think it serves the theme of the page. For the second image, I just hunted up 1950s images of officers' clubs and cocktail parties, and put together something plausible. Basic tools on this page, with almost all the lettering done in Photoshop. I went to an old device for the border on the second panel- hard rule in pencil and freehand the inked border. I haven't used that device a lot in this book, but it works here.

Next: Mother's story meets another story.

Original Art Sundays no. 360: Sharp Invitiations: Crooning (single page story)

 Okay, doing two posts today. I missed a couple weeks, partially due to a positive COVID test and dealing with my health and navigating the health care system. I'm on the mend, and have rallied enough to create more work.

First up, something more from the Curt story, or at least from that time frame. Delia and I were walking downtown in Minneapolis, and....

(giggling at the memory)

Actually, we just traded some lines from Hendrix's Hey Joe, but it works better this way. This was a nice bit of fun. It's been a while since I did a single-page gag story. I broke my own rule and used more formal tools on this: pen and ink, markers, Bristol board. When I've done these in the past, they have been freehand with ballpoint pens on typing paper. But I wanted to be a bit tighter with this one and maintain that loose airy feel. As is often the case, I second guess myself a bit on backgrounds, but I'm pretty happy with this. And it's a good gag, even with the cornball "round of applause" in panel 5. The characters in background in that panel are sketchy, much like those in some panels of Omaha.

I also wanted to give the street person respect. They don't get enough of that.

Next: back to Mother's story.