On March 23, 2023 Austin English delivered a lecture in the Lilly Gallery at Davidson College detailing his experience in comic book making from a young age during his humble childhood beginnings to the present where he does so for a living. Upon starting his lecture, he notes that his past week on campus amongst students and faculty was a bittersweet experience in that it was rewarding being in the company of many amazing people, but will miss the environment of trust embedded in the community. Throughout his lecture he attributes his interest in cartoon making and creations as a very intimate art form that is a personal outlet of communicating one’s feelings or emotions at the time. This provided a comfort for him in recognizing that the idea of someone could create many imaginative worlds of feeling and thought by hand as he explains wanting to amplify the deep emotion expressed through art.
Additionally, English talked about various works from people that inspired him like Mark Beyer and started self-publishing. Overall, through the process of creating more and new comics, he stated his goal and in it, an explanation of the reasoning behind his creations: “art isn’t necessarily about communication, it is also about interaction which allowed me to improvise and edit that improvisation”, therefore abandoning cartoon integrity and do whatever he wanted. Although he emphasized the importance of grounding himself upon creating a work, he also wanted to give the audience this sensation of the freedoms in art making and how that feeling is what encompasses his constant passion in making art.
As the lecture continued, he describes the evolution of his work where in the beginnings, drawing with graphite, then inking the illustration was the medium he felt most comfortable with whereas in the present, he’s transitioned to colored pencils and watercolors which are prevalent in his newer editions. In light of his utilization of these mediums, he showed the audience and read parts of his new comic Meskin and Umezo which depicts two friends that attempt to pay lip service with minimal forms of communication. The illustrations were unlike what most of the audience had seen before in comic books which led many to question the meanings behind the story and in some cases, what actually happened in the comic. As a result, many were confused of the correct plot and asked the author to clarify in which he successfully clarified that most of the characters he creates are based on his personal experiences, stories he’s heard from people he’s talked with and any other ideas he has that are relevant to enriching the content of his comics.
In conclusion, he left the audience thinking of the future of the visual art world, and how it seems to be deadening due to the lack of human interaction. Growing up, I was exposed to many different art and reading mediums where they all had one thing in common: materiality. I read newspapers in their physical form back then instead of through my computer. The same with comics and books where the drawings weren’t digitized. This allowed me to experience what it’s like to feel the texture of the pages, smell the faint, yet noticeable smell of them as I flip to the next one when reading. Unfortunately, the rise of digitized books, newspapers, magazines, comics, etc. have taken over their physicality. There are the most commonly known pros and cons where making books costs the lives of trees and on the contrary, reading on a device takes away the experience of feeling the pages. Regardless, although I don’t have much prior knowledge on the art of comic book making, I do know the amount of work that goes into it where the artist has to draw out countless illustrations for their creation, but what happens when many switch to using digital technology to draw? The artwork will be susceptible to endless error corrections unlike the organic and unique process of the power of drawing with a colored pencil. Only time and the choices of uprising artists in their choice of medium in their creations will tell.
