Bored Panda reached out to Evie to learn more about her creative process and herself. Since a lot of her comics feature her own experiences, we were curious to know how she finds inspiration in her everyday life. "Ideas don’t exist in a vacuum," the artist shared. "It is so important to have a balance between life and drawing, even though it seems like they have a lot of overlap. If I was making comics all day, I wouldn’t have the experiences to make new comics. But if I was out all day, I would never have time to make comics either. You have to have both."
"Unfortunately for me, I FEEL a lot. I’m also a chronic overthinker whose brain runs at a million miles an hour. Now, I can’t drive, but I feel like that’s way too many miles an hour for a brain to be going.
Me saying that I'm a big thinker isn’t me tooting my own horn - truly, it’s the worst. Imagine a skull full of bees. You’re picturing my skull. It’s FULL of bees and I am NOT a qualified beekeeper. But it does mean I churn out a lot of ideas!"
Artist's block is a common challenge, so we asked Evie how she overcomes moments of creative stagnation. "Artist’s block is the worst! To anyone creative, art block is the equivalent of a papercut right between your fingers. The worst! It’s like needing to open a can but you don’t have a can opener. The ABSOLUTE worst! It’s like… the feeling of needing to sneeze but with no sneeze that ever comes. The worst of the worst."
To Evie, artist's block occurs frequently, and she shared that she feels let down every time that happens. "Drawing is my THING, you know? And if I suddenly suck at the one thing I'm meant to be good at, it's not just affecting my creative output - it's affecting my whole self-esteem.
To get back into the swing of things, I will always start off with simple drawings. Recently, I did a comic that was all just variations of street signs. That way I ease back into it, without judging my work too harshly. And also, allowing yourself to be bad at art for a while. Being bad at art is always better than not doing any art at all. And one artist’s ‘bad’ could be another artist’s whole inspiration. I once drew what I thought was my worst comic, and then a year later someone told me it was their favorite. Be bad at art! The good comes later!"
Evie's comics cover a lot of different things. We were curious to know if she has some favorite topics or feelings she likes to draw or write about the most. "I think there can be a pretty strong divide in the comics I make - they can be dumb jokes and word play like mixing up the words ‘pirates’ and ‘pilates’, or they can speak earnestly on the transient nature of loneliness. Yes, I KNOW ‘the transient nature of loneliness’ sounds pretentious but that’s exactly what I am sometimes!
I struggle with defining what kind of comics I make because I don’t want to be pinned down by one feeling. I can be funny, but I can also be sad, or angry. My comics really are an extension of me, who I am, and whatever I’m feeling or thinking at the time."
The artist shared that she studied animation in college, and that's where she earned her degree. However, she finds animating challenging because it requires a significant amount of time. "When I started making comics, I found it came so easy to me. When I say it came easy to me, I don’t mean the theory or the craft of it. what came easy to me was the will to MAKE comics, something I never really got from animation. I don’t know what exactly clicked or why, but once I started I never stopped. I love it. I love it! I love making them, reading them, and showing other people how to make them - it’s become a huge part of my personality. Talk to me for five minutes and I’ll probably have already mentioned eight different webcomics I'm into.
I think, if I could speak to anything specifically about comics that I'm passionate about, it would be storytelling. It’s such an engaging way to tell a story and to read a story. Time, place, dialogue, plot - it’s all at your disposal. You draw a place, sure, but then you add text and it can shift the tone of the piece completely. Nothing else can do exactly that, except comics."
In Evie's journey as a self-taught artist, the most challenging part is being perceived as a bad illustrator. "People will see my stuff and think I can’t draw well. I spent a long time putting away really fun ideas because I didn’t feel I was a good enough drawer to do them justice."
The artist shared that she reads every single comment and DM she receives. "I don’t reply to most of them because I don’t know how to convey what it means to me, that people see my work, and relate to it enough to be kind to me. Because really, to me, what they are SEEING is not my comics, but me! I feel seen and validated in a way that I never got before starting this project, probably because I was too afraid or self-conscious. I’m being super earnest here, but it is so, so special to me. If you like someone’s art, whether it’s music or comics or paintings or stories, you should tell them. If you have the opportunity to make someone’s day and validate the work they’re spending their hearts on, why wouldn’t you?"
