is it just me, or does blogspot not like Safari?

So my day keeps getting worse and worse today.  

My external hard drive is MIA, I tore apart my room without any luck.

My tooth and jaw hurt like a motherfucker.  My head also hurts in general.  

I can't figure out what to eat in my house (except leftover chinese, but that might be dinner), so I'm drinking diet coke. What a healthy life I lead. 

I'm going between doing English homework and (attempting) writing a resume, because I am a bum and I can't get a job.

However, to shut Kate up, here are her stupid questions answered.

1.Which artist(s) influences your work the most? Cartoonists, feel free to talk about writers and fine artists too!

You caught me. :|  You know the first one I am going to say is Gerard Way.  I always get warm and happy when artwork that he does pops up on the internet or in books.  The cover of 'Three Cheers..." was really what influenced my artwork the most, and it still does, when it comes to style and medium choice.  I also envy his storytelling and batshit insanity.  I also love Mike Mignola, Alex Toth, Tony Moore, Lee Bermejo, Will Eisner, Joe Kubert... Lauren Weinstein's "Goddess of War", and I'm not saying that to suck up. Like I said, I love Eddie Campbell and Vince Locke, I wish I could ink like them.  Edward Gorey is another love of mine, as an illustrator/when it comes to working with ink.  Oh, did I forget James Jean?  James Jean. 

As for fine artists/periods of art, I love El Greco, Velasquez, Murillo, Goya, I love the Spanish painters from 16th/17th cent.  I love paintings that use chiaroscuro.  I love a lot of the New Objective/Post WWI German artists, especially Otto Dix and George Grosz.  

2.Why do you want to make comics, or are currently making comics? And at what point in your life did you come to this realization?
I think it started as a rebellion thing!  I had started doing SVA in 2005, and took a Cartooning class with Tom.  I thought I sucked at it, so I started doing a lot of fine arts stuff, too.  I started doing the fine arts stuff because I wanted to impress people, I think.  I wanted people to respect me for being a good artist, but people tend not to unless your art is photorealistic.  That backfired, though.  Turns out I wasn't as good at fine arts as I thought I would be, and I realized that no matter how hard I tried, the people I was trying to impress would never think I was nearly as good as the person they had been fawning over... Not to say that I'm rejecting fine arts like drawing, painting, etc.  I love oil paint and I love watercolour, and working on huge things with charcoal or conte crayon is really freeing.  I'm glad I took those classes and tried so hard in those classes for so long, because they pay off when I'm making comics.  

But it was a rebellion thing.  I was tired of sitting in drawing and painting and feeling like an alien.  So I did comics.  I guess I'm slow, it took me until almost senior year of high school to figure this out. 

To me, comics are like...the underdog, the punk rock of the art world.  Not only do you have to take shit from people who only respect fine arts, you have to take shit from people who think they should only respect fine arts so that they look intelligent.  If you're doing a photorealistic drawing or painting, no one is going to give you shit.  They're going to think you're amazing.  If you're drawing a comic, people will laugh at you.  You could be the best artist, but once you say 'comics'...

Which is why, to me, comics are so special.  You have to deal with all these preconceived notions (some of which are true), you have to delve through and find the counter-culture within the culture. It's not all superheros in tights--even within that formula, you have stuff like Watchmen or Doom Patrol taking that and putting it in a blender and throwing it back at you.  For me, it's freedom, it's defiance against what people think of as 'good art' or 'good literature'.  It's storytelling.  It's conveying a message.  

3.What is your favourite thing about comics (storytelling, the accessibility of it, the sense of community among artists, etc.)?

Okay, I will say it now, half the reason I did Cartooning at SVA the second year was because I thought the Cartooning kids were the coolest motherfuckers ever.  They were the coolest kids, the nicest kids.  A little eccentric but not as eccentric as the computer animators/animation kids.  Crazy, neurotic, quirky.  Brilliant.  And in art school, yeah, I think Cartooning majors are cool people.  The hardcore manga addicts, they scare me a little after a while.  Once they get cliquey, it's like an impenetrable fortress.  But for the most part...

For me, it's storytelling and drawing.  I'm not fantastic at the writing end of it, but that's what collaboration is for.  I enjoy drawing, and comics allows me to do a lot of that.  Working with Cris is also a pleasure.  She gives me a story and I have free reign with it.  She lets me put things in other places, rework scenes, cut scenes, add scenes, change dialogue, etc.  So in a way, I am involved with the storytelling.  

Now if only I could write this much for English class...