Daniel Clowes is an American comic book artist and
screenwriter, perhaps best known for his graphic novel, Ghost World, and
its film adaption, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted
Screenplay. Clowes was born in 1961; he started reading comic books inherited
from his older brother as a young child and, after attending the University of
Chicago Laboratory School, graduated with a BFA from the Pratt Institute in New
York in 1984 (Daniel Clowes). Although he produces mostly graphic
novels, including the anthology Eightball which ran from 1989 to 2004,
he has also created artwork for album covers (see: Supersuckers’s The Smoke
of Hell), film posters (Todd Solondz’s Happiness), as well as other
forms of illustrations. Clowes’s work can be characterized as dark and cynical,
and disillusionment with banal everyday life is a recurring theme in Clowes’s
work.
In the
early 90s, Clowes, along with several other artists, was commissioned by the
Coca-Cola Company to design the packaging for a new soft drink called OK Soda,
marketed towards a new demographic of adolescents (“Generation X”) that was
emerging along with grunge during this time; the product aimed to utilize irony
to target a group of youths who were disillusioned with commodity culture,
featuring “blank deadpan characters on the can that sort of represented the
dull ennui of the average consumer” as well as sardonic slogans such as “What's
the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?” and “OK Soda may be the
preferred drink of other people such as yourself.” Although OK Soda failed as a
test product, the cans have become collectors’ items, and the brand has gained
a cult following of sorts (Clowes).
In terms of his artistic style, Clowes utilizes caricature to create his
(almost always) misanthropic characters. In his drawing, Clowes works heavily
with subtractive drawing: "I tend to overfill every panel so I go back and
erase a lot; or when inking I won’t ink half the things in the background.
Often, I’ll ink all the buildings in the background and then go in with
white-out and remove half of them, so that it reads in the way want it to read
without being cluttered or fussy (Sullivan 143)." Clowes also works
with different modes of perspective, sometimes using two- or three-point
perspective and lighting to create depth, but also often flattens out his
images to create congruency between his form and content. He also frequently
uses stark black backgrounds to create contrast between foreground and
background, as well as "air pressure, smog, clouds and various optical
effects [to diffuse] and distort the way you see things in the deep background,
especially in the urban America [Clowes tends] to be drawing" (Sullivan
149). Clowes produces most of his works by hand—his lines and letterings are
drawn and edited on paper and then scanned; final corrections and color are
done digitally.
"Back
to the Drawing Board: How Dan Clowes Creates His Worlds on Paper."
Interview by Darcy Sullivan. Daniel Clowes: Conversations. Ed. Ken
Parille and Isaac Cates. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 2010. vii-xvi.
Print.
Clowes,
Daniel. "Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man: A Q&A with Dan
Clowes, Cartoonist Extraordinaire." Interview by Jonanthan Valania. Phawker.
N.p., 3 May 2011. Web. 1 Mar. 2013.
<http://phawker.com/2011/05/03/portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-middle-aged-man-a-qa-with-dan-clowes-cartoonistscreenwriter-extraordinaire/>.
Daniel
Clowes. 2012. Web. 1
Mar. 2013. <http://danielclowes.com>.
"Introduction."
Daniel Clowes: Conversations. Ed. Ken Parille and Isaac Cates. Jackson:
University of Mississippi, 2010. vii-xvi. Print.
