When I first came up with the idea for Drawn To Key West, having never done any journalistic work before, I really had no idea what the structure of the comic was going to look like. Comics-journalism could follow a traditional narrative, taking the reader from point A to point B like in Persepolis. Or it could simply be a collection of meandering thoughts and experiences that help drive the overall thesis of the story, like with Flying Couch. I knew I wanted to collect the local's stories, with a heavy emphasis placed on the lives of the street performers, but I didn't really know how I was going to present the information.
Luckily, after my trip to Key West and after having interviewed some people, I had enough information to work with to get a sense of what I wanted the comic to look like.
It came to me, as most of my ideas do, as I was drifting off to sleep. I was on the airplane back to New York and snapped awake, grabbing my sketchbook and doodling away in the dark. I won't share those thumbnails with you because they are truly undecipherable to anyone other than me. But when I got home, I was able to draw some more readible thumbnails:
I laid out the framework for the intro to the comic, which ends with the spread of the map of Mallory Square. My plan is to work on these pages so when I approach other people, street performers, hopefully, the local museums and newspaper, I'll have artwork and a solid concept to show them.
So this first spread I'm working on takes you for a little history ride, featuring all the people who have inhabited or visited Key West up until present day. Key West has been home to a lot of different people and has really transformed throughout the years. According to my online research: it was first inhabited by the Calusa tribe, then the Spanish conquistadors came in (specifically Ponce de León), then it became territory for the US. Key West served as a naval base from the Union during the civil war and has continued to hold U.S. military bases. It was a favorite vacation spot for a couple of presidents, most notably Harry S. Truman. Key West has been known as a creative haven for writers like Ernest Hemmingway and Tenessee Williams as well as serving as inspiration for some of Jimmy Buffet's songs. Key West is also notable for being extremely open to the LGBTQA+ community, electing it's first openly gay mayor in the 80s. Nowadays, during it's peak seasons, the island is always bustling with tourists.
The Process
Wow, such art. Very draw.
I definitely spent more time on the overall drawing for this page than I did for the next page. This picture featured a lot of things I wanted to make sure were solid before heading on to the inking stage. I wanted to make sure I accurately represented the indigenous people of Key West and that good ol' Ernest Hemmingway and Jimmy Buffet resembled their actual selves enough. Let's go with, this is the more historically accurate page.
This page is more comprised of generic tourists that can look like whatever the heck I want them to look like so I left the pencils a lot looser. I've never been one to fear winging things in the inking stage.
This is what they look like side-by-side.
Hope you enjoyed this journey, stay tuned for more updates! As always...
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Twitter: @TheresaChiechi
Website: https://www.theresachiechi.com/