My process creating The Great Gatsby Graphic Novel
This is an overview of my creative process adapting and illustrating The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. I use a combination of digital and traditional art techniques.
Thumbnail drawings for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Original Text
Since F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books, I still owned the version I first used in my high school English class—with notes from my 16-year-old self! I quickly realized that I did not want my high school insights clouding my current reading so I ordered another edition. With a pencil in hand, I re-read The Great Gatsby several times, underlining lines, themes, or details that felt particularly important to including. I went to the book again and again during every phase of making the graphic novel to check that I was capturing the right mood for the scene.
Script & Thumbnails
After I felt I had a good grasp of the important elements of the text that I wanted to include, I then created thumbnail drawing of each page of the graphic novel. Thumbnails are little drawings—about 1.5 inches high—that help me figure out the pacing of each chapter and the overall pacing of the book. I put thumbnails of each chapter on an 17” x 11” sheet of paper so that I can see the overall flow of each chapter and the book as a whole. Concurrent to drawing the thumbnails, I also write the script detailing the dialogue and what happens on every page.
I do many versions of thumbnails and script so what I start with is actually very different than the version I end up with in the end. For instance, my first version of this book was about 40 pages shorter than the final.
Nick Carraway character design for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Character Design
I make a character sheet showing all the major characters in reference to each other in terms of size. I also make individual character sheets for all the main characters showing them standing at various angles and facial expressions. I fill pages of a sketch book drawing the most important characters so they enter my muscle memory and I don’t have to be constantly referencing my character sheets. Nick Carraway proved a definite challenge and my editors and I went back-and-forth on his design until we were happy with it. On the other hand, Daisy Buchanan’s character design barely changed from the first time I drew it.
Rough Drawings
After I have a script and thumbnails that I’m relatively happy with, I move onto making very rough hand-drawn pencil sketches of every page of the book. Working a chapter at a time, I would reread the section in The Great Gatsby that I was drawing out loud to make sure I wasn’t skipping over any details and to remind myself of the mood of a specific scene. These rough drawings, like my thumbnails, are not very attractive—they’re drawn quickly and help me figure out page compositions and where there will be issues. I just fold an 8.5” x 11” sheet of printer paper in half and draw them with a Caran d’Ache Non-Photo Blue Pencil.
Pencil sketches for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation were done in Clip Studio Paint.
Pencils
The next stage in creating The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation is my “Pencils” which I draw on the computer using Clip Studio Paint and a Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet and pressure sensitive stylus. I do these in a red color to remind me that they are not final and encourage me not to spend too much time trying to make them perfect. I prefer working digitally at this stage because I tend to make a lot of changes as I draw, and I find that digital drawing, and especially erasing, is faster than working traditionally.
Reference photo of K.Woodman-Maynard posing as Owl Eyes in The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
I then send my Pencils to other cartoonists for feedback and then to my editor and art director for their edits and additions.
Reference Photos
I frequently use photos of myself as reference when I’m struggling with a pose or a facial expression. I also use Google Image search for reference but I find doing the poses myself usually results in a faster and better drawing.
Inked pages for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation were created in Clip Studio Paint.
Inks
Reference photo of K. Woodman-Maynard posing as Daisy in The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation
Once the pencils are finalized, I move onto “Inks.” Again, I do these “Inks” digitally in Clip Studio Paint. Inking is essentially tracing over my pencil lines with cleaner lines, and flushing out the character and environment design which I might have left quite sketchy in earlier versions.
Coloring for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation was done using traditional watercolor paint
Watercolor
Once my Inks for The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation are edited and approved, I move onto the coloring stage. Using my Epson giclée printer, I print out my ink drawings onto Stonehenge Coldpress Watercolor paper. From there, I color the pages with Winsor Newton watercolor paint. After spending so much time digitally drawing, it’s a pleasure to get back to creating by hand again! I write more about watercoloring a graphic novel here.
Before I work on every chapter, I print out thumbnail versions of each page spread to test out different color options on it and save me time later on by making mistakes on the thumbnails, not on the full scale version.
I scan those pages back into the computer and in Photoshop I edit the pages to clean up the watercolor, add white in the speech bubbles and gutters, and add in hand lettered text where needed. Finally, using Adobe InDesign, I upload all my edited pages.
The typography I use is a font I created based on my handwriting that I made using the site Calligraphr and then a designer at Candlewick improved it further.