Finally, after over a year since my last post, I am breaking my silence. (Has anything important happened since 2019????) It's been quite a journey, but I am putting out my graphic novel, Artie and Merlo, out to the wider world this year beginning April 1st.
All in all, the germination of the idea for the story took place about 4 years. It took about one year on pencils and then a year on ink and coloring. In all honesty, The majority of the time spent was writing, editing, drawing, revising, loving it, loathing it, getting critiques, losing all confidence, regaining all confidence, reediting, then rinse-and-repeat. Even then, if I consider how long that I've drawn and written about these two characters, the idea for Artie and Merlo, the idea of a kid being helped out by a wizard friend, goes back even further to 2010! (You can see many of these earlier iterations in this very blog.)
I guess that what I am trying to say is how amazing it is that through the twists and turns of life, the ideas and characters morphed. They changed. They grew. Now, they fully culminate into what amounts to 174 pages. It seems miniscule, but I think this goes to show that it is okay for ideas and characters to organically develop over time. Some works of art can take years to develop, rather than knocking out of the park in one shot.
I'm very excited to share Artie and Merlo to the world and I hope for more stories to come! If you're interested, you can follow the latest pages of Artie and Merlo on Instagram or read the whole story on my new blogspot: https://artieandmerlo.blogspot.com/.
MEWWWWWW! Off to fun times!
