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I recently applied for a 6-month comic-illustrator residency at the V&A Museum,
and although I didn't get the job, a few questions in the interview were very
interesting and made me think about my work and teaching. Here a couple of them:
1. Describe your creative practice and the thinking behind it.
I draw and occasionally write stories. I have drawn on work-for-hire and creator-owned projects.
I have self-published and edited comics. I believe that all forms of graphic narrative are valid and
that communication between ages, countries and people can benefit from the rendering, understanding and reading of
experiences.
I work 8 to 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. I slightly adapt my style and page-layout design to fit each project,
depending on public audience, page count, topic and vehicle.
Telling stories through images is learning about the world and sharing your experience of it. Communication
through a combination of intuitive and rational marks on paper, symbols and signs, balanced aesthetically in
a confined space and narrative sequence fascinates me, and always has since I was a small child
(although at the time I did not think of it in such terms). Learning the magic of how to create worlds
and characters with ink, seen through our small window of paper - into the past, present or future,
or even different dimensions - thrills me.
2. Give details of any experience you have of working in a community or
educational environment, or with working with the public.
I have been teaching drawing and sequential art for children and adults consistently for the last 4 years,
in private art schools and public libraries. The classes are mixed age, ranging from 8 to 40, and sex, with 3 to
22 students in each class. Often students who want to work with illustration, comic art or animation.
At the art schools the courses are one-year long, 4 hours a week, while at the libraries the courses are two or
three months, 3 hours a week, and at both I cover as much ground as possible in that time-frame: anatomy, animals, pencil and ink, light and shadows, colour, graphic narrative, plot, script, onomatopoeias and lettering. Often students will return for further courses.
Students are encouraged to work with each other often, such as with scripting and artwork, or pencilling and inking.
I have also given talks on comic art, drawing and comic history, and one-day workshops for elaboration of
comic stories and fanzines.
February 2009
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