Themed Project

Selecting a Theme

3. The Word

This is possibly the most challenging of the three options, simply because working with text or the word visually is much more difficult than working with the image or picture. For example, if you choose ‘A Place’ or ‘Imagination’, you can look at a physical reality like a person or a city or document a vivid dream you have had, and images will come into your mind simply through the act of either looking or having a picture in your mind’s eye. But when you have to translate a person, a city or a dream into words to describe it, then you have to make all sorts of decisions about language, voice and structure. Similarly, if you want to transform a poem, short story or other text into pictures, you have to identify the relevant parts of the text and change them into a visual form. However, there are many examples and precedents of writers, illustrators, designers and photographers either working with writers or visually adapting texts, books and poems.

If you choose to do this you could research the history of book illustration, from the illuminated manuscripts of the 5th century through to woodcuts, block printing, children’s book illustration and artist’s books. Or you could adapt a text by making a series of photographs to tell the same story visually. Or you could take a graphic designer’s approach and take a book and creatively examine the fonts, page layouts and other formatting and structure of the book.

For example, English artist Tom Phillips (b. 1937) set a project for himself based on his interest in “process, chance, language and the cumulative effects of multiple reworkings”. The outcome was his artists’ book ‘A Humument’ which used a Victorian novel, A Human Document by W H Mallock (London, 1892), as a starting point. Phillips isolated phrases or parts of words in the book and then
combined them with painted and collage elements to form a new narrative. Phillips worked on the project at various stages from 1966 until the entire book was filled. The complete artwork can be seen at: http://mumentwww.tomphillips.co.uk/hu​.

The first order of business was to select one of three directions for the project. The three suggested themes are: 1. A Place, 2. Imagination, 3. The Word. The unofficial theme of my previous assignments has been sequential storytelling of some form or another, so the natural decision is to select either numbers two or three. Using some brainstorming techniques from assignment 2, I mapped out some ideas.

For Imagination, the ideas I ended up liking the most were making a series of ten or so images connected by the theme of Dreaming. I thought it might be interesting to create fantastical landscapes from a world of dreams. Another idea was to draw a series of monster portraits in multiple styles of portraiture from history. The illustrations would be connected either by a character travelling across the dream-world or by chronology, in the case of the portraits. The difficulty with the idea of a series of illustrations was the presentation. Since this is a bigger project, the appropriate way to present a series of illustrations would be by framing and hanging them. Making a video slideshow simply does not feel like enough. Printing the images in book form would be more polished, but then I might as well have done a illustrated story or comic book.

For Word the obvious suggestion is illustrating a short story or poem. The important thing is to use words in harmony with the images. Keeping things digital is a more agreeable option for a comic book-style project, but I still kept the printing idea in mind. In terms of subject matter, I thought of illustrating one of Tolstoy’s fables, a Romanian Folktale, “The Grecian Urn” by Keats, and “Ozymandias”, but I eventually settled on “When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman. Choosing a poem over prose has more to do with the theme than personal preference. Toying with words typographically is easier when there are fewer of them. This poem has a good length and only one action (whereas some of my other poem ideas had far too much going on) and it also has star imagery, which would be wonderful to illustrate. Poetry is not something I read often, but this was one I had instantly related to, so it felt like a good choice.

Research and Brainstorming

I chose to work with the poem. The project notes stipulate that the assignment should not take more than ten days, therefore I would have to work with a fairly simple style. The next task was to research styles and mediums best suited for a short illustrated book or graphic novel about stars. A quick google search revealed that the poem has already been beautifully illustrated by the famous Loren Long.

Long’s illustrations tell the story of a young boy whose parents take him to a lecture hall. They are complete within themselves and tell the story without much help from the text. Since I do not own the book, I cannot really say how much he added to the poem, but the description says the story is fairly similar to the content of the poem itself except for the fact that the main character is a small boy. The poem does not state at which age the author had listened to the lecture, but one might assume he was an adult. Long presumably used a child as a main character because the book itself is aimed at children.

Poem Analysis

Leaves of Grass on Project Gutenberg

“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” was published as part of the 1867 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It is popular in anthologies of both Whitman’s work and the works of his contemporaries. Leaves of Grass was republished several times during the author’s lifetime, gaining more poems with every edition. In early editions, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” was part of the ‘Drum-Taps’ section, which had much to do with the American Civil War, but in later editions, it was published in the ‘By the Roadside’ section. While it isn’t necessarily a poem about travel, it is a poem about nature and exploring it as an individual.

The subject and approach of this poem also exemplifies Emmerson’s influence on Whitman’s work. The individualist approach to learning about nature and the elevation of its beauty over the facts and figures of matter are typical examples of the Transcendentalist philosophy which had been very popular on the eastern coast of the United States about a decade before the time of the poem’s publishing.

A Guide to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, (January 2000) Poets.Org, Available at: https://poets.org/text/guide-walt-whitmans-leaves-grass.

McGee, Tim ( October 17, 2022), Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzSDBIMbmck

McGee, Tim ( October 3, 2022), Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, By the Roadside An Intro Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YODxjkrdmDc

Next, I wrote down the poem and analyzed its structure, making notes on basic things like number of lines and the type of poetic devices it uses. Since the theme of the whole project is The Word, I took my time and analyzed the text closely. The poem is in free verse, so the device Whitman uses the most isn’t rhyme, but repetition. The free verse and first person make the text feel a little like a journal entry, or like a friend sharing a realization.  The poem has eight lines total with each line having about 9 syllables at least and 23 at most, though most lines average at about 15.

I would split the poem into two sections: The first four lines, where the speaker is still in the auditorium and the last four where the speaker has left the lecture hall to sit beneath the stars. The first section represents the confusing experience of being taught a completely new subject in the traditional university context, while the second is about rejecting said context in favor of taking the hands-on, individualist approach. The poem also exemplifies main transcendentalist idea of looking beyond materialism to find meaning and favoring the study of nature’s beauty over its scientific study.

In the first four lines the author uses “When” at the beginning of each line, using an oratorical type of repetition called an “anaphora”. This is fitting given the lecture hall setting of the first section. The author also uses words like “heard”, “sitting”, and “was shown” to emphasize the passive style of learning. He also uses enumeration of words like “proofs”, “facts”, “charts”, “diagrams”, “add”, “divide”, “measure” and “columns” to show both that he was overwhelmed by things he couldn’t understand and that this section is all about physical matter and facts.

The second section is much shorter, despite the fact that it has the same number of lines. There is no enumeration and the repetition has disappeared completely. The effect is abrupt, especially since the first line is “How” in response to the “When” of the previous lines, and the first line of this section ends on “tired” and “sick”. They are short, emotional words which contrast with the previous fact-laden section where there had been no room for emotion. Line 5 starts with “How” to show the author’s immediate negative emotional response, then line 6 starts with “Till”, giving the resolution to the “When” setup from line 1-4 and the solution to the “tired and sick” in line 5. This section is full of active words like “became”, “rising”, “gliding”, “wander’d”, and “look’d”. The author is now searching for answers literally “by myself” instead of taking in information from the “learn’d astronomer”. Though he does not look for answers in the scientific sense, or else he would have mentioned more facts and figures, instead he uses the word “mystical” to show his desire for something more spiritual rather than scientific.

There are only two words that evoke sound, both at the end of their section. “Applause” refers to the accolades received by the lecturer, and “perfect silence” which shows the meditative approach the author takes when studying his subject: the stars. This contrast shows that the answers the author was looking for could not be found in a social context, but had to be searched for alone. This is emphasized by the first and last lines of the poem:

“When I heard the learn’d astronomer,”

“Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.”

The author begins by passively hearing from an astronomer, an expert but still a second party, and ends by actively looking at the very subject of his fascination, the stars, without interference.

Leaving aside the obvious transcendentalist sentiment, the poem shows what is a common experience among those like myself who have seen the inherent poetry of stars and constellations, wanted to learn more about astronomy and became disappointed when there was so much math involved. It’s difficult to see the beauty of “proofs and figures ranged in columns” when one’s brain is more wired for more poetic, aesthetic sort of beauty.

The author might have attended a lecture far above his scientific expertise and was disappointed when he understood neither the subject or why it warranted applause, and then wandered off and was pleased to simply behold the stars as a poet rather than as a scientist. This is one interpretation of the situation, though I propose another. If the author attended a lecture not necessarily meant for experts, then the main problem can be boiled down to bad science communication. If the audience is mixed, then the lecturer has the responsibility to communicate the facts in a way that best convey the subject itself, the subject’s contextual relevance, and their own passion for it in a way that can be understood by people at multiple levels of education. I am not certain if this was a concern in Walt Whitman’s day, since science communication as a discipline is fairly new, but it certainly is something important now.

New discoveries are made every day, and information is easily accessible in the sense that one can get a hold of it, but it isn’t all accessible in the sense that the layman can understand it. Dumbing down complicated subjects and translating jargon is extremely difficult and one can easily fall into pitfalls such as oversimplification or bias, even when the communicator isn’t deliberately skewing the information. Being able to communicate science is a different skill from understanding it, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the author really did attend a lecture for a mixed audience and left confused.

For this project, I decided to use the second interpretation because I feel like it’s both relevant and unique. The other two illustrated versions of the story shown above do not necessarily interpret the poem the way I just did so I feel like I can bring my own take to the table.

After analyzing the poem, I started thinking of how to make it work visually. The story obviously needs a main character. From the poem we know that the character is (1) in a lecture hall and (2) beneath the stars. But if we want there to be a story arc there needs to be more progression than that. If we use the “bad science communication” interpretation, then the story arc could look something like this: (1) Young, inexperienced character is excited to attend an astronomy talk, (2) Character goes to lecture hall, (3) Character sits down at lecture, only to notice that he is among experts rather than peers, (4) Lecture commences, and it becomes obvious that the character cannot understand a word of it, (5) Caracter leaves, despondent, (6) Character sits under the stars, (7) The stars “call” and the character answers.

If the character carries a flyer titled something like “Let’s Talk Astronomy” or “The Universe Awaits Us All”, then it would help show that they did not wander in some advanced lecture without studying up first. Pushing some visual contrasts, like having the character wear informal clothing and the others wear formal clothing would also help with the unwelcoming atmosphere. The effect might be a bit cartoony, because I seriously doubt that there still are STEM colleges that are quite that elitist, but it would serve the message. I might even make the surrounding characters a little 19th century in style to really exaggerate the contrast.

Drawing the Comic

The format I chose to go with is a standard A4, because I had a vague hope of printing it even though present circumstances made it a bit tricky. I kept this in mind as I ordered the panels and planned where the two-page spreads would land. Perhaps I could have done more iterations of the panels I thumbnailed, but since I was short on time I made do with what I came up with initially. I spent two days on research and sketching the panels and the next ten inking, coloring and designing the covers. The inking ended up taking the longest amount of time, as can be seen in the video lengths below. Screen recording is a new trick in my arsenal, and one I’m happy to use as part of my learning log. Being able to analyze my process like this has always been something I wanted to do, and now seeing playbacks of my working process has helped me see where I could streamline things.

Drawing over thumbnails

The most efficient way to build on the thumbnail sketches is to literally build over them digitally. I scanned, edited and uploaded them to Photoshop, then started drawing the more elaborate scenes with a pencil-like brush. The placement of the words is roughly sketched in red. I didn’t pay too much attention to alignments or consistent panel sizes, the point was to make the thing exist beyond some vague squiggles. If I had had more time, there would have been a second sketching stage where I could have sorted out the anatomy and perspective problems, added more background detail, and inserted some more interesting angles. As it is, I’m fairly satisfied with the storytelling of the panels even if their execution is lacking in the final result because I chose speed over quality. At twenty-three pages plus two covers, I had to be efficient.

Arranging paneling and working with the text

At this stage, I simply chose a margin size and used the ruler to stay fairly consistent across pages. The style of the comic is loose and the panels vary greatly in size and shape depending on what action or emotion is depicted in them. Sometimes the elements escape the panels and other times I forgo boxing in the character entirely. Some pages are colored in all the way to the edge of the paper, like the two-page spreads, and others have white, unbroken margins and gutters. If the action is more focused, I tend to keep things boxed in, if the action is more dynamic the image escapes the box. That was mostly my thought process, some elements were just happy accidents.

The text of this short poem takes up very little space on the twenty-three pages of images, but it is obviously central to the project. The goal was to incorporate the text into the composition of the pages artistically. They are supposed to be a character in the story as much as the illustrated people. I tried to incorporate them in a way which is both visually harmonious, but also descriptive. I tried several fonts, and then moved them around, changed their style and size until they described their meaning visually as well, or at least fell into place in a visually interesting way. I treated some of the words more like one would treat sound effects for comics, by stretching and twisting them to obtain a visual representation of sound.

For the first section of the poem, which happens at the lecture hall and is more cerebral, I chose a clean, sans-serif font. For the second section, which happens beneath the stars and is focused on a more spiritual side, I chose a serifed, rounded font, because it looks closer to typewriting and therefore a little closer to the human hand. Handwriting (or Comic Sans) would have been the closest to the human hand, but I did not want the contrast to be quite so jarring. I tried to be creative with each word, whilst keeping legibility. Some, like “mystical” are stretched out and funny-looking, others like “columns” are a bit more literal and are arranged vertically, and yet others like “tired”, which seems to weigh on the back of the main character, interact with the image directly.

Inking

Again, the inking took the longest out of all the steps. I deliberately kept the style loose. I have never drawn a comic this long before, so my lack of experience and the fact that I was technically solving problems in ink that would normally be solved in the second sketch layer meant that the result varies from charmingly wonky to not-so charmingly wonky. It’s at this stage where the holes in my initial plan were showing the most. This step took at least twice as long as I thought it would.

I recorded the spreads separately because the inking video was already very long. The first page (technically pages 10 and 11) was a bit more spontaneous than the rest of the pages, because I ended up treating it more like a painting by covering up the selected equations and shapes with broad, gestural strokes. The page had just looked too empty, so I became a little more spontaneous with it. The second (pages 4 and 5) could use a little more work, with better perspective and more detailed background characters, but this was the best I could do for now.

Colors

The colors are flat and simple. There are already a lot of thick, dark lines on the page, and the second half with the sprawling sky already has some very bold blocking, so the pages did not need a lot of color. I kept to sepia-like tones and ended up changing the line art to a very dark blue, as it is the complementary of orange and because it looks like the night sky.

Covers

The covers are a little more detailed and cleaner than the rest of the book. In comics, it’s common for the cover art to be done by an entirely different artist whilst the comic artist themselves works on the interior, meaning that the cover artist has much more time to spend on the cover, leading to a more sophisticated image than the interior would be. I restarted the process from the beginning by thumbnailing and drawing, but I did use cut-outs from the interior pages to plan the design. I ended up choosing a design with both the sky and the equations for the front cover and a composition with a sprawling sky and a very small character who seems to be in deep contemplation for the back cover. This is meant to echo the progress of the poem from one state (intrigue, awe) to another (pondering).

Final result

Conclusion

The greatest challenge, and the thing I am most pleased about, is the fact that I did all of this within the ten day time limit. I think the final product is decent relative to my experience and the time I spent on it. There are things I would do differently, like actually putting the time to do a second sketch layer instead of inking straight on top. This might have saved me time and stress in the long run, and would have made for a better result. Being able to record myself was uniquely helpful for both presentation reasons and because I like to be able to see where I can improve on my process. Having the recording timer on also helped me stay on task better.

The drawings themselves are alright, though they did not end up quite how I had imagined them, style or quality wise. Despite the fact that I was getting inspired from images that looked very different, I still ended up drawing the way I usually draw. Which is probably for the best, because I had trouble keeping the character consistent as it was. I think the images could use some clearer poses and thinner lines, but overall, I’m just happy I managed to make them look presentable.

The text could have been pushed a little more, I think. I was undecided during the whole process on wither I should focus on keeping things easy to read and moderately invisible or whether I should push it farther and farther until one can say it is truly part of the image itself. I think this is what I might try to do for the next assignment: take a text and really distort it and paint over it and under it until it is really part of the image.

The thing on my mind during this course has been sequential storytelling, so I am really glad I got to do this comic-book style illustrated poem. I feel I learned a lot about the process, and my own ability to deliver. I would like to continue with something similar, if a bit more artsy in the next assignment. Since in this part I focused on doing a greater number of pages instead of great individual pages, I might focus instead on doing just a few images which incorporate sequential storytelling and words, without sacrificing quite so much of the quality.