Friday 25 January 2019

On the 11th Day of Christmas...

... this blogger gave to thee...
... eleven illustrated Instagrams...
... ten sassy soaps...
... nine creative weirdos...
... eight things I've loved...
... seven shoes to choose from...
... six party dresses...
... five gold rings!..
... four silly socks...
... three Etsy shops...
... two tuneful gizmos...
... and a great soup for cold winter days.


The 11th Day of Christmas, kind of eluded me. I've spent the last few days since publishing day ten (and a lot before) worrying about what I was going to write about and coming up with ideas I couldn't quite get behind. I considered writing about papercut art, but I couldn't get past the idea I'd done that a year or two before this. I really liked the idea of doing a post on miniatures - which I may still do a post about - but was falling into the world of doll houses, which while they can be incredibly elaborate, wasn't quite what I was going for. I also considered a post on random things I've been making or art, design and random books I liked, but I kept putting off actually writing the post because it didn't feel right.

Enter the little sister, who said, "what about webcomics?" this seeming logical to her as I had recently made an Instagram account, so I could follow other designers, illustrators, makeup artists etc and a good number of the ones I instantly gravitated towards were indeed webcomics. So, thank you for that, because it was genuinely the best idea and I quickly filled the eleven spots on the list with a few to spare! Not bad given I've had an Instagram account for only really a month*.

So Day 11 I am using to introduce you to some thoroughly entertaining, relatable and goofy webcomics that, if you like them, you could follow on Instagram. 

For anyone not familiar with Instagram, some of the images will have arrows right and left on them, which will lead you to a second or third picture in the particular webcomic, so don't forget to click through to continue the various stories...

My head and my heart don't work together. Not properly. My heart wants to be creative and have fun and be happy, to make and keep friends, to fall in love... my head however is constantly telling me why I'm not good enough, what will go wrong and why the things my heart wants are never going to happen. They appear to be completely incompatible.




However, it's this seeming incompatibility that Nick Seluk, the cartoonist behind Brain and Heart, has managed to so perfectly capture. Originally the duo were featured as characters in The Awkward Yeti, a series following Lars the yeti through his day to day life, as he experiences social awkwardness at work and social life. Brain and Heart, who later became a spin-off series, were Lars' inner dialogue

Brain and Heart play in many respects, the roll of the angel and devil sitting on Lars shoulder, trying to convince him one way or the other. Who plays which role is a little hazy, however Heart is optimistic and joyful, excitable and encouraging, but is impulsive and rushes in without thinking. Brain, is always trying to do what's right in the correct way, he's methodical, he wants to do all the research he can and he's cynical about life but petrified of making the wrong decision... they're a little bit of both really, devil and angel. Both want the best, and they're better working together than apart.

Seluk's Brain and Heart is remarkably relatable, even when your heart and head are a little more compatible than mine.

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Tumblr || Website

Being relatable is part of the draw of a lot of webcomics. They rely on the fact that while most of us feel alone in the way we feel about our lives, actually there's always someone else out there who is feeling the way, and part of feeling better about our inadequacies is being able to laugh at them.

Sarah Andersen's webcomic, Sarah's Scribbles is a self-deprecating, semi-autobiographical portrayal of a wide eyed, messy haired Millennial (Sarah) and her issues with social anxiety, body image, menstruation and the feeling that she's really not equipped to be an adult. Also cats...



But my God does she hit the nail on the head.

(I bet you're already sensing a theme with these choices already, and we're only on number two!)

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || YouTube || Website

Writing/illustrating a webcomic semi-autobiographically may seem like the obvious choice for an artists subject matter, it's also the logical one. Who is it easier to make fun of, to tease about insecurities while also being brutally honest about the sometimes ridiculous nature of them? Writing about yourself as a character seems like a pretty cathartic way of coping with your feeling, experiences and problems, even if they are first world.

As part of her webcomic series, Cassandra Calin focuses on expectations vs reality, a lot of which in turn focus on the joys of being a curly haired girl, not an archetype and not feeling ready to adult.



Or in other-words the joy of life. I love Calin's comics, I love the way she draws and the contrast between the beautiful illustration of expectation verses the less than perfect image of reality. She's not afraid of letting her character show its imperfections and that feeling is so perfectly familiar. Why is the person I see in shop windows and dressing room mirrors not the same one I see in the mirror at home? Are they specifically designed to reflect your inner troll?

Instagram || Facebook || Tumblr || Website

Adam Ellis (also known as Adamtots), claims he "left art school after a fellow student presented her final project to the class, declaring 'I put a condom on the Virgin Mary,' and the professor loved it."

I remember those people at university. I remember the stories of the person who urinated on canvases and got a first in their degree, and the guy whose photographs gained him a first, but he never took the photographs... but the nice thing about Ellis and his decision to leave art school, is that it's proof that actually a degree doesn't mean you can't be an artist. Ellis had a successful stint at Buzzfeed as a cartoonist and writer, before leaving to pursue his webcomic about the joys of S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder), low self-esteem, brief obsessions and the absurd moments of his daily life...



...and of course his cats Maxwell and Pepper. I'm honestly starting to believe a cat or a pug may be necessary if you're intending to be successful writing a webcomic...

Instagram || Instagram (Maxwell & Pepper) || Twitter || Facebook || Tumblr || Website

... because when you don't want to write about yourself, but want to write from life, who do you write about? Your pet of course! There are a few staples of the internet that will never truly disappear, including social media, pornography and cats. It doesn't matter what platform you're on, you'll always find cats.

In 2017 Lucas Turnbloom rescued his pet cat and thus How to Cat was born, and instead of serialising his own life, Turnbloom turned his cats crazy antics into a webcomic. Honestly, if you're a cat owner, as soon as you read a few of his webcomics, you'll quickly realise that this illustrator knows cats! Even their internal monologue.



So not only is this an adorable looking illustration of a cat, it's so eerily accurate that I'm kind of scared.

Plus, could all the people who have given their cats (or dogs or hamsters or whatever) a voice in which they talk to you and other family members, please make themselves known. Don't worry, this is a safe place, you're one of us now. Welcome.

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Patreon

Inkpug is the work of illustrator Laura Stohler and Gareth Campbell, and I have been in love with their illustrations of poetry spouting and stupidly cute pugs since well before I knew Instagram even existed, let alone had an account. They were one of the first accounts I started following when I started using Tumblr, and one of the only reasons I ever used to check my feed once I realised that Tumblr wasn't for me.

I'm even pretty sure that Thunder Buddies was the first of their illustrations I ever saw. I even wrote about them here five years ago! So I shall direct you there and keep this short and sweet instead of rehashing that post, leave you with their reply to being asked if they ever got sick of drawing pugs:

"Secret is: I am not drawing pugs. I'm drawing feelings, and the pug is my conduit. So far, I haven't run out of feelings. If I do, I'll probably do fun stuff or sad stuff or general stuff until I have feelings again."  (Do you every get sick of drawing pugs? July 15th 2014, Inkpug!)



I don't know if you can technically count Inkpug as a webcomic, given they are individual illustrations, but they deal with life and anxiety and are a way of the illustrator working through what's going on in their heads, which is what the majority of webcomics I like seem to be. Instagram is also my chosen platform for keeping up to date with their antics these days, and thus this to me makes them count. One hundred percent, and I encourage you to look at their work as it's impossible not to at least smile when looking at them.

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Tumblr || Etsy || Website

Now for something sickeningly sweet. What do you do when  the silly little things in your relationship are just funny? You make a ridiculously sweet and endearing webcomic which is just so freaking adorable that I can't be a surly single person around it!

No matter how much I want to be.

Catana Chetwynd began her webcomic, CatanaComics, in 2017 after her boyfriend, John Freed, told her the idiosyncrasies of their relationship would make a good cartoon. Using the silly, sweet and ridiculous moments of their relationship as inspiration, Chetwynd turn herself and her boyfriend into her simple big eyed couple, even down to the marked size difference, Freed towering over her at six foot six. But it's the silly little things in this webcomic which warms this sad singletons heart, like someone changing your mood by just being happy to see you, or being excited at the most ridiculous things, such as getting enjoyment from the same terrible joke or watching a Roomba vaccuum the floor, and having no problem that your first reaction is to anthropomorphise it with googly eyes...



... I hope for a guy who doesn't mind that I like putting googly eyes on inanimate objects just because it makes me laugh. But I want a guy who does it before I do because he knows it makes me laugh.

These webcomics should be obnoxious, but their not. They're incredibly endearing and I applaud Chetwynd for that.

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Website

Enough with enviable relationships  and back to cats and social anxiety with the webcomic of Hannah Hillam. Obviously two of my favourite things when it comes to webcomics and Hillam provides us with an almost daily dose of both. Helping to prove that cats are almost certainly fluffy gits plotting our demise, but that we can't stop ourselves loving them, and that our brains are trying to sabotage our lives and drive us slowly but surely insane...



...actually cats and brains are quite similar in many respects, they're both all about mind games. Hillam's furry friends are called Battleship and Bear, just in case you're interested.

Instagram || Twitter || Tumblr || Website

I've always been a little ashamed that I can't speak French past the very, very basics. I'm pretty sure if asked my name and age I'd manage both, but still tell you I was fifteen. This feeling is because my gran is half Belgian and French was her first language, something the younger generations of our family have failed to pick it up. My inability to speak or read French however, doesn't stop me loving the work of Margaux Motin, as her sense of humour in her illustrations, for me at least, transcends the language barrier. That or the actual joke is totally lost on me, but I'm just happy looking at the pictures.



(Translation: "Hey! Look how beautiful she is!!! Loooook!!! LOOOOOKK!!!! Look! Look! Look! [Kids: Mum... seriously...] - When you have the mental age of five and everyone else is older than you in your family.")

I've also realised a couple of things over the past few days of looking at the her exuberant, colourful and overwhelmingly joyful illustrations. First is that a lot of webcomics rely on  a black and white colour palette, with minimal use of any other colours let alone the full rainbow like Motin. Secondly a lot of the humour comes from the dark side of the brain, whereas again, Motin's world is incredibly positive - though I may be missing a darker context when I don't go to the effort of translating her text. Thirdly I think I've realised what her illustrations remind me of, and that's the illustrations on the covers of some of the few books I actually read and loved as a kid, Ms. Wiz by Terence Blacker.

The illustrations in question were featured on the original 1990's covers by Kate Simpson, and the book that reminds me most of Motin's work is Ms. Wiz Love Dracula, where we see an almost deranged Ms. Wiz completely besotted by what she believes to be the iconic vampire. I can't quite put my finger on why, but as i was sitting looking through her posts, that's what came into my head. I even went searching for my books... and while I know exactly where they are, and I even managed to get a couple out, unfortunately I've stashed them on a shelf, behind a heavy filing cabinet. We'll see if I'm dumb enough to move it by whether there's a picture of all the books here or not.
(I failed/didn't want to hurt my back again being stupid and moving 
heavy furniture, but did find the correct edition on Amazon.com)

I know they're not that similar, but there's something familiar for me about the comparison, and it's nice that Motin's illustrations remind me so much of a book I loved as a kid, because she's currently illustrating two of my favourite books. For Tibery Editions, Motin has illustrated a limited editions version of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, which I've loved since I was a teenager and even though I have multiple editions of each**, I would have these in a heartbeat.

Instagram || YouTube || Facebook || Tibert Editions || Website

Beth Evan's webcomic, Beth Draws Things, traverses her experiences of depression, and being anxious, of feeling as though she's being left behind by her peers as they get married and constantly post baby pictures on social media, and generally feeling like a less than brilliant adult in the grand scheme of things...



I'm going to give Evans a second image because as I'm scrolling through her feed because I can't pick and I love that she posts both things that scare her but things to reassure everyone...



So while that's incredibly familiar for me and her illustrations are both funny and poignant, and incredibly reassuring for someone who feels many of these things, they're also eerily familiar for me because of these...
... these are origami water balloons I made during my Masters Degree, when I was struggling to put my work down on paper. It seemed like everyone else was adept at using mind-maps and show their working, but I just couldn't. One particularly day we were handed a sheet of paper and told to fill it and I was stumped. Luckily I was talking to one of my tutors, and somewhere along the line it came up that I'd been making hundreds of origami water balloons for a window display, and she encouraged me to find ways to stop the blank sheet of paper I was staring at less scary, like transforming it first. So I made huge origami water balloons out of flipboard paper and started drawing these ridiculous potato people. I don't have a clue why I drew them like this, but it helped me out of a rut in a creative way. By the end of the year I had dozens of these in different sizes blown up to their full glory, piled on my desk with ideas and research and designs and lecture notes and potato people all over them. And I loved them, and my tutors and friends were tickled by them and I'd just kept making them, because apparently while I find mind-maps and empty sketchbooks intimidating, give me a few of these and a Sharpie and I'm okay.

That's what Beth Evan's work reminds me of, and it instantly endeared me to her.

Instagram || Twitter || Tumblr || Website

Of all of these illustrators, I think Gemma Correll is probably the best known of the bunch and likely the one some of you may already be aware of. Primarily because I reckon anybody who has bought a greetings card over the past few years, has probably seen a few of Correll's humorous illustrations lining the shelves. Whether they've been about yoga anxiety, veggie dinosaurs, rainbow unicorns, sozzled goldfish or proud ass spiders...
(via Paperchase)


... Correll's cards are unmistakable and have been a staple of my card giving for a few years now. That's because pugs, cats, food, puns and panic are, apparently, inherently funny to me. Plus her concerned looking pugs are ridiculously cute in every guise that she's created them.

Keep an eye out next time you're looking for a greeting card, because I'm positive you'll come across one of her designs somewhere.

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Pinterest || Society6 || Website


I've been avoiding creating an Instagram account for a while. As I've said repeatedly over this years posts, I feel pretty inadequate about my life and work etc, and to me social media sites like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are all about showing off the wonderful things you're doing with your life. So my feeling has always been, if you're someone who doesn't feel like you have anything in your life or work to tell people about, what's the point in having those platforms? Especially if it'll just add to your anxiety and potentially make you feel worst about yourself. Wouldn't it just be embarrassing having your friends and peers, strangers even judging you on your inadequacies? That's why I left Facebook, or at least stopped logging on, it's why even when a lovely old friend reaches out I feel like I can't reply to their messages. I couldn't even explain that feeling to my gran when she asked if I had friends online, like my sisters do, or if kept in touch with anyone from school or university, because I just felt like a complete weirdo. It's should be simple right?

But these illustrators for the most part feel, or have felt, relatively similar to me, they've had similar experiences and have managed to stay afloat. Expressing and working through their issues by illustrating their lives and having other people respond positively has been cathartic. They've successfully emerged from their anxious little cocoons as actual, relatively functional - at least as it seems online - adults!

There's something so attractive about their openness. I've always kind of envied illustrators, who can express their emotions through their drawings and have it so easily recognised by others. I'd love to do what they do, and get some of the nonsense out of my head, and I realise I'm looking at with newbie rose tinted glasses, but ;'oi1[
p2]45...

...okay, I'm going to interject this mid-sentence as editing Emily, because as I'm sitting on the floor going through my post which has taken me way longer to write than intended because my brain has been useless this week, my lovely cat has just launched himself at my toes. He's then proceeded to wriggled across my keyboard to attack higher up my leg when I objected... for no other reason than I wasn't paying full attention to him for the two seconds he's actually been away today - he's been asleep on the bed ALL DAY! See, that would be the kind of thing an illustrator would be able to make hilarious, instead I'm sitting writing about it with a chunk out toe, covered in hydrogen peroxide!

Anyway, despite the fact that I'm looking at this through newbie rose coloured glasses, I really think that Instagram is a wonderful platform for artists trying to show their work in an approachable and accessible way and I can see why so many have migrated from sites such as Tumblr, because it has many of the same attributes without some of the downsides.

But that's Day 11 done, if you like go show some of these people some love and find some others to recommend and share the wealth. I'm sorry this post has taken so long, I've found it really had to concentrate on writing this week, but seeing it's nearly the end of the month and these should have ended on the 5th of January, I don't think anyone is surprised or I hope you don't mind.

Happy New Year, Merry Christmas and one more day to go! Part eleven after this short commercial break with something I wanted to work in this year and have failed to do, a beautiful piece of animation by Ainslie Henderson called Stems...



Link || The Awkward Yeti || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Tumblr || Website
Link || Sarah Andersen || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Website
Link || Cassandra Calin || Instagram || Facebook || Tumblr || Website
Link || Dina Mata Comics || Instagram (Comics) || Instagram (Illustration) || Etsy
Link || Lucas Turnbloom || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Patreon
Link || Inkpug! || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Tumblr || Etsy || Website
Link || CatanaComics || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Website
Link || Hannah Hillam || Instagram || Twitter || Tumblr || Website
Link || Margaux Motin || Instagram || YouTube || Facebook || Website
Link || Beth Evans || Instagram || Twitter || Tumblr || Website
Link || Gemma Correll || Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Pinterest || Society6 || Website
Link || Ainslie Henderson || Vimeo || YouTube || Twitter || Tumblr


* Yep, I have Instagram, here is my page, but I've not posted anything of my own yet, nor do I intend to for the time being. I will, but only when I have something good or interesting to post. My intention is this may end up being my professional/work account for stuff I make in the future. But, until then it'll be a quiet place for me to lurk around and look at other peoples pretty pictures.
** In my defence of having multiple copies of books, my feeling is that if I love a book, I want to have a reading copy that I can dog ear and abuse and can looked like a cherished and more importantly read and re-read, and another, preferably in a hardback edition (for example the cloth bound Penguin Classics by Coralie Bickford-Smith or a Folio Society edition) that I can keep pretty on a shelf... I don't know if that makes me weird, but that's my system and seeing I don't read a lot of fiction, it makes me look like I have more books than I do!

..................................................................................
Listening: Stems - Poppy Ackroyd
Posted by Emily Boyd at 23:06
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