Worth the Wait

Late in the afternoon yesterday I took a ride up to Home Depot to pick up a few needed items:  a new piece of wood to replace the one I cut up for students the other day, some coarse grain sandpaper, and couple of wooden drawer pulls.  The last items are for use in printing.  Many years ago I was teaching a workshop at PCNJ and one of my students brought one with them, having used one in college as a printing tool.  I bought a couple of small ones shortly after and found it helpful for printing small details.  Definitely worth the 80 cents I paid for each.  Somewhere along the way one went missing, but the one I still have has been helpful for printing hundreds of my own proofs, plus dozens of college student prints, and now it gets passed from artist to artist in my local workshops.  The Belmar workshop starts up again next week, so I figured it would be good to have a few more.  They didn't have the same type that I had bought years ago, so I picked up one that was a little smaller, and one a little bigger.  I'll give them a try next week.

Next stop was to drop by the Studio, where I added the new piece of wood to my supply pile, and used the new sandpaper to sand the edges of the 24 small blocks that I cut the other day.  Those came home with me.

Along the way I had gotten word from my parents that a package for me from my friend Dave had arrived at their house, so I went there next.  I knew this was coming, but didn't realize it would be so soon.  Dave has been involved in a major project for almost a decade, a graphic novel biography of the Carter Family.  Dave and another Seattle based comics creator, Frank Young, got the idea early last decade, and produced and published a sample chapter.  It was admired, but didn't result in anything right away.  In 2007, Dave followed the example of many other comic producing friends and got an agent, put together some more samples with Frank, and this all led to a book deal with a comics division of Harry N. Abrams publishing.  Work began in earnest in late 2008 (I wrote about it back then) and it's been a long slow process, with some factors beyond their control.  But then this is no little comic book, but a hardcover book of almost 200 pages, called Don't Forget This Song.  Mostly it was Frank doing the writing and Dave doing the art, though each helped with the other task.  (for example, it seems Frank did most of the coloring, and an excellent job of it in my opinion)  I'm looking forward to putting together some undistracted time so I can sit down and enjoy it, maybe while listening to the accompanying disc of rare Carter Family radio recordings to create the right atmosphere.  Dave and Frank kept a blog about their creation of the graphic novel, including previews of many pages, looks at alternative artwork, stories of related interest, and now links to some of the great reviews the book is getting.  So check that out, then go get yourself a copy of the book.