seriös ritblogg

Dear Students,

Writing by hand is so different than typing on a keyboard.  It’s like walking through a town, especially a strange town.  You don’t really know much beyond one foot in front of the other toward something in the distance or away from something behind you.

If you are stuck trying to write something, you can let your hand and fingers take the lead. What happens if we write slowly and by hand? What happens to ideas when we move through them at a walking pace?

Sincerely,

Professor Andretti

Neil Gaiman has released a book of his great commencement address, Make Good Art.

When things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician — make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor — make good art. IRS on your trail — make good art. Cat exploded — make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before — make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and that doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: Make good art. Make it on the bad days, make it on the good days, too.

I love Gaiman’s message, but I also want to make a plug for something else: when the going gets rough, make bad art, too.

When 9/11 and Katrina hit and she lost a bunch of her close friends, Lynda Barry got really depressed, and all she could do is doodle:

I found myself compelled, like this weird, shameful compulsion to draw cute animals. That was all I could stand to draw. You know, just cry and draw cute animals…dancing dogs with crowns on, you know? And, like, really friendly ducks. But I found this monkey, this meditating monkey, and I found that once - when I drew that monkey, it’s not that it fixed the problem. But it did shift it a little bit, or provide me some kind of relief. And that’s when I started to think, maybe that’s what images do, because I believe in all my - with all my heart they have an absolute biological function…

“My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea”, the animated movie I wrote/directed, is world premiering at TIFF next month, and US premiering at NYFF in October. Both were announced earlier today. 

A Flamboyance of Flamingos by Mal Jones!

Illustration - Harry Mckenzie

Lungs of the World

by Louis Deux

Wool Tree - Lynden Joudrey

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Haven’t posted in a month and here’s the reason why! 

I recently teamed up with Singaporean author Jumaini Ariff to create this picture book, ‘Three, Two, One… Zoom!’ It’s a short story in Malay about a little girl and her grandmother’s adventure to the moon. Book launch on the 25th of May. :)

Text: Jumaini Ariff. Illustrations and layout: Samuel Lee. Publisher: Mini Monsters Limited. Brought to you by an initiative from Beyond Words. Managed by NBDCS and supported by NAC.