(no subject)

[megaloo]

For our Youth Literacy class, we presented a group project on graphic novels. We worked in "reading circles", in which each person got a job assignment such as leader, connector, illustrator, vocabulary...er. I got to be the illustrator.

Our group's graphic novel was the first printed volume of Bayou, which is an online comic by Jeremy Love and Patrick Morgan. It's got a strong female protagonist, Lee, living in post-Civil War, pre-civil rights Mississippi. Her white best friend, Lily, gets kidnapped by a monster in the bayou, Cotton-Eyed Joe. Lee's father ends up getting blamed for Lily's disappearance. To save him from lynching, Lee must find Lily with the help of the other swamp monster, the kind Bayou. It deals with race, love and hatred, and Deep South folklore. It's extremely well done and I mean to finish it once school finishes.

Hear are my preliminary sketches of Lee and Lily:



And of Bayou, singing Blues to himself:


The finished piece in colored pencils and markers:


I tried to focus on the main characters, plus the imagery of the butterflies (the dead child Billy Glass), the mud (the dead of the bayou), and the crows (the mysterious bad guy aligned with Cotton-Eyed Joe).

And that's enough yammering from me today! :)

Comments

[staraflur.livejournal.com]

i am definitely interested in this

[katzell.livejournal.com]

oooh I love it! I particularly like Lilly, with her messy hair and shocked expression, she has so much character. I'm going to have to check out that webcomic next time I have some down time at work...this will be in approximately 3 months.