Making art to see it
And Tintin rip-offs
Hello September friends!
I’ve recently started work on a project I’ve long wanted to do, and it’s exciting. But also, it’s scary as I’ve never done something like this before - it’s much longer than what I usually write. So I’ve been hovering a bit around 2-4 of this “stages of creativity” list:
Which is fun!
I watched the third part of the Picasso documentary that’s currently on iPlayer, Picasso: The Beauty and the Beast. Julian Schnabel said that near the end of his life Picasso was making paintings “not to be seen, but to see them”.
I was really struck by this. I’ve always figured I’m an artist who wouldn’t make work if other people didn’t see it - it totally feels like a form of communication for me, and if there was no one to communicate with, there’d be no point. But the idea of making art “to see it” felt so smart. I think I do that - make work that I want to see and to read. It’s why whether I’m enjoying making a drawing or comics page is always such a clear sign of whether I will think the end result is good or not - if I’m bored doing it, won’t I be bored reading or seeing it? So I’m going to keep that in mind and I think it’ll help!
One bit of the documentary I loved was seeing his many iterations of the Velasquez painting, Las Meninas. Picasso made 58 paintings in his series, and this is one of the first.
I really enjoyed the last two posts from the Sequential Artists’ Workshop Substack, about how the comic artist Sarah Glidden started to find her voice. It included two pages from a comic she made called “The Reader”, in which she imagined herself entering the novel “The Shipping News”:
She was used to herself as a main character, so she crafted this narrative called "The Reader", where she placed herself inside a novel she had enjoyed.
I like using myself as a main character! I really love this idea - I thought I’d have a go below with a page from one of my favourite Tintins, “The Shooting Star”!
I’ve redrawn it below (could do much worse as a drawing-improvement exercise than copying Hergé!):
Just terrible. But now I want to do this with alllll the Tintin comics!
Haha - love this Tor! You and Tintin sharing the telescope - cute! move overrr, no, you move overrr!! Although maybe it was more os a frisson vibe!
This makes me think about your recent post about pastiches too. You seem to get more than just inspiration and enjoyment from other people's creative work, it's almost like you are starting a conversation with them or that communication you talk about. Riffing with them across the ages. I like that idea! It's nice to think we can bring something fresh to a piece of art that has been around for years, just by looking and thinking about it with our unique perspective of the world!
*big eyes at last three Tintin panels*