F.A.Q’s

What is this comic about?

This is an autobiographical comic taking place between 2010 and 2013, a time during which I sailed on a bunch of sailing ships and lived on the road in the USA for a year.

What is scratchboard?

Scratchboard is a medium enjoying far less recognition than it deserves to. Basically it is a board or carton that you buy that is prepared with white chalk (or some related substance) which is then covered with a thin layer of black. You draw by scratching away the black, thus revealing the white. The effect resembles that of a woodcut but you can do pretty much what you want with it.

Why did you choose scratchboard for your comic?

Scratchboard has always appealed to me. I found that by using the technique I was forced to think in reverse. When drawing the traditional way you create a line, usually black on a white, by appying ink to an empty background. Here you have to do the opposite, remove all but the line, thus creating an image by creating a background. I found that my style changed. It was still recognizible as mine, but it had a different look to it. I also found that some subjects that I had been struggling to draw came more easily to me in this technique. It was as if I had unlocked something in my drawing.

Another aspect I like about the scratchboard is the kind of dark, dramatic feeling it creates. Why is this? Black is by nature more dramatic than white, and I mean ‘dramatic’ not in the sense that it is violent and forceful, but more in the way that there is a lot going on. Often there is a block and kind of hesitation when drawing with pen on paper to add a lot of black, but with this technique, all is black to begin with. Since a little of this tendency of fear of going ‘too far’ in a drawing lives on, one tends to leave more black than you would usually add in a drawing, and that creates kind of a noir-feeling to the pictures. Also, all the surfaces that are white, I have to actively remove black from to make white. In other words the surfaces that are in a traditional pen drawing passive, now become highly active, as I am required to painstakingly touch every single part of the surface. This creates a sense of involvement in all parts of the drawing.

The effect the scratchboard creates can resemble that of an etching (or actually a reversed etching) with its ability to create fine, thin scratched lines. It can also create the more bold, expressful look of a wood cut or linoleum cut. On the white surface you can draw and also paint with ink or water colours. This allows you to the best of both worlds; the reverse effect of the scratchboard, and the traditional technique of drawing black on white. Should you make a mistake or change your mind as to whether a line should be there or not you just paint or draw some ink on the white, that you can scratch away again. You can do this about three times before the chalk is gone.

How long does it take you to draw one page?

One page generally takes between 10 and 20 hours to draw.

How long is this comic and when will it be finished?

The comic is 266 pages long. Given the average speed so far it will be finished sometime in 2016.

Do you have a publisher for the comic?

No.

Do you make any money doing this? Do you intend to make a lot of money publishing and selling it?

Money is not what motivates me to draw this comic. Had making a lot of money been a motivating factor in my life, tall ship sailor and comic artist would have been two shitty career choices. That being said, I hope to make enough money publishing it that it feeds me while finishing other projects for a year or so.

I notice you are Swedish. How come you write in English when you have a perfectly functional and beautiful language as your native tongue?

I agree that the Englishification of all other languages, especially the Scandinavian languages, is unfortunate and often quite silly. The reason I write in English is that most of the events in this comic took place in English-speaking environments, and most the charachters in it is based on Americans, and most the conversation it is based on was in English. Also I began work with the manuscript during the year I spent in the states when only spoke and even thought mostly in English, so it was a natural choice for me then. Ideally I wish I could write this story in both English and Swedish.

Why do you call it a ‘comic’ when it is clearly a graphic novel, i.e. a ‘serious’ comic?

Simply because I find this silly. A comic is merely the name for the technique of telling a story by combining text and images. The written text as a medium has a reputation of being of high intellectual value, and a painting (and to so extent also a drawing) enjoys a similar reputation. Curiously, when these two well-respected techniques are intimately combined into what is referred to as a ‘comic’, its reputation sinks immediately. Why is this? Sure, a lot of comics are of poor value both as literaure and art, but why should this drag the entire art form down with it? There are an ocean of books and drawings of unbeliveably crappy quality, but that doesn’t affect the way we view both those mediums as a form of expressing ourselves.

In my (quite obstinate and highly subjective) opinion, comics are among the most evolved forms of telling a story, and very possibly one of the most difficult ways to do it, as well.