Part 1: What the Heck Am I Trying to Say?
This is the first installment in a 4-part series exploring the process behind making my zine Mind the Gap. Let's just say, it wasn't a linear process!
Through the process of making anything (or just doing life in general), I never manage to take a direct route. Maybe no one does. Maybe the nature of creative work is driving down many paths that don’t visibly make it to the final product. Regardless of the process, I have a theory that those “unused” paths create an invisible foundation for the work—they become the cement block walls in the basement that supports the finished version people actually see.
This month I want to share my messy process for creating the zine Mind the Gap and show you some of those cement blocks that aren’t necessarily visible.
When I started working on this project, I was coming off a season of feeling totally uninspired and frustrated with my art. In fact, I made this comic about it.
I was making things, but none of them seemed to “matter.” I get in these ruts sometimes, and I think the crux of my frustration is usually that I have a bunch of random ideas marinating, but none of them are coming together in any sort of cohesive or satisfying way. In retrospect, I can always see that this is an important part of the process, but it never feels that way at the time!
Phase 1: Aimless Drawing… Lots of Thinking
I made this illustration with no zine scheme in mind. It was just a concept I had rolling around in my brain and had to get out.
According to Procreate (the app I use for digital drawing), I spent 12 hours and 27 minutes on this illustration. That’s how long I was actively pressing the Apple pencil to the surface of my iPad pro anyway. I’m sure I spent many more hours staring into space or catching scenes of The Great British Baking Show. (This is my favorite background show when I’m drawing. People are just trying to make something lovely and delicious, and everyone is so nice to each other!)
But while I was drawing, I kept thinking about time and how hard it is to be present because of how rooted we are in the past, but then on the flip side, how we can mine the past for valuable information (the diamond), and how the way we behave in the present pushes us into the future (the leaves reaching up). The diamond from the past can become the shooting star in the future, and a lot of times it feels like everything is happening at once—the past, the present, and the future. All these thoughts were swirling around my brain, and this drawing was my first attempt at trying to create order from the chaos. Basically this drawing (like all drawings) was just a way for me to process and think.
After I finished the drawing, I knew there was more that I wanted to say about being present and how that relates to art. So after I made it into a t-shirt design, I thought, “Hey, I’ll make it into a zine. That’ll help me complete the thought loop on this topic. I’ll keep it simple: eight pages, three interior spreads—one for past, present, and future—plus front and back cover. Boom. This’ll be easy.”
I promptly made it not easy by going in several different directions with the artwork. Here’s a glimpse into the eight-page rabbit hole I fell down while drawing different kinds of brains.
I liked the individual illustrations, but the eight-page layout lacked cohesion. I didn’t like having two different styles of brain… I knew I wanted to rework the brains to all look like the flower brain, and then I realized I wanted them to all connect! This eight-pager wasn’t going to cut it. An accordion zine was clearly the answer. I’ll show you how that turned out next week.
I was also writing some things that I really wanted to explore and expand on beyond eight-pages. Here’s the intro to the zine that encouraged me to keep going:
I spend a lot of time
Trying to fill the open spaces
Between the noise
Between the gaps
In my capacity
To be here
Now
I knew I wanted to explore the concept of how we use creating and consuming art as a way of coping with daily life—and even more than that—as a way of transcending the pitfalls of being human, of trying to be present, of trying to say what we really mean, but not being able to. That’s where art comes in—it fills the gap between what we say and what we mean. It becomes shorthand for what’s really in our hearts and minds.
I finally had a grasp on what wanted to say. Now I just needed to figure out how to say it! So I started drawing and designing some more (and writing a bunch of junk that mostly landed on the cutting room floor!). I wanted the format to serve the message, so next week I’ll dive into Part 2: Making a Mess (aka, exploring the accordion zine format).
Thanks for reading!
Thank you for your responses about “Listening to the Late-Summer Air” last week. If you missed my post about listening to the cicadas and discovering the joy of Lumpy Horse, you can check it out here.
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