114 Writing the Graphic Travelogue

It is a bit as the dilemma about the chicken or the egg: which came first. I made the story Destination Iligh out of sketches without text. Now that Bert is back in Amsterdam for a while, it is all about text. She liked the story, but the outline for the text doesn't quite follow the ramblings of the sketches. It also has to do with the material and the sources. There is little sketch material about some subjects where there is an abundance of text sources. How to balance sketches and text, that is the question. Nothing comes easily. In the sketch: the first meeting between Bert and me and the Imam and Fatima Aboudmiaa. Love for Egyptian Movies and Soaps was the common denominator that opened the door for friendship.

113 Sketches galore

The original Graphic Travelogue called 'Destination Iligh' was only 4 pages. It was supposed to go into a 'Cahier' Bert was making about Iligh with contributions of different experts. Bert and I were going to do 'something' together. She was doing the text, me the drawings. The 'something' had come to nothing yet. We both were busy with other things. i had given it some thought though and when I needed to 'play' as part of recovery I thought this was a good place to start. It turned out, I had given it already so much thought that it didn't take much time to fill up 4 pages with sketches. Each page of basic A4 size was forming one chapter. There were 4 distinct chapters: View of Iligh from 4 sides, The court, Imam and the Museum and Foreign (in particular Dutch) Interest in Iligh. That done I was eager to continue. Bert was away on the Orkneys. The text had to wait. I decided to add 4 more pages. Highlighting the itinerary to Iligh and Michiel de Ruyter's expeditions to Iligh. That made 8 pages. I discovered that keeping the strickt regime of one page one chapter, I could endlesly extent the story line of the Graphic Travelogue adding pages on ways to travel, slaves, the environs of Iligh, the family Aboudmiaa and flora and fauna. This sketch depicts the wondrous landscape on the mountains between the Rout N ! and Iligh.

112 Starting a Graphic Travelogue

As I will be recovering from surgery for some months and as I need daily care, I'm stuck in Amsterdam and won't get around much, let alone go anywhere soon. This state of affairs I've been anticipating for some years now. That is why I was doing so much traveling and so much sketching. In 1993 we (a group women of which I was one) organized a week long conference on 'a gay old day' (een vrolijke oude dag). One of the organizers worked a lot with the 'Intranet'. At the time it was a cyber network of universities. The World Wide Web wasn't really up and working yet. But we sensed it wasn't far away either. We asked Marleen Stikker who was setting up an email network provider (dds) for the city of Amsterdam to give a talk about the future importance of computer networks when being old and possibly infirm. Well, it all became reality. Being infirm and older for me means I can play. I have hundreds of sketches, I have Photoshop, my own font and I have the time. I'm playing now with the sketches I have made in the last 6 years in Southern Morocco and in Iligh in particular. Of course the graphic story about Iligh is still 'in progress' if not exactly 'having come to a grinding halt'. Doesn't matter: I have now the time to compose a 'Graphic Travelogue'. This sketch of 'Goats in an Argan Tree' is composed of two different drawings.

82 In search of the ‘Salamander’

The most important reason for visiting Vlissingen was to sketch the model of Michiel de Ruyter’s ship the ‘Salamander. De Ruyter commandeered ships of Cornelis Lampsins and war ships of the Admiralty, but only once he had stood on his very own decks. That was on the Salamander when he traded with Morocco and the Caribbean. I knew the MuZeeum (MuSeaum) had a model in its collection. So there I went. The front desk of the museum is manned by volunteers. They had heard about De Ruyter’s ship but it didn’t ring a bell that the museum should have a model. They were most helpful but further than a printout of the model from a general maritime site they didn’t come. I was stunned. They called the back office. There were the professionals, but everyone was out to lunch. If I could wait? Of course I could, I chatted a bit with the volunteers and took a tour of the museum. The museum is set up in three parts: the new building next to the Lampsins House and behind the Lampsins warehouses. It is a huge complex over three floors, a cellar and an attic. Between the Lampsins House and the warehouses were glass encaged galleries. Here I found among other gable stones a very big one representing a ship that looked like the Salamander except that it had sails two stories high instead of three and it was rigged out as a war ship with two rows of cannons. I decided to draw the stone as it was nicely detailed. One of the volunteers had an interesting comment. He said that the Salamander was only a small ship. Regular VOC vessels had up to 250 men on board, but the Salamander would only carry 50 men or so. Half way on my tour somebody came down from the offices to tell me that indeed the model was in the museum, but it was not on view. Later Gabrielle Baumann the director of the museum came to see me. I explained I wanted to draw the model for the purpose of using it in a graphic story about Dutch contacts with Iligh. She told me she couldn’t let me into the museum’s warehouse. I had to write a letter and the board would than take it in consideration. I did and I haven’t heard from her or anyone else since.

71 Paolo de Mas

Paolo de Mas was one of the Dutch experts who didn’t come to the Reunion Des Amis d’Iligh. He had prior engagements. However he was one of the Dutch connections with Iligh. All through the preparations for the Iligh project he also had been extremely helpful. Chapter 5 of the Graphic Story that had to deal with Paul Pascon had him as the protagonist. We had boldly made that choice although we didn’t have a clue what he had really done during Pascon’s stay in Iligh. He wasn’t on the cover of the book. Herman van der Wüsten was as was Daniel Schroeter and Mohammed Tozy. Bert set up a meeting with him in the ‘1ste Klasse Wachtkamer’ at the Amsterdam Central Station for May 8. Before we went we read up on him. There was an in depth interview with him and his brother on the Internet. He was the son of Italian immigrants who came to Alkmaar in the Thirties and started an ice-cream parlour there. Paolo and his brother were second-generation immigrants. When he went to school in the fifties and sixties other waves of immigrants came to the Netherlands: Italians, Spanish, Yugoslavians and from the early sixties onwards Turks and Moroccans. According to the interview on the Internet Paolo keeps close ties with the village of his parent’s birth in the Dolomites. He visits it at least once a year and takes part in the community. He also cherishes his diploma Professional Ice Cream Maker. From childhood on he was fascinated by maps and geography. When he went to study at the University of Amsterdam he chose Social Geography. His professor there was Willem Heinemeijer and that man had a great influence on Paolo’s life.

Gaining confidence

I watched a show on Belgian TV in which the Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang was asked if being able to play a piano concerto faultlessly is possible because of hard work or talent. He conceded that talent and inclination were of course prerequisite conditions. He flexed his fingers and said: 'I just practiced for three hours on the piano and my fingers feel really soft and nimble now.' He pinched his rather pudgy fingers tenderly. 'This feeling in my fingers gives me confidence. I can play anything now without any difficulty.' He went on to say that it was like digging for gold and finding a vein. The harder you dig, the deeper you can penetrate into the vein till a whole mountain of gold opens up for you. I know that this is the same for me. The work I did in the last couple of years as a Urban Sketcher under all circumstances and anywhere at all has made it able for me to feel confident. I know I can sustain a production of drawings that is enough to compose a graphic novel from. The only doubt I had was access. I didn't want to have to spent ten days scratching the surface not being able to get to any vein at all. On the plane to Agadir we discussed a plan B.

The birth of an idea

On November first 2016 Bert and I flew back from Agadir to Amsterdam. The plane was full and not having a seat booked we were placed far apart from each other. It is a four hour plus flight so I had plenty of time to think over our meeting with Aicha. Yes, I would like to come back to Iligh to make drawings especially if Bert could come along. Of course we would have to pay our own fare, but if we could stay there and we could do our own cooking that would make things a lot cheaper. Bert could do research into those mysterious documents and I could draw. And then I got the idea for a graphic story. We could make the history of Iligh come alive if we told the story from the point of view of Aicha's father as a young boy. Start at the time that the film crew from the Alliance Israélite came to Iligh to film in the Mellah. That must have been a life changing experience for a ten year old. Him being the crown prince having to witness that the spotlights were turned instead on the scruffy kids from the narrow dusty alleys. That would make a great intro. From there the story could revert back to the time that Michiel De Ruyter did business with the first Aboudamiaa trying to sell Dutch hats and sides of smoked pork to a Muslim ruler. When the plane landed I thought I had it all in the bag. Bert wasn't adverse to the idea, but wanted first to see if there was any interest in the Netherlands for a story on a little chiefdom on the edge of the Sahara.

Balancing text and image

I was going to split up the book I had written about Morocco and divide it in different graphic stories. First I was going to do a try out. I would take Tangiers. Tangiers was easy I thought. There I had made many sketches in one neighborhood the Bab Teatro district. It is full of stories both contemporary and historic that are also interesting for people who would never go to Morocco. I wrote the text. It was too much really compared to the drawings I had. Next question could I make extra sketches from photographs? Was that 'cheating'? Rework portraits of historic people featured in the story and taken from the internet? Did I have to draw the story? Or could I just stick to the random sketches I had made of the neighborhood? Could the images be totally separate from the content? Wouldn't it become an illustrated book instead of a graphic story? Did it matter either way? I didn't find a solution. In the end I decided to go back to Tangiers to make more sketches in the Bab Teatro district and to have them correspond with the content of the text. The graphic story about Iligh Bert Hogervorst and I were going to make was by that time already on the cards. It turned out that on the next trip to Morocco I could combine a visit to Iligh with a stay in Tangiers. Bert and I would go to Iligh before we would go to Tangiers where Bert was going to meet a group she would take on a train trip through Morocco. I would stay on in Tangiers for another week to make more sketches.The distance between Iligh and Tangiers is enormous, but with the use of busses and trains it could be done with ease in two days. It turned out we did it in 24 hours.

From analogue to digital and back again

By the time I got into professional cartooning I already had a Mac, a flatbad scanner and knew how to use Quark Express for DTP. Life changed completely in the late nineties with the introduction of Adobe Photoshop and the Wacom tablet. As a cartoonist and illustrator working solely for clients I rarely did comics. If I was asked to make graphics for a manual I still did it in pen and paper. All the afterwork I did in Photoshop using an A3 Cintiq Wacom tablet. By the time I was ready for a career change hardly any of my work got printed. Everything was digital and increasingly 'made for' tablets and smartphones. I noticed that most of the artists in my acquaintance who made graphic stories still made them for the printing press. Although most of the work in creating the graphic story was done on the computer. Initially I did the same. When by 2013 I seriously got into Urban Sketching I reverted totally to pen and paper. By that time there was already excellent software available for making quick high quality sketches on an Ipad or any such tablet or even a smartphone. Maybe it was for sentimental reasons, or even financial reasons or just plain laziness that I went back to the sketch block. I don't know. Although in prioritizing my expenses an Ipad never featured large. In any case the sketches I had made in Syria were made into a proper book that was published in 2015. The beautiful lay-out had been done by a colleague that knew how to use Illustrator and Indesign something I never took the time to master. In 2015 I was also preparing to put the sketches I had made in Morocco into a book and I had already written 98% of the text. But something was nagging.

From paper to tablet

Graphic Stories were designed and executed on paper. First came the story (typed or handwritten). Then paper was cut to the size of twice the page. With a pencil a template of frames was composed. Next the action and text was drawn also in pencil. Changes could be made by applying an eraser. When satisfied with the pencil sketch the pen and ink came out. In my case a pen that I dipped in a pot of Indian Ink. If a mistake was made white paint was painted over the black ink to blot out the offending bit. If the mistake was of major proportions the scissor came out to cut away the botched up frame(s). The new frames were then drawn on a separate piece of paper and fitted in the hole with the use of glue. Colour was added on a different piece of paper that was put over the original drawing that was put on a light box. Grey shading came from prefab sticky screens of dots. The same applied for stick-on fonts. A screen with dots of the desired density was put over the drawing (on the light box) and cut to size with a surgical knife and then stuck on. It had all to do with how the end product was processed at the print works. It was labour intensive to say the least. If you think I learned these procedures at the college of art, you're wrong. Graphic stories were not seen as art and therefore not taught. I taught myself after I left school, talking to friends and by browsing through shops specialized in artists materials. This way of making graphic stories came to an end with the introduction of the personal computer.

The little matter of lettering

The written text in a graphic story is often as important as the images. It is expected that the graphic artist also has a good hand in writing out the letters of the text. Not me! I was never any good at lettering. I was so bad that the publisher of 'Moord in Iran', my graphic novel set in Iran decided to hire somebody to write the text into the balloons and frames. Unfortunately his style of lettering didn't correspond with my style of drawing at all. It was a hard lesson. No more pussy-footing. From then on I taught myself to write well. In the 20 or so years I worked as a cartoonist I did a lot of lettering. It became second nature to me. However after I was 65 I noticed that my lettering became more shaky. All my life my hand had had these funny little spastic jerks and trembles. For and outsider it often looked horrifying to see me DIY-ing. On paper I had never trouble drawing a straight clear line. But after a certain age the jerks and trembles also started to appear on paper. In particular in my lettering. As a cartoonist I would draw straight on paper, scan it and if necessary work it out in Photoshop on the computer. Actually more and more of the actual work was done on the computer. Why not have a font made of my own lettering? There is software you can download for free that makes a Font out of your writing. You print out a template and draw in with a marker the alphabet. Not me. I couldn't get my jerky, shaky hand to write into the small frames on the template. The letters were all over the place. I had to hire somebody to make a font out of my lettering. It didn't come cheap, but it was just in the nick of time.

The Life of Alie Snoek

In the late eighties I approached the poet/writer/magazinist Sjuul Deckwitz with the request to 'do' something together. It resulted in the graphic novel 'Alie Snoek mijn leven' (The life of Alie Snoek). Originally it appeared page by page in the magazine of Dutch comic/actor/play-write Paul Haenen. Later it was collected into a book. Ali Snoek was the first project I did together with somebody else. Later I would work together with another cartoon artist but never with a poet/writer. Because Sjuul Deckwitz at the time had a very distinct and original style of writing, I left the initiative to her. She wrote the text and I would make it into a graphic story. She communicated with Paul Haenen about when the next deadline was, wrote a little story about something in the life of Alie Snoek and dropped it into my mailslot. We never communicated about either the graphics or the story. It turned out to be gas! I thought Sjuul's stories absolutely brilliant. And she liked my renditions. I never found it difficult to turn her text into images. After the first page (on view here The Death) I never kept to the literal story. I let the drawings tell a parallel story to the text. From the beginning I left the text intact and wrote it under the frames in full. No Balloons. No frames within the action frames. It worked! Of course it wasn't a totally new way of telling a graphic story but to me it was. However it was also the last graphic story I did. I got very much into the business of cartoon making working for clients and earning good money. I had nor the time or the inclination to continue with 'free work'. Until I went to Syria and started 'Urban Sketching'. But that is another story.

How I made a Graphic Story

Tintin by Hergé has always been the seminal graphic story for me. There was Tintin and then came the rest. Tintin has everything: a good well-written story, interesting story lines, lovable characters, hilarious jokes, beautiful graphics and lots of tongue in cheek action. However the most amazing thing about Tintin was that although it was written in French by a Wallon and set in Belgium, it translated without any problems into totally different languages and still be culturally recognizable. How strongly unique Hergé's touch had been became evident when Steven Spielberg made a animated film of the graphic story: it became just an other thirteen in a dozen action movie. Tintin deeply influenced me. That was how a graphic story was made and should be made. Of course the medium had evolved, but the basics stayed the same. Between 4 to 9 frames on a standing page of around A4. The page was read from the top to the bottom from left to right. All the action happened inside the frames. The dialogues if there were any, were put into so called Balloons. Additional description got their own frames inside the action frame. Sometimes one picture could be cut into more than one frame while the action progressed. Ideally the story should have a bit of a cliff-hanger at the bottom of the page to encourage further reading. The storyline could also be for a book or movie. It had a hero (or in rare cases heroine), a villain and supporting actors and actresses. It had a problem, mystery or challenge that the protagonist had to solve and bring to a good end. It had two plot points when the hero had an epiphany that would put the story into a different gear. And that was how I made my graphic stories.

Letterlijk & Figuurlijk by Joost Pollmann

When Bert came to Ireland in the summer of 2017 she brought a Dutch language book with her: Letterlijk & Figuurlijk (Literally & Figuratively) by Joost Pollmann. It was the precursor of 'De Strip Professor'(The Professor of Comics)a bundle of 50 essays on different aspects of 'telling a story in images'. In that anthology Joost also included a few lines on me and my 'Urban Sketching' in particular the sketches I made while in ICU after a cardiac event. When I got home from hospital I reworked them on the computer into a graphic story using Photoshop software. Curiously enough Joost had headed the essay in which I featured: 'After Photoshop'. The book had been an eye-opener for me. I had used the medium of comics on and off to tell a story since I was 13 years old and over the years had published three graphic novels. It turned out: I didn't know a thing about the medium. In 'Literally & Figuratively' Joost puts the medium under the microscope. What is a comics/graphic story? Is it literature, is it art, is it film or is it nothing more than 'The Funnies'? Joost concludes: it is a separate medium, should be treated as such and should have its own academic platform. Which it hasn't even though it exists since the invention of the printing press. The title refers to the dual aspect that is so unique to a comics/graphic story: the written word and the imaging. It also refers to how the story is told. Is it told in a literal manner keeping close to a story line as for instance in literature? Or is it a bit like art: an expression in images and maybe words of an idea or emotion or just some vehicle for the use of materials and skills? In Dutch the title also refers to lettering. An important aspect of the medium as it is usually an integral part of the image and isn't conceived or printed separately. Anyway the book shook up my idea of how the graphic story about Iligh could take shape.