C4, 7 Sept – 2:11pm
I have just drafted the script for the second episode "DEEP BLACK". First of all, I have enjoyed the way the titles have come together, DEEP BLUE, DEEP BLACK and finally DEEP RED.
It feels good to know where the story goes even if it's only till the end of this episode – and more importantly, to see how it gets there. This has turned into a bit of a sprawling story – nowhere as sprawling as I would ideally have them, because I am a sucker for epic scale stories. But this level of expansive story with multiple characters is still very complicated for me and I have to spend the time worthy of it to make sure that the dots are lined up and the story is making sense and that it is coherent.
Deep Work (funnily enough, also a title of a book starting with "Deep") by Cal Newport has been a life-saver for me with this project. There has not been any other book that I have used as inspiration for writing this novel. I feel a kinship to people like Cal who value depth in work and thinking to achieve something that is thought through and well constructed. I am grateful for this.
The script for Deep Black is still on its draft stage – but the heavy lifting for me has always been in the coming up of the first draft. Once they are down on paper, the fine-tuning, the cleaning up and sometimes even adding scenes to it is a joy to work on. This is why I feel a sense of relief.
Drawing the pencil sketches and layout for the visual storytelling has partly been done with the writing – but the actual construction and plotting and building of the drawings will be a major work too. In fact every step in this process feels like a major work. Why do I write these stories? They may not even be great stories. Who even are these characters? Why do I feel a strange sense of responsibility to tell their story? No one would shed a tear if Bri's and Uncle Peters' stories never got told – but here I am pouring my heart and soul into these unimportant characters (unimportant in the grand scheme of things).
I've been reading Art + Faith by Makoto Fujimura and I find it encouraging that he categorises his art as "slow art". He allows his paint to dry and his material to build in layers and layers of colour, textures, waiting for cooling, drying, blending, binding, and so on. Slow art. Writing this graphic novel has felt like that too. And in between these spaces, he would collect his thoughts and contemplate on his art, on the meaning of what he does, on God, on life, on the meaning of art – and over time has built up not just a collection of art, but thoughts, meanderings, and a philosophy developed over the period of this slow art.
The temptation will be to compare the abundance or the lack of time one has when you read stories like this. We all have jobs to do, and errands to run – and it does seem like a luxury to have time to work on "slow art". I think that is a fair argument and counter-thought. But yet, I have felt this working on a comic book as one of the best example of something I can truly call "slow art". It really is slow.
For a second I found myself complaining that I don't have time to work on slow art because I don't have the luxury of a work studio, a full week time of creating a piece of art. But they're just excuses.
I have been sleeping early and waking up at 6am which is a miracle for me – and then working on this book from 7am to 9am everyday – and doing that atleast 5 days of the week. I have resolved to not do any more than this allotted time. That should be enough time. 10 hours a week. That gives me time to put in work – and then for the rest of the day while I do my "day job" I can be contemplative and think and let ideas develop. I think this is a good start.
Slow art – comics
Last week I made a timeline for my book, and thought I could write the script (draft version of the script) of the rest of the book in a couple of days. It took me four days or even five (more than double the time I thought I would need). And that is only the draft stage. I will need to layout the pages with pencil on paper. Approximated at the pace of 6 pages per day. This will be the stage where things can change and I can still revisit the draft script and re-work some scenes / direction if necessary. And then after that I would have to put down lines / ink on the pencil marks, at the pace of one page per day. You come to a point where you wonder if making timelines is even a good idea to do this. Can we even do it? Can we ever keep the timeline?
This truly is slow art. But what this affords me though is a lot of moments like this in between the pages, in between the scenes, in between the stages of the creation to sit and gather my thoughts and build a philosophy, a theology, a rationale for what I am doing – for what I feel Life is doing through me, for the ink, pencils, paper, software, materials, devices, tools that I am using and are using me through my skills and lack of it – of what worlds developed formed by my human boundaries of imagination, technical prowess and depth.
Am I a writer or drawer of the graphic novel?
I have often stopped myself to think about whether I am writing or drawing a graphic novel? The answer would be both. But it is not quite both. The story is written, but also drawn, they work together and become one and the other at the service of the story. This is what I like about what I get to do. It is a little undefinable. A little counter-typical.
Maybe the simple work "creating" is better. A creative practitioner creating a graphic novel.
Going analog
Also halfway through the book, I decided to go analog with the pencils and ink and have chosen to do the rest of Deep Black on paper. I don't know if that is a smart idea or not. I have often entertained the idea of a comic book done fully digitally as a way to embrace "the future" since I am creating a story set in the future. But that is assuming that the future is fully digital and there is no place for the ink, the paper, pencil scribbles on textured paper, paint blots, all the elements of art and drawing that you can feel with your hand – and I realised that I would hate to live in a planet where art is to be experienced only on the smooth glassy impersonal surface of a device. Paper to me has healing qualities. It reminds me, as I have browsed through many books in my dark times, bright times, that being alive and being transformed into worlds through stories is a tactile experience. Art, especially, has a terrible lack of personality when viewed on a screen. When you cannot touch the lines, the bumps of the paint, the roughness of the paper developed over its lived history, how can you trust the art?
Forget other people's works, how can I trust my own work when I cannot feel or re-live the story of how the pen or nib scratched on the paper? Sometimes I can smell the ink, the graphite, though I cannot literally smell it, I remember the smell, and that memory of the smell is the same as smelling it. I can then trust it because it is real.
I still have the original paper and art of Sirion Diaries that I must have started working on when I was age 16 or 17. That to me is worth more than I can imagine. The lines on the paper remind me of who I was – and reminds me to be that person, a true practitioner, a dreamer, a drawer, a doer.