What’s in a cartoon and why does it move people? How personal is graphic novel writing? Where do inspired editorial cartoons come from? What makes humor stick?
Ramona Sharples and Signe Wilkinson drew on personal and professional truths at Friends in Fellowship, on Thursday March 8th, as they explained the origins of their very different cartoons to a group of some 25 Friends, and shared their reasons for using art to share their truths.
Signe said that she first began cartooning while covering politics for local media. Her habit of doodling in the margins of notepads led to early cartoons that were then published. She also had the good fortune to be mentored by the humorist David Barry. He helped deepen her knowledge of editorial work and supported her development as a political cartoonist. Even today most of her work remains rooted in the building blocks of democracy. While there can be raw and unfiltered criticism, she says “for some reason I don’t take it personally, I just feel like they are talking about the cartoon – they are not talking about my immortal soul.”
There are 180 editorial cartoonists in the US and ten are women, two of whom are Quaker, so Signe represents a very small cohort of cartooning professionals. It can be a rough and tumble world where people feel entitled to let you know exactly how they feel, and therefore some talented artists end up retreating with their work, looking for a more private space. Ramona says, “you do have to take a position when you draw… and (like Signe) I get nasty mail, but it feels very personal for me.” Unlike Signe, who uses art to comment on politics, Ramona uses it to communicate truths about her own life as a transgender woman.
“I was thinking about (emotion and art) recently as I was going through all my comics, and there is a rhythm that is very slow and quiet. It’s not very actiony comics that I’m drawing … because … a lot of the feelings that I am describing are melancholy, and that plays a role in the way that my comics are presented. As a counter example, there are a lot of wonderful comic artists who use extremely different techniques to build emotion. There is a book called ‘Understanding Comics’ by Scott McCloud, where he does a great job showing examples of this – showing all these different styles and what they do to your perception of the emotion of the scene. I’ve see some comics that are just black and white with very scratchy ink, rough lines, with a frenetic, kind of chaotic texture, but the story that’s being told is very quiet … internal, and emotional, and that contrast really works as well.”
The program, at Arch Street Meeting House came to an end at 8:30 PM. For more detail on what was presented, the Q&A, and Ramona’s recommendations of other Trans cartoonists– listen to our recording.
