Saturday, October 18, 2014
The challenges in drawing another person's story.
The challenges one could face while drawing out someone's story are mainly linked to the satisfaction of the person or people who are being drawn. I am an artist, and I can honestly say that there is no worse a feeling than delivering a portrait to someone that has asked for one, and they are embarrassed, disgusted, or ashamed of it. That is, after all, only an example of a portrait, not a full book/story. When you are drawing a graphic novel, you begin with the design of the characters. After the character sketches have been complete, you then need to make sure that the character is recognizable in each comic block or square. Facial expression and clothing is also crucial. If you are drawing someone you know or someone you have been in contact with, you need to express their personality through their appearance. A kind and good person may wear white and have upward-slanted eyebrows to show their meek personality. A mean or cruel person usually is seen in black or a dark shade of any other color. If they aren't wearing elaborate black robes and capes, their eyebrows will go downward showing their anger and wickedness. In the book Maus, Art Spiegelman's drawings are not very realistic, they are more cartoonish because it is easier to visualize personification through a cartoon than any other medium. People visualize themselves as something they are not, that is why it is difficult to draw self portraits because they usually end up not looking like the artist who drew it. Because of this, I have always thought of art as a form of show business. Art is constantly critiqued and reviewed by the public. Graphic novels have become quite popular now, and if someone has their own visual of a character in a book or a real person, they would expect the images in the graphic to fully visualize that person. If they don't get the same emotion or visual while reading the graphic novel, they won't like it as much.
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I think you make very good point about people don't see themselves the same so the drawing to them wouldn't be very accurate (not in every case though obviously) Do you think it would be easier to tell this story the way it is in cartoonish form or in more personal illustrations?
ReplyDeleteI agree with the fact that drawing someone's story can be difficult when satisfying the narrator's thoughts because it is quite true! I also believe that it is really important when drawing the details, such as facial expressions and clothing, because they make up the story and replace the imagery not given in the text. I think it that it's really cool how you related this to your personal drawing experience; it made me understand your point more!
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is harder to draw a story because you can not draw it exactly how they are telling/understanding it. However, at the same time, I think that some parts of drawing a story might be easy. These parts would be the ability to make up the smaller details or focus on one part of the story over another.
ReplyDeleteThis is very true and not something that everyone thinks about or takes into account. You being an artist, you have an insight into this that not a lot of people can have. Good job.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I think its difficult if you are trying to meet the expectations of the person that you are drawing/writing as well as satisfying them. I think the outcome depends on how well you know the person and the story that involves them.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good point that it is easier to draw a cartoon figure with emotion rather than a self portrait. I think that Art Spiegelman did a great job capturing the emotion and action that he was trying to communicate through the graphic novel.
ReplyDeleteYou have a point Ian, I can see how someone can envision themselves in one way, but when someone else can see them another way. In my eyes you can easily draw someone else's story because they give you the detail you need to draw such a masterpiece, when you are drawing yourself it is a whole lot harder to do so because you are looking at yourself in a mirror. As you draw yourself you find that there is a pimple on your face, but you don't want that to be on the painting, drawing, sculpture, or photograph, you cover it up, or don't put it there. Then again, if you did that then that wouldn't be a actual portrait of yourself. It would be a portrait of someone you wish to be. I know that sounds weird but that's just my opinion.
ReplyDeletei agree full heartedly and i believe this is a supporting reason for why fiction novels are not reluctant of the details even if they are not flattering. writers share no correlation with their characters in real life so they have no reason to make their characters as vile and evil as they want. even if some characters are based off of people they know in real life they shouldn't use that as justification to hide the blemishes.
DeleteI agree with your point, but in Maus, the characters are portrayed as animals. If you look at the graphics, all of the Jews look the same, because they are all drawn as mice, no different from each other. I agree with your point, but I don't think it applies to this particular book.
DeleteI agree with all your points, but I'm curious if you've had to create a comic style story of someone else (other than the assignment we had in ELA), and if so, how did it affect your personal approach to it? You seem to speak from personal experience and I'd like to know more about that, as opposed to a generalization.
ReplyDeleteBeautifully said Ian! I absolutely agree with what you've stated here. Of course it's hard to create and bring to live in the form of pictures and graphic novels, the details of someone else's story. In someone else's mind, the story always looks a certain way. Do you think that this is similar to what happens in movies? Have you ever gone to see a movie and the characters were far different from what you saw in your minds eye? I think that's the same as what you are describing. Do you think so too?
ReplyDeleteI agree that it may be hard to draw people and things in a cartoonish fashion but I personally never knew that people could be disgusted by a painting of themself and that makes me want to know what Art's father thinks of Maus. All around great post though.
ReplyDeleteI disagree one of your points- the one about drawing the base of a character using their personality traits (by base I mean the way they constantly look). For example, the nazis didn't wear black/ darkish uniforms in Maus because Art wanted to depict them as evil- that's just historical accuracy. The "character expression through appearance" that you mentioned, although effective in other areas, just doesn't work here.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about the way Art decided to portray his characters its fascinates me. why did he chose mice and pics and if so why did he make the mice riding horses and not bugs? Maybe this would be a good topic for a response project and maybe someones already doing it! Cant wait to see.
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