Hi Robert and Maelle! I’m so sorry for not posting in a while, I have definitely been making huge leaps of progress since the last time I posted on here. I am currently making my book dummy on InDesign and writing in a free-form format in regards to the places or people I’m drawing to be edited and added later on. I haven’t been prioritizing color or to draw more places as I want to be able to present what I have so far in a somewhat similar format as what I imagine it to be in its final form.
I also have a question that I think having feedback from both of you might be helpful:
What do you think about adding photographs in the book? I think some pictures could compliment the drawings and provide a nice mixed media quality to my book. I was inspired by Belonging by Nora Krug and really enjoy her format of text, comic, photographs and illustrations. One of my biggest concerns with adding photos is that they are images taken on my iPhone, so I don’t want there to be an inconstancy of quality from page to page. I can definitely add some images in my book dummy so that you both can get an idea !
Below I’ve attached some text I wrote over Thanksgiving break.
As Colin and I walk up the subway stairs, he starts reciting a Marie Howe poem he memorized thats posted on one of the subway lines,
“Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment
when, nothing
happens
no what-have-I-to-do-today-list
maybe half a moment
the rush of traffic stops.
The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be
slows to silence,
the white cotton curtains hanging still.”
The cadence in his voice runs through evenly on the last line as we continue up more stairs. The M train tumbles along the tracks and we run up the last few steps to catch the doors opening on time, for the first time in a while.
Before I moved to New York, I would take the Metro-North from my hometown, at least twice a month. Before I departed the train, I always made sure I listened to one last song I really wanted to hear, attempting to fit with my entrance into Manhattan, an omen perhaps. Or maybe it was just my childish-self pretending I was in a music video, as we all have shamefully imagined at one time or another.
But now, when I return from my hometown, I still keep this tradition with myself. I am welcomed by Grand Central’s limestone interior, the turquoise ceiling, its gold-coated railings. I don’t know why I keep this tradition, listening through a song and looking up every time in the main concourse as if I too, am still a tourist. I wonder now if it comforts me to know a familiar sound underneath all of New York’s unexpected realities, covered by the terminals facade of marble and Tiffany glass.
