Culture
Bringing Up Baby: Comics Artist Documents Life With Daughter
< < Back toOn this edition of Conversations from Studio B, Jessica Makosky talks with Chris Monday and Heather Hively of Flying Weevil Productions about Drink More Water, a comics journal created by Monday.
Drink More Water documents the life of Monday and Mabel, his daughter, from September 2009 to November 2010.
As Mabel turned four years old, Monday honed his craft as a professional artist under the guidance of his mentor Jed Collins, despite the pair's love/hate relationship (a major theme throughout the collection).
Monday drew comics in the Athens area for a number of years, but recently relocated to Columbus to pursue comics as a way to make a living.
It was there that Collins introduced Monday to a number of Columbus-based comic artists, many of which used the daily comic journal entry to exercise their craft.
"I felt that I was in kind of a self-schooling phase of making comics, and thought that if I just started to do something every day, where it was an obligation, my drawing would improve, my writing would improve," said Monday. "I had never really documented my own life before."
After a year of gathering daily snap shots of his life with his daughter Mabel, Monday and Hively self-published Drink More Water under their own production company, Flying Weevil Productions.
"The nice thing about it is that it’s under no censorship but our own, so in putting out that book, the content is purely what we wanted," said Hively. "Anything that we do in the future is up to us, it’s our discretion."
Makosky, Monday and Hively also discuss Monday’s side projects, minimalism vs. reductionism, coffee and the power of Kickstarter, among other topics.
Check out the slideshow below for some examples of Monday’s work. For more information on Chris Monday and Flying Weevil Productions, visit www.flyingweevil.com