Finding Katya

A GRAPHIC NOVELLA

Finding Katya began as a graphic novel, basically a story in a comic book format. Almost all of it has been sketched together in pencil form with very rough draft text. When the ink work started I found that ruling all the panels, drawing speech bubbles with leaders and drawing at least six illustrations per page was going to be tough for these 77 year old eyes. That’s a lot of precise inking. I decided to go with fewer illustrations per page and make them larger. Gouache seemed like a good idea, like little paintings. After a few of those, my detail work didn’t meet my expectations. I went back to ink and watercolor (mostly). I took a look at some of my favorite books and comics. Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee stood out, as did Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant pages. I am no Brian Froud or Hal Foster, but I’m using some of their approaches to put this projet together. Some things are very likely to change as we go along. What I’ll post here will be a mixture of edited second draft and unedited first draft as it is written. A lot of the art may change. The final work, some months and possibly a couple of years, down the road is intended to be printed in a 6″ x 9″ book format.

I’m having fun. I hope you will enjoy going on this journey with me.

~Ralph Parker

^ ^ ^

In the days of the Great Forests, people built their houses and their villages on the edges of the woods, often building under the trees, but close enough to the open grasslands to enjoy the sunshine and plant gardens. They ventured into the woods to gather edible foliage and fruit, to hunt game, and to cut logs to use for building.

They didn’t often go very deep into the forest. Sometimes stories were told about people hearing what sounded like voices, almost like whispers, speaking but never quite understood. Most people laughed at those stories, saying those who told them were imagining things, that the sounds of the trees overhead were playing tricks on them. Although my mother had told some of those stories to me as a child, as I grew older I became one of those who laughed.

And then one day I discovered those voices were real.

My name is William Sawyer and this is my story.

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