In today’s newsletter we are excited to share with you some behind the scenes moments during the designing and creation of our forthcoming graphic biography about Gertie Austin, Max Littlesalt’s wife.  So much work and energy goes into the making of the biographies from the many family members, writers, editors, artists, beta testers, website developers and more. We thought we would share some pieces of this process with you while we finalize the website.  The process of creation began with Madi Fair who, in addition to heading up all of our Production and Social Media, is also a photographer and illustrator.  We asked her to write, design, and create this latest online graphic biography website.  

Above is Madi Fair’s breakfast nook which doubled as an art table for the past 6 months. She borrowed her mother’s light box, upgraded her watercolor set and made sure she had fresh drawing pens ready to go. 

One of the first steps in creating the biography was gathering together of all of the information we had about Gertie from her family. Lithuania Denetso has been our fantastic source for family history and has shared with us hours of audio, video and photographs to help us get a clearer picture of who Gertie was. Part of the challenges with this are that many of Gertie’s children are late in life and do not have many clear memories of her. It is also Navajo tradition not to speak of those who have passed away, and many people still abide by this tradition. 

Photographed above was the next step after gathering all the information we could. Madi set out to create a rough storyboard with important information and sketches of what each page would look like. This is also where she brainstormed ideas on how to make this biography visually interesting and special. As you can probably guess, the final outcome will look only partially like the original storyboard.

Madi created many of the drawings in the graphic biography by tracing over an image using the light box and making the simple image more visually appealing by adding crosshatching and detailed linework.

Madi really wanted this graphic biography to feel like an old scrapbook and did a couple of things to get this affect. She chose watercolors that reminded her of desert sunsets and sunrises and painted these colors onto watercolor paper. She then drew little scalloped frames and cut them out by hand; once scanned they could be used throughout the book in different ways.

Madi also tested out many nude and beige watercolors to find the perfect aged parchment color. After painting a full piece of paper this color, she scanned it and then used it as the background for each page. This gives a consistent feel and adds to the texture of each page.

Madi specifically created all of these drawings and design pieces by hand, because she wanted the graphic biography to feel textural and like a real scrapbook would feel from the early 1900’s. She then scanned these design elements and was able to move the components around the different parts of the graphic biography digitally to see where they would fit best. She particularly likes how you can see some shadows, creases and imperfections with the scanned items, that you wouldn’t normally see with digitally created designs. The illustrated numbers pictured above were also created by Madi. She is using them to create dates for each page. Because this story begins in the early 1900’s she felt it was important to really emphasize how long ago the story took place.

As you make your way through this latest graphic biography—  anticipated in the new year—we hope you will appreciate the detailed work that went into it. Stay tuned—you’ll be reading it very soon!