a guide to Emily Joynton’s thesis project MICA MFA Illustration Practice 2016 - 2017
INTRODUCTION THE BEGINNING THE COMICS Whitman The Dress CONTEMPLATING TRUTH TOWNS AND TAKEAWAYS BUILD UP TO BREAK DOWN BEYOND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This year began with a promise. I promised myself that I would not, under any circumstances, set out in a direction that would be unsuccessful and require me to start all over again. I took thesis year very seriously. I vowed to work hard and work smart. I believed that with careful planning, passionate drive, and clear visions, I could stay on the path I had set for myself, rather than deviating from that plan and causing delay. This, of course, was not how things happened. In the end I did not make very many large, devastating changes to my thesis, but I did have to make some alterations to my original plan that resulted in “starting over� in some respect. I made a lot of mistakes this year, but I can now say with full conviction that I learned from those mistakes and the second half of my work was significantly better for it. It was a relief to realize I could break that original promise to myself and still have work to be proud of at the end of the year. I will remember this, and approach each new project with the expectation of some failures and lots of changes, but always the reward of knowing that, one way or another, I can accomplish what I set out to do.
The idea for my thesis came from three main places. The first source of inspiration was from my experience as a longtime lover of stories, specifically the storytelling in podcasts like This American Life and The Moth, as well as novels and collections of short stories. Second: my exposure to comics that read more like memoirs and journals was revolutionary. As I read books like
Age of License by Lucy Knisely and Tomboy by Liz Prince, I found myself thinking “I like this, I relate to this, and I can do this, too.� I felt that by reading these works that spoke of some of my own, sort of mundane yet important experiences, these authors and their stories were giving me permission to share my own stories in a similar form.
This led to the third source of inspiration for my thesis: two projects completed as a first year grad student. The first was a threepart zine titled The Feeling of Guilt where, through text and image, I explored subjects that
were difficult for me to talk about. The second was an expansion of this idea, a longer comic called Last Friday that told a full story through reflection on growing up, dealing with loss, and examining how relationships can change.
Left: excerpts from and cover of The Feeling of Guilt self-published zine; fall 2015 Right: excerpts from Last Friday self-published comic; spring 2016
The positive reception of these two pieces led me to consider following a similar thread in creating my thesis. To start, I decided the foundation of my thesis would be two personal narrative comics. In addition to the stories told in the comics, I wanted to further draw in my audience by creating companion pieces for each comic that would elaborate on the characters and the setting of the each story. This manifested in the illustrated maps and portrait postcards that accompanied each comic. As I planned each part of my thesis, I considered the marketability of each element and what audience I would reach.
Excerpts from my thesis proposal presentation September 1, 2016
Whitman, the first comic, follows the rapid rise and fall of friendships between five 20-somethings living together in a house in Miami. Setting expectations high often leads to some sort of disaster, as is the case of these creatively-minded and naive roommates. Centered around one major conflict (the addition of a cat named Whitman), this book reflects on the emotional development and disappointment of the narrator. The Dress is a story about crying. The narrator recounts a humorously dramatic experience from high school in which feelings were hurt but in fact no tears were shed. This memory is juxtaposed against the narrator’s current state, in which she reflects on how events of much less gravity and trauma can send her into tears, and how she has come to terms with her own ability to cry and relationships with those she once considered close friends.
There were a lot of false starts in beginning work on the first comic, Whitman. I initially planned to make this comic almost completely digitally, creating a two-color file that could be risographed.
As someone with very little experience in this area of production, I struggled to create images that I felt embodied my storytelling style and drawing hand.
Pages from an early dummy book of Whitman Digital illustration; fall 2016
After suggestions from Whitney and a few of the visiting critics, I did what I promised myself I would try to avoid. I started over, switching to a much more traditional approach: drawing with graphite and coloring with acrylic ink. This began a move in what felt like the right direction – combining traditional and digital mediums to create a polished, personal piece.
But even with this important shift of media, working on Whitman was a struggle. I felt like I had moved too quickly from storyboarding to final and often found myself stumped on how to fill the page. Because of my own doubts about the level of success coming out of this comic, I was easily swayed by all the many different suggestions I received on the comic from visiting critics. I found it hard to
decide what feedback to use for improving my work and what comments to politely ignore. As a result, I spent more than a semester on Whitman and ultimately feel that it is overworked. However, this presents an opportunity to rework this comic once I’ve given it the appropriate amount of time and distance. It is a story I am proud of and would like to revisit once I am ready.
Excerpts from Whitman cover; pages 4 - 7
Excerpts from Whitman pages 8 - 11; back insert
Beginning the second comic, The Dress, felt completely different. This was for several reasons: accepting the struggle of Whitman and wanting to do things differently with this new comic, feeling armed with more knowledge of how to create dynamic comics from the Drawing Non-Fiction class (taught by ILP alum Shreyas Krishnan) I had taken in the fall, and discovering Lynda Barry.
I started the spring semester by auditing a class called Reading and Writing Graphic Narrative taught by ILP alum Sara Lautman. The first book on the reading list was One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry. This book proved to
be hugely influential on how I would approach creating my second comic, inspiration ranging from color, style, tone, etc. I took what I loved about her work and translated it into my own story and style.
One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry cover; pages 104 - 105
I also improved my technique so I was working smarter. I went from doing both line work and color on the same page to creating separate layers of brush pen line work and acrylic ink color, then digitally combining the layers. The change was immensely helpful and allowed me to make many more corrections on the images once I put them in the computer.
The Dress in progress building color layer on lightbox
Creating layers brush pen and acrylic ink
I felt behind schedule, starting this comic several weeks into the beginning of the spring semester. So I set a hard deadline for myself, to have this comic complete in time to enter in the MoCCA Award of Excellence contest happening in the spring. Though my comic did not win the award, I was
proud to discover that I was able to push myself to complete a successful comic from storyboard to final in two weeks. The work felt much more fluid than with Whitman. I had found a more natural and efficient process that produced more satisfying results.
The Dress front cover
Excerpts from The Dress pages 4 - 7
Excerpts from The Dress pages 8 - 11
Excerpts from The Dress pages 12 - 15
The Dress back cover
In Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, she talks about something called “autobiofictionography.” This is her way of describing her work, which blends truth and fiction. When I began my own comics in the fall, and with previous personal narrative projects, I believed it was imperative to stick to “the truth,” whatever that might mean for me. But when autobiofictionography became a
part of my vocabulary, I questioned why it was so important to tell stories where every aspect reflects the exact details of reality. This especially came into play knowing that some of the people my characters are based on may be less than thrilled to see what may not be their proudest moments interpreted by someo ne else and put into a public forum.
I found myself pondering how I could change enough of the actual details and events so it would not be immediately be recognizable by those involved, but still maintaining the integrity of the story that made it interesting in the first
place. I feel like I barely scratched the surface of autobiofictionography with the two comics in my thesis, but it is a tool I plan to employ more effectively in the future.
The creation of the postcards for my thesis happened alongside the process of writing and illustrating my comics. My first set of postcards was for Whitman, and were exhibited at the fall Image Harvest show. The purpose of the postcards was to feature each of the characters in my comics, one per postcard. The portrait of
each character was surrounded by blocks of text that provided anecdotal information about the character, usually explaining a connection of the character to me. The rest of the space on the postcard was filled with doodles of objects somehow related to the character, the anecdotes, or the general storyline of the comic.
These postcards served a purpose. My main goal was for them to act as giveaways that would draw the passerby into the stories on the card, into the exhibit, and hopefully then into reading the comic that the card connected to. The postcards were also my opportunity to flesh out the characters, give them more dimension than what they had in the comic. And they also gave me the chance to draw portraits, something I love to do.
Making the maps was an experiment. Creating an illustrated map was something I’d always wanted to do but never tried. The maps became similar to something my classmates and I had created in the Critical Seminar class as first years, where we were led by educators at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in making memory maps of places in Balti-
more that were significant to us. I wanted my maps to represent the most important places and moments I could remember from my experiences in each city. The maps are companions to the comics, though there is not always a obvious line of connection that exists between the story and what is on the map.
Illustrated maps for Whitman (Miami) and The Dress (San Angelo) screenprint
The map of Miami represents the four years that I lived there – the food I ate, the drinks I drank, the places I frequented. Starting my map making career with this map was a challenge because the city of Miami is huge and narrowing it down took some careful planning. The map of San Angelo was easier – it’s a much smaller place and I had
a much larger bank of memories to draw from when brainstorming what landmarks and locations to include. This map proved to be more difficult to for people to understand as being directly connected to The Dress since in the comic, I don’t reveal a specific location for much of the story. A good amount of the backstory that is told concerning my rela-
tionship with my friend takes place in San Angelo, a location with much more personal meaning to me than Pittsburgh, where the climax of the comic occurs. If I were to rework The Dress I would make it clearer that this backstory portion is all occurring in San Angelo so the map would more easily connect to the story.
Before installing the show, I was very nervous about how it would all come together in the gallery space. I had difficulty imagining how my work could be effectively and dynamically displayed, and looked to Whitney for guidance. Her suggestion of
enlarging and painting the maps directly on the wall as murals was a brilliant one; everything else seemed to fall into place after that major element was established. The experience of painting the murals fit well within my enjoyment of slow, tedious work that grew
into a very careful and successful piece. I will be adding this new skill to my resume and will seek out future work with murals as a part of my career as an illustrator.
Exhibition proposal final sketch
Installation in process painting the maps in layers
Left: Finished exhibition installation murals, comics, postcards Right: Wall text hand-painted lettering
Amy Voloshin, co-founder and Creative Director at Printfresh and me Photo by Micah E. Wood, courtesy of the MICA Career Development Center
I am very fortunate to have solid plans after I graduate from MICA. The night of the show opening, I got a call to inform me that I had been hired as a full-time designer at the Philadelphia-based textile design company Printfresh. I interned at Printfresh last summer, loved living in the city of Philadelphia, and am not only very grateful to have a job that I will enjoy but to have one that comes with a stable salary and benefits. I also plan to continue making more comics and new maps in my own time. At the begin-
ning of the year, I had originally planned to make three comics, three maps, and three collections of postcards. I described my idea for this third comic to Sara Varon, one of the gallery talk critics, and she encouraged me to pitch it to publishers. My goal for my own comics is to eventually create an anthology of several of my stories all published together. Hopefully this will someday lead to full-time work as a writer and illustrator, but I understand that that might take a while. My last plan (for now) is to
enter into the festivals circuit. This includes comics and print festivals, where I intend to sell my comics and zines as well as larger risographed and screenprinted work. I also hope to create more of a personal brand by expanding into a product line that includes items like enamel pins and patches. Selling my work was something I struggled with throughout the last two years, and so I plan to determine what market niche my work can fill and how to start building my own small business.
None of this could have happened without the help of some very special people. First and foremost: my eternal gratitude goes out to Whitney Sherman and Kimberley Ellen Hall for their guidance, patience, and encouragement over the last two years. I still feel lucky to have been chosen to be a part of this program, and to have worked closely with both of you. It has been an incredible opportunity and an honor. Many, many thanks go out to other MICA faculty who have helped shape my experience here in the most positive and challenging way: Sangram Majumdar, Jennifer Watson Wester, and Heidi Younger. Thanks also to all the guest critics who provided valuable feedback on my progress at every stage. As always: a big thank you to my family and Manny for the constant support of my endeavors in illustration. And I would be remiss not to give a huge shout out to my peers, the “big ILP family� that we have become. I would not be the illustrator I am (or will be) without the support of all of you. Thank you for the solidarity in late nights and hard work, commiserating on failures and celebrating successes. I love you all!