I started doing this thing about a year ago where I would choose a picture - a very casual snapshot works best, the more offhand and no big deal the better - and draw it in fragments until it became a comic. When it works, the drawings lead to other ideas that aren't part of the original photo, and it just kind of takes off from there. The pentagon shaped panels somehow make this fragmentary approach to cartooning more possible for me. Without an orderly row of panels, I feel more free to just fill them up with the next thing that comes to mind, or that I notice. I am happier drawing this way than I've been with drawing for awhile. I didn't know it at the time, but linear narrative was starting to bum me out. Leaving it behind, at least for now, has cheered me up artistically.
This came from a blurry picture of my mother, Katie, when she was a college student. It's perfect raw material for me, emotionally resonant, but unimportant -- it appears to capture be a random moment, perhaps even accidental, or trying out the camera. I do this with found photos sometimes too. I usually choose it because there's something in the photo I want to draw, but not that I want to draw the whole photo. And then I just kind of feel my way around inside the image picking out parts that would be fun to draw. And then sometimes, not always, it starts to congeal into something else.
#nonlinear #pentagons #snapshots #foundphotos #fragments
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