Thursday, June 18, 2009

Deryni Sequential Art




I have come to the end of transcribing my Deryni art to digital formats. At least, the end of my Deryni painted art. There is one more set of pictures which I have not transcribed yet. This is a series of nine pages that I did illustrating a very early story by Katherine Kurtz that was published in the 1970s. It is "sequential art" which is fancy mediaspeak for a "comic book" or "graphic novel." I started this graphic in the early 90s and worked on it here and there. The latest pages are from 2003, I believe. After that, I have not worked on it. The Deryni graphic is in black and white, pen and ink on Bristol board, which would make it easier to publish. 

The title is "Swords against the Marluk" and refers to an incident in the life of King Brion (Kelson's father) and his young squire, Alaric Morgan (whom you've seen as a grown-up in a couple of these postings). Alaric is fourteen but already has plenty of magic powers. In the story, Alaric must unleash the magic which was encoded in an heirloom silver bracelet, which will endow King Brion with the magic powers which every Haldane king eventually gets. The excerpt here depicts Alaric thrown to the ground by an explosion of magic, while King Brion and his brother Prince Nigel look on in shock. The round snarling face is a close-up of a metal cloak fastener which will become an important prop later in the story.

I have not been able to work on this for years, yet I really want to. Believe it or not, the art I do which I value most is my graphic work, i.e. comic books with frames and word balloons. I do other stuff because I can sell it. If I had loads of money and didn't have to work on day job and stuff, I would devote myself to these high-level graphic stories, despite their lack of "profundity" and non-profitability. You have seen a little of what I can do with my Noantri architectural series. I have lots more in that direction that I want to illustrate. 

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