This week, in my comics/graphic narrative class, we were
fortunate enough to have a Skype conversation with British cartoonist, Simon Moreton. It was way too late his time, but he was gracious enough to spend the
better part of an hour answering our questions.
We’d all read Simon’s latest book, the beautifully
rendered Plans We Made (Uncivilized Books). To tell this poetic
autobiographical coming-of-age story, Simon uses simple pencil line drawings
with minimal text. Some of the pages have only two lines on them (that form an “x”,
or an airplane, depending how you look at them), or are intentionally left
blank. [Side note: Our class had an interesting discussion about the
similarities between comics and poetry, with their heavy use of images and white
space.]
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| One of my favorite spreads! |
Anyway, reading Simon’s book really opened up the world
of visual storytelling for me. Give me a blank page and ask me to draw a scene,
and I’ll happily do so – with words! But for some reason, I have a block when
it comes to rendering things visually. In our conversation, he told us that he
used to obsess about getting things perfectly right on the page. But he quickly
grew tired of perfection; you can never make something look exactly as it does
in a photo or in reality. So he asked himself—what’s the point of making
something super detailed? The most important thing is that your reader
understands what’s a tree and what’s a person. I find this notion very freeing!
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| Trying my hand at Simon Moreton-inspired minimalist drawings |
This shift allowed him to focus on the story more
than the visual details. He says he asks himself these questions when he’s
creating one of his comics. What’s the essence of the story? What feeling are
you trying to elicit? From there, he follows the drawings and isn’t afraid to
explore where the drawings take him—something that all art forms and artists
have in common, I think.
As someone who also obsesses about place in my
writing, I really enjoyed the place-based aspect of his story. Plans We Made
has some really beautiful landscapes, and I could feel his connection to this
small town where he grew up. As it turns out, Simon is geographer, which
prompted me to ask him what connections he sees between his professional life
and his artistic life. He said that the two work in conjunction with each
other, and that the artwork deepens his intellectual experiences at work.
I was fascinated to learn about the trajectory of Simon’s
comics career. He started self-publishing his comic, SMOO, in 2007. Since then,
he has put out 10 issues and has amassed a strong following of SMOO supporters.
The coolest part about it is that he printed and cut all of these zines
himself, distributing them by mail and at comics festivals around the world. He
told us that this was how he learned how to make comics – by making them and
getting them out into the world. In doing so, he figured out his style, what
worked for him and what direction he wanted to move in. But the most important
thing for him was to be creating work. Clearly, his DIY style has worked out very well
for him.
There is a quiet quality to his work that I find
truly beautiful and inspiring. It was awesome of him to stop in and chat with
our class, even if it was the middle of night across the pond!
As for me, I continue to stay restless. This weekend,
I’ll be traveling to New York City to give a reading with my fellow Art Farm writers at The KGB bar, a "New York literary institution." The reading is Sunday Feb 14th at 7 p.m., so
please come on by if you’re in the area. It’s free of charge!
I am also pleased to share a new publication at the
Normal School, a “hermit crab essay” that mimics a Wikipedia article to explore
my relationship to my HAIR. I hope you’ll check it out and tell me what you
think!
