I'm not the best person to analyze any kind of evolution in my work, but I do feel like it's been an ongoing struggle to basically teach myself how to tell the kinds of stories that interest me in comics form. Adrian Tomine More Quotes by Adrian Tomine More Quotes From Adrian Tomine I wanted it to be as readable as possible. I had the ambition of reaching a broader audience. Adrian Tomine reaching ambition wanted I set myself up for a lot of trouble by wanting to tell a story that is fairly earnest and emotional and expressive, but to do it in the most subtle, realistic way. Adrian Tomine emotional stories way There are some people who may not like precision in their art. They may like it to be grittier and more gestural, more of a direct expression in the way that a painter would put his strokes on canvas. Adrian Tomine expression people art It's cold water in the face to realize you're not nearly as special and as unusual as you might have thought when you were an alienated teenager. Adrian Tomine teenager special water One of the by-products of being allowed to start my professional career prematurely is that the evolution of my work is really evident. Adrian Tomine professional-career careers evolution When people see me struggling on paper, I think it invites an almost collaborative relationship with the outside world, and that includes readers and other artists. Adrian Tomine artist struggle thinking I've always been really impressed with some of the longer graphic novels and thought it would be really amazing if one day I could try something like that. Adrian Tomine one-day would-be trying I'm always pointing things out to native New Yorkers that I think are weird about this place and their culture and all that. But I feel like my friends and family from California feel like I've totally "become a New Yorker." Adrian Tomine family-and-friends california thinking I guess there's just a part of me that's not very enthusiastic about finding myself ten years from now halfway through a story that may or may not be any good. Adrian Tomine stories may years You start to get nervous when the value of a comic book or graphic novel is relative to the achievements of some other medium. Adrian Tomine nervous achievement book I certainly wasn't consciously hiding my identity in the earlier work, though a lot of people have brought up the fact that I drew myself without eyeballs. Adrian Tomine identity facts people It's important to make a distinction between becoming more precise and becoming better. Adrian Tomine becoming-more becoming-better important I think there was a point in the past when I felt that my options as an artist were either to make race a nonissue and deny its impact on life and just say, "Don't think of me as an Asian cartoonist. Just think of me as a cartoonist." Adrian Tomine artist past thinking There were certainly some people who wanted me to do a feel-good story that affirmed a lot of very commonly held beliefs. Adrian Tomine feel-good stories people I wanted to try to create characters that happen to be Asian but who are pretty different from those we generally see in our culture, in our commercial culture. Adrian Tomine asian trying character A lot of the kinship that people notice is not coincidental. I was very impressionable and trying to find my role models when I was twelve or thirteen. Adrian Tomine role-models trying people The first time I did a reading/signing thing at Cody's, the woman who did the introduction said something like that, and I wasn't the only one cringing. I remember looking out into the audience and seeing people's faces and people whispering to each other, and thinking like "Ugh, can we just cancel the whole thing? I can't go out there after she said that." Adrian Tomine reading people thinking I was just a guy who did adult or alternative comic books. And then suddenly to be, like, a New Yorker cover artist was a different thing. Adrian Tomine guy artist book Maybe you're not even in a position to really judge how good your kid is at that endeavor. Adrian Tomine endeavor judging kids When email and the Internet came along, I never publish an email address. I just stuck with this P.O. Box address. Adrian Tomine email addresses internet
