THE OBJECTIVE
With this comic, I wanted to play around with the idea of legibility. The story I used (and wrote) is surreal, grotesque, and rich with imagery. I wanted the comic to work with and against the text, leaning more into intuitive creation than visuals that directly correlate with each visual.
THE PROCESS
1
I began by selecting three of my books: Illuminations by Rimbaud, Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautremonte, and At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft.
2
I then selected a single page from each of them, printed each out, and cut the words into chunks of 2-4 words. I then laid out the "cut-ups" at random until I worked a story out of them, editing my voice throughout each author's words.
Raw cut-up content
Excerpt from "Starved of Desire" showing original cut-up content
3
Using the final 2-page story, I began the comics process. I relied heavily on intuitive movements, trying to let my materials guide me. Of those materials were acrylic paint, charcoal, ink, pen, and pencil.
My workspace with materials
4
My goal was to let my subconscious take over, making this comic much more about process than outcome for me. I tried not to edit the pages as I made them, only going back at the end to make slight changes, such as adding a black background color.
Testing background colors on Photoshop
THE RESULT
Although not every page of this comic came out exactly as I would have liked, it was an experiment in trusting the process and experimenting with different media. So, in the case of taking risks and exploring this was quite a success for me.
