F&Gs in for Seth Bullock

Well, we received the F and Gs (folded and gathered pages) for the new South Dakota Biography, Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman by David A. Wolff.

F and Gs basically give us a sense of the actual book without it being in final bound format. So the pages are folded in the manner they will be in the final book and gathered together to be in order. This is the final piece of the puzzle before the actual books arrive in the warehouse. The prediction at the moment, assuming that the bad weather leaves South Dakota as quickly as possible, is that we’ll have the printed books in hand by the end of next week.

Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman is the first book to be published this year for the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

Peter Norbeck excerpt

Continuing our look inside South Dakota history books, today we’re bringing you a short excerpt from Peter Norbeck: Prairie Statesman by Gilbert C. Fite, published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

“Having regained his strength, Norbeck took the Senate floor a few days later in support of the debenture plan. He gave a detailed discussion of the causes of the farm depression and argued that increased production was not the principal difficulty. He declared that production had not kept pace with population advances and that it would be impossible for the farmer to restrict production of wheat, for instance, only to domestic competition, as it was being advocated in some quarters. Farmers, he said, needed a better price and not more advice from city editors! He insisted that the debenture scheme would not give the farmer equality, but that it was a move in the right direction. The nature of his address was more political than economic. He discussed the Kansas City convention and the defeat suffered by the farmers there. Finally, he stated that he would oppose Hoover’s farm plan even if he had to stand alone.”

Illustrator Susan Turnbull writes about her work on The Raccoon and the Bee Tree

The Raccoon and the Bee Tree by Charles A. Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman will be published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press later this year. This one-hundred year old story has been illustrated by contemporary South Dakota artist Susan Turnbull. Susan recently took a moment to reflect on the process of illustrating this book.

I began the process of illustrating The Raccoon and the Bee Tree last summer. As is usual these days, I jumped on the internet and searched for a copy of the story. The South Dakota State Historical Society Press had issued a request for art submissions for a new children’s book and I was hoping to be considered for the illustration job.

I found what I was looking for, and Grampa and I read it with our three grandchildren sitting on a hill near the Buffalo Roundup in Custer State Park last Fall. We all loved the story. Full of action, surprises and lots of emotion, we thought it was very funny, and we talked about the lessons the raccoon had learned.

As an artist, I connected with the story and immediately had a flood of pictures come into my mind. I thought the blissful little raccoon hopping through the grass, landing on the family of skunks was very funny and wanted to draw it right away. I also enjoyed the absolute joy and happiness that the raccoon experiences as he discovered the honey, covering himself with all that stickiness. That created a strong visual for me.

The other scene that I had an immediate visual response to was the bee stinging the raccoon’s ear and the freaked out raccoon jumping straight up in pain. The leaf covered raccoon seemed to make for a funny visual too.

I chose to use these three visuals and sketched the happy raccoon covered in honey, getting stung, and covered in leaves to submit to the South Dakota State Historical Society Press for consideration. Imagine my delight when I received the call telling me that they had selected me to illustrate this book.

The first step started when I received the final manuscript. The editors at the SDSHS Press told me that the process of producing the book would be conducted in conjunction with an art director and book designer who had designed and produced the other three books in this series. After receiving the art director’s manuscript with suggested text breaks to make a 32 page book I made a small dummy of the book and drew out my layout ideas very roughly to see how my visual ideas fit with his. We went back and forth with layout and image ideas before the basic layout was approved. At that stage I began the tighter pencil sketches that I would actually use as a basis for the final illustrations.

The next thing I did was spend several weeks researching the animals mentioned in the story as well as photos of the flowers and trees that might be part of this prairie scene. I started from page one and drew each spread. Some of the drawings turned out as I had envisioned, others had to be redrawn until I was satisfied with the layout. As I was producing these pencil layouts, I would scan them, put them together in spreads and then email them to the art director for approval. He would contact me with approval or make suggestions for changes.

Once we agreed on the basic pencil drawings, the art director put them together with the type. Then I made a few alterations to help the type fit better, as he also moved some of the type to better accommodate the artwork. There was a lot of re-doing and re-drawing until we got something that we both like.

The layout was then sent to the SDSHS Press for their approval. We went through the same process to design the book covers. After a few tweaks and final adjustments we were ready to start working on the full color art, starting with the cover. That is the art the publisher wants first to help promote the book, giving prospective readers a feel for what is “coming soon!”

To get the sketches on to fine art paper for the final illustration also takes time. I use a graphite transfer paper, trace over my final pencil art and the image is then lightly transferred to the art paper. Then I carefully redraw the image using a harder lead pencil to maintain the lines of the art. Next comes a soft wash of pastel chalk over the art using the background colors that I want to create the mood of each scene. That is followed by spraying a workable fixative over the art which sets the color and the line drawing. Next, I begin to apply many layers of color, spray, pastel pencils and graphite until I get the drawing where I want it. Most of the art is close to finish at this stage.

Then I have a professional photographer take a very high resolution, color balanced, digital photo of the finished artwork. I transfer that digital image to my computer. I have loaded the “color space” profiles from the printer who’s going to print the book into Photoshop. This ensures accurate color matching both on my screen and throughout the printing process.

In the computer, using Photoshop, I carefully inspect my artwork and create layers of new color on top of this artwork. This allows me to enhance highlights, details, shadows and add colors that may not be available with my pastels. My goal is to give the art more life and snap and to make sure the art stays consistent from spread to spread. I will look for inconsistencies like the nose size of the raccoon, or sunset colors that must progress through the book evenly. I enhance parts of the art much easier and faster now that it is in the computer.

Once I’m happy with them, I send the images to the art director so that he can put together the final artwork for the book, before sending it all to the printer.

As you can see, there is a lot of work involved, but the end product will be fun and full of life, enjoyed by parents and kids for years to come. There are smiles to be had and lessons to be learned!

Jerry talks about cedarcide

New post from Jerry Wilson where he discusses why he chops down countless cedar trees on his property.

Sanctity of a man’s bedroll

“A man’s personal belongings were denied to the curious if he packed them in his bed. In every roundup bed was a ‘war sack,’ usually a wheat sack or so-called seamless sack, in which he kept his clothes and any little personal belonging he had with him. The Anglo-Saxon maxim that ‘A man’s home is his castle’ was fiercely true in the cowboy’s case, but, as such, the only home he had was his bed. That was why Jimmie Harrell threatened to shoot me for raiding his bed and stealing his itch medicine. The law of privacy, the law of the range, called for complete sanctity of a man’s bedroll.”

Taken from the award-winning Cowboy Life: The Letters of George Philip, edited by Cathie Draine, illustrated by Mick B. Harrison, published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

If you found this interesting, the SDSHS Press has many more good books on South Dakota history, just visit our main website.

The joy of editing

The joy of editing is taking something that someone else has written, tweaking it a little bit, and then sitting back and letting others read it. The curse of editing is taking something someone else has written, trying to tweak it a little bit, and then sitting back and letting others read it.

It is a classic dilemma for editors at the South Dakota State Historical Society Press. How do you make the words in front of you that little bit better than they currently are without destroying what has already been done? If it wasn’t any good in the first place you wouldn’t be sitting with pencil in hand debating whether to leave that sentence where it is, shorten it, add to it or remove it completely. It can be incredibly frustrating, but equally exciting, as you realize where the problem is and how to fix it.

The other element to this bizarre nether world of editing is that it is so anonymous, so invisible. How many times do people read a book and never even consider that it isn’t solely constructed by the author whose name is on the front of the book? I’d hazard a guess at the vast majority of times. I know for a fact that before I worked in the book business I had never really considered what the editor had done for the book in my hands. I knew they existed and I knew what they did, but they certainly did not factor in my appreciation for the book I was reading.

So rest assured that every one of the six new South Dakota history books published by the SDSHS Press this year will have been agonized over, scribbled on, erased from, added to, chewed over some more, sent to someone else for their opinion, and finally signed off on. It is what we do, after all.

Read a short excerpt from new Seth Bullock book

To help the time pass until the new book by David Wolff, Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman comes out in May, we’ve put up a short excerpt from chapter 3 on our website. So click on the link and read a sneak peak of this great book published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

Off to the OAH

Just in case you plan to be at the Organization of American Historians conference in Seattle this coming weekend, make sure to keep an eye out for Nancy Tystad Koupal, the director of the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

If you have manuscript suggestions or proposals, she will be more than happy to discuss these with you there and then!

New post from Jerry Wilson

Check out the latest post from Jerry Wilson, author of Waiting for Coyote’s Call from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.

Steamboats on the Upper Missouri, South Dakota

“The departure of the Yellowstone from St. Louis marked the beginning of a new phase in the history of the Upper Missouri Valley. Carrying trading goods, the Yellowstone reached Fort Tecumseh on June 19, 1831, and made the return trip to St. Louis after a brief stopover, arriving on July 15 with a rich cargo of buffalo robes and peltries, and ten thousand pounds of buffalo tongues. The Yellowstone’s maiden voyage proved the feasibility of steamboat transportation on the Upper Missouri. The following year the boat made a second trip, this time reaching Fort Union. Pierre Chouteau, Jr., went along as a passenger in order to take part in a christening ceremony for a new post named in his honor and built as a replacement for Fort Tecumseh. The name of the new post was soon shortened to Fort Pierre.”–History of South Dakota, Fourth Edition, Revised

To read more about this event and all of South Dakota’s history, check out History of South Dakota by Herbert S. Schell and John E. Miller published by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press.