Graphic Novel about Tea (Work in Progress)
On one of our summer love days, (a trip to the beach for a swim and then a jaunt around Bexhill-On-Sea), my cohort made the fatal error of refusing to accompany me for a cup of tea.
Here, I try and write movingly and from the heart about how it made me feel. (I mean the line about being a fluffy pea)
I decided that the fluffy pea line wasn’t attention seeking enough (evidence shows I made notes from Gardeners World only hours later) so I’ve threatened to turn The Tea Withholding into a full length graphic novel. Here are the sketches so far:
Next: a bit about growing up with tea, history of tea and stuff about origins and feminism and politics and that, early tea traumas, climax being when I nearly died through lack of tea, grande finale – the recovery.
This would be better but I’ve run out of time again. Here’s my rant:
RANT
Here’s why I don’t post more. I have about 30 minutes a day to do stuff like this. I usually photograph my sketchbook on my phone but decided to scan instead.
1. I can’t use a computer. So it took about 15 minutes to get my scanner to autoscan and about 7 minutes to work out how to edit the image. I ended up turning the image into a PDF and editing it that way. Also, each image was upside down. I suppose I could have learnt after the first one..
2. WordPress wouldn’t let me upload any of the images onto a new post or even write any text. Is that because i saved them as PDF’s? Anyone? So I’ve resorted to this
A) email the PDFs to myself
B) open them on my phone, take a SCREEN SHOT of them, trim them in ‘photos’ and save
C) continue posting from my phone as usual
ISN’T THERE ANOTHER WAY?
Comments on "Graphic Novel about Tea (Work in Progress)"
ooh dear – for what it’s worth i like the photos of the sketchbook, you get the texture of the paper too, depends on your plans for this of course, but if you’re doing anything else with them you could just scan at that moment in one go
if you have photoshop or photoshop elements (the much cheaper version that comes bundled with graphics tablets sometimes) you can scan direct from there (file menu, import, then scan or TWAIN32 sometimes, might be TWAIN64 in this modern 64 bit age).
plus if you photograph the book you can do amusing things in the background.
the no infuser command made me laugh.
Thank you Adam, that’s all very useful and entertaining as usual. I really regret posting my rant now, I look so petty and ungrateful. It baffles me how computers make things 90 times more complicated than photocopied fanzines ever were but that’s because I am computer illiterate. For example, I’m not entirely sure what these things are: meme*, server, upload, PDF, RAM, arse, elbow. I DO know what a motherboard looks like but I can’t imagine one of those enormous green things with diodes and switches is inside my iMac. (*= I could probably work it out under duress – if being tortured – but might not get full marks in an exam. These are the criteria I use to spur myself on, during crosswords for example or medical emergencies)
i’ve seen people collage things then scan the whole page and use that before – normally looks nice.
Meme is a name given to a clichéd image that is frequently used in images as a cheap gag.
Internet memes are the lifeblood of B3ta messageboard.
http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/memequake/
server is a computer that people don’t use directly – sit and type at for instance, but it sits connected to a network and does stuff for them – storage, printing, email, and web pages
mostly when people say it nowadays they mean “teh computer that my website lives on” – it is switched on 24/7 and “serves” pages to people when they request them (by clicking on links) – websites like google live on thousands of servers held in data centres – a well set up server can handle hundreds of page requests per second.
upload is the opposite of download – you upload blog posts to your server – or wordpresses by the looks.
pdf stands for portable document format – it’s a way for people to create electronic documents that include pics and always look the same – pdf is also the way some printers like you to supply books – but you should always ask a printer how they want your digital artwork before you start to save time & money – they will often charge upwards of £50 an hour to correct it.
ram is “random access memory” – it is where your computer puts things while it is working on them, when you switch the computer off the ram is cleared ready for next time. if you want to do too much your mac starts storing temporary info on the hard drive instead – this slows your mac down as it “swaps” back and forth
macs always ship with an unsatisfying amount of ram – this is a ploy to make you buy more, apple charge 2 or 3 times the market rate for extra ram chips but you can get it cheaper from http://www.crucial.com/uk/ if your mac is slow more ram will speed it up – also replacing the hard drive with a solid state drive will speed it up more, this is much cheaper than buying a new mac.
Adam, this is unbelievably helpful, thank you. I’m now regretting selling my old ibook, maybe I could have giving it a new lease of life with the extra ram. I’ll do that next time. Yes, collage is lovely, I shall have a go
I agree 100 percent. I used to do a little fanzine called…as a matter of fact… The Flying Teapot…
and it was just typewritten and literally copied and pasted together and it was easy and fun. I wouldn’t even attempt it on a computer.
ANYWAY YOU DO IT IS FINE WITH ME! AND DO IT AT YOUR OWN PACE. The longer your fans wait, the more we appreciate. And this one was well worth the wait indeed!!!!
And now I need a cuppa.
when I used to ‘work’ for (‘was employed by’) patchings the builders (long defunct) in BRIGHTON a lot of the time we used to HIDE in teashops. So I learned all about the teashops of brighton. however this was in the mid 1980s so I expect it’s all different now
I have several teapots….I always take one to France when I go…..and I have a teacosy(!!!???) which matches my curtains………..but mostly I drink coffee! xxx
Now I regret telling you to take your time with these posts. Woke up this morning… made my tea. And thought, “Gee I hope there’s a new comic strip today from Jo”. Forget what I said… we want these daily!!