Fox Head Stew First Preview

I finally started scanning in Fox Head Stew!

It is the most ambitious project I’ve undertaken yet, and it’s been an entirely new experience for me to work on a graphic novel without sharing it as I go, like I did with Weird Fishes. I sneak photos of the pages and share them on Instagram and Twitter, but still, not the same as having your audience follow the story right as you create it. The feeling of keeping it all secure has been powerful, and it’s allowed the story to grow and change. This comic started off as “Dee’s Siren Song” nearly two years ago, and I’ve had to start re-drawing the earlier pages because the story and art style has changed too much. Things have become more ethereal than they were going to be originally, and I look forward to seeing people’s responses as they read it.

For now, I’m sharing something that doesn’t really give away anything: Dee and her roommate Zack watching “Breathless” in film class:

Yeah, that’s right, no text for you.

I still have a pile of pages to finish painting, and an ending I still need to draw, but I’m aiming to get it all in a somewhat-finished state by the end of the year. So in 2012 I’ll get to tell you where you can read it! I have some crazy ideas about how I want to tour the book across the country, but we’ll talk more about that later.

I’m having a great time jumping back and forth between familiar watercolors and challenging guitar strings.

I’ve gotten a few emails recently from people who found this site after reading a copy of the Weird Fishes graphic novel. In case you didn’t explore around the site, I’ve posted the full-color version of Weird Fishes right here. Also, you can get a jump on my new project by reading the pages of Dee’s Siren Song that I posted last year.

-j