Ask Meme answers pt. 2!
Mar. 8th, 2024 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeFrom adore, for both art and writing!
Which artists inspire you right now?
Favourite works of all time excluding your own?
What do you like most about your own work?
What are you currently trying to improve?
Clarity and simplicity. How can I take whatever it is I'm doing (be it drawing, writing, whatever) and convey exactly what I want to convey with minimal clutter or distraction?
This can vary from "how can I make these two characters falling in love convincing in minimal wordcount?" to "how can I visually depict three different apartments, with three panels and zero words, that on first glance are immediately, incontrovertibly worse than couch-surfing?" to "how can I describe a complicated mental health topic that's laden with a bunch of jargon, strip all that away, and explain clearly in everyday language?"
adore, for both art and writing!Which artists inspire you right now?
Oh jeez. A handful of porn artists who just shamelessly pursue what turns them on. (As artistic encouragement, by my computer and stuck to my wall, I have a beefcake pin-up by Kelly Turnbull with her words "artistic self-actualization is finding your Don Bluth's Boyfriend and never apologizing for it." She's also responsible for Biff's icon here on DW, thus why we're using it!) As someone working to overcome puritan artistic shame and just draw joy-inducing beef, it's inspirational!
I also have a framed poster of Charles Vess's Self-Portrait hanging over my drafting table, where it's more or less been since the Homeless Year. Back then, I would look at this art of a well-respected cartoonist drawing comics at his drafting table because that was what I wanted to be. Now I am that, and every time I look at that poster, I get to remember how far I've come. Talk about a rush of pride!
There's a lot of nonfiction folks right now, like Edward Tufte's breakdown of charts and graphs and such in the pursuit of "beautiful evidence;" I just got my hands on a secondhand hardback copy of his Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which isn't a light read but is still a beautiful one. We've also really been feeling Dorothy Allison's incisive analysis of the sexual power politics and cruelty of the "Lesbian Sex Wars" of the 1980s which are just the unplugged sapphic version of what people call "cancel culture" today. Allison's essays definitely delineate the emotional complexity and heartache better than anyone else I've read.
I also have a framed poster of Charles Vess's Self-Portrait hanging over my drafting table, where it's more or less been since the Homeless Year. Back then, I would look at this art of a well-respected cartoonist drawing comics at his drafting table because that was what I wanted to be. Now I am that, and every time I look at that poster, I get to remember how far I've come. Talk about a rush of pride!
There's a lot of nonfiction folks right now, like Edward Tufte's breakdown of charts and graphs and such in the pursuit of "beautiful evidence;" I just got my hands on a secondhand hardback copy of his Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which isn't a light read but is still a beautiful one. We've also really been feeling Dorothy Allison's incisive analysis of the sexual power politics and cruelty of the "Lesbian Sex Wars" of the 1980s which are just the unplugged sapphic version of what people call "cancel culture" today. Allison's essays definitely delineate the emotional complexity and heartache better than anyone else I've read.
Favourite works of all time excluding your own?
Oh jeez. The fiction prose holder is probably Spider Robinson's Callahan Chronicals/Callahan and Company, since it's the only book we have owned and loved continuously since the age of 10. There are other books that we love, arguably more intensely, and there are certainly books we've read that are better, but Callahan rules through seniority.
Visually... god, that's a hard one. Possibly the Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot? It's a comic we first read as teens, but didn't dare own until adulthood, due to the nature of the story, and when we did finally end up buying it, it was during the Homeless Year. The story of a teen girl becoming homeless to escape incest and triumphing with her beloved imaginary friend obviously has personal importance, but it's also just such an well-made work where each reread uncovers these beautiful little details--the thematic use of the color red, the symbolism of cats and rats. It feels like a symposium on the power of comics to work on multiple levels--as entertaining story, beautiful art, symbolism, metaphor, and psychological depth.
In that vein, also: Paprika, by Satoshi Kon. You can see his evolution as an artist and on similar themes from Perfect Blue, to Paranoia Agent, to Paprika, and the visual details are so dense, so satisfying! It too is one of those works that we find something new upon every rewatch: how a blue butterfly appears as the emissary of one character, greenery and tree roots for another. It's such a triumph on so many levels, it enthralls us every time. Satoshi Kon is a professional inspiration for us, since he's a master of depicting psychological realities and the distortion thereof.
Visually... god, that's a hard one. Possibly the Tale of One Bad Rat, by Bryan Talbot? It's a comic we first read as teens, but didn't dare own until adulthood, due to the nature of the story, and when we did finally end up buying it, it was during the Homeless Year. The story of a teen girl becoming homeless to escape incest and triumphing with her beloved imaginary friend obviously has personal importance, but it's also just such an well-made work where each reread uncovers these beautiful little details--the thematic use of the color red, the symbolism of cats and rats. It feels like a symposium on the power of comics to work on multiple levels--as entertaining story, beautiful art, symbolism, metaphor, and psychological depth.
In that vein, also: Paprika, by Satoshi Kon. You can see his evolution as an artist and on similar themes from Perfect Blue, to Paranoia Agent, to Paprika, and the visual details are so dense, so satisfying! It too is one of those works that we find something new upon every rewatch: how a blue butterfly appears as the emissary of one character, greenery and tree roots for another. It's such a triumph on so many levels, it enthralls us every time. Satoshi Kon is a professional inspiration for us, since he's a master of depicting psychological realities and the distortion thereof.
What do you like most about your own work?
This will surprise nobody, but when it comes to fiction, I'm a people person. Those are my favorite things to write and draw, and I'd like to think I'm acceptably good at it. My goal is to take challenging experiences or people who might otherwise be treated as jokes or afterthoughts, and I like trying to make readers care and understand them. That moment when someone goes, "Oh! I get it now!" or "I am so invested in these characters' feelings!" is among the most professionally satisfying.
What are you currently trying to improve?
This can vary from "how can I make these two characters falling in love convincing in minimal wordcount?" to "how can I visually depict three different apartments, with three panels and zero words, that on first glance are immediately, incontrovertibly worse than couch-surfing?" to "how can I describe a complicated mental health topic that's laden with a bunch of jargon, strip all that away, and explain clearly in everyday language?"
