Cartoonist and illustrator Adrian Tomine (author of the terrific little book Scenes From an Impending Marriage) was recently interviewed on the Bat Segundo show. (I love this cover Adrian drew for The New Yorker.)
Subjects Discussed: Doing time in Sacramento, veiling a personal experience with a sex change, which of Tomine's characters is least like him, the liberation that comes in fabrication, scratched out names and Victorian literature, the original small audiences for Scenes and 32 Stories, the father's fund, taking criticisms to heart, the drawbacks of working in the same realist vein, Tomine's wife as the "first audience," the artist's fragile ego, the influence of printed literature and storytelling upon art, humbling versions of inspiration, Tomine's degrees of aspiration and ambition, living a life in service to the drawing, facing the world, the "strenuous" exigencies of cartoonists, drawing panels without decor, Tomine's perfectionist qualities, the freedom in pursuing work that isn't going to be reviewed, feeling highly scrutinized, the pleasure in publishing harsh letters, the look of the ranger, using the fewest lines to get the maximum amount of detail, settling upon the three panel approach, maintaining a private style in secret scrapbooks, varying levels of creative insulation from the public, the very low frequency of sound words, the tongue licking in "Alter Ego," seeing external details that other characters cannot, the grotesque reality of Chris Ware's furry cats, the number of people who read books in Tomine's New Yorker illustrations, the Venn diagram between 1990s subcultures and digital culture, disappearing subcultures, cartoonists who detest hippie and hipster culture, gesture and look, Alison Bechdel's elaborate photographic process, and the pursuit of "realism" in an "unreal" medium.
