The Artist_s Magazine 2016-03__

March 2016 47

Padua is hardly

unfamiliar with

telling a story

through art, even if

Lovelace and Babbage

is her i rst graphic

novel; she works as a

visual ef ects anima-

tor on i lms like John

Carter and Clash of

the Titans. “Animation demands an unusual

mix of technical craftsmanship and creative free

play and a desire to constantly learn new things,”

she explains. “You may go from animating a

delicate dialogue performance one day to space-

ships colliding the next, so you need to be happy

diving into the mechanics of both. I’ve always

been interested in anatomy and how things

work, but also in storytelling—these two things

come together well in animation.”

Pictures and Words

Storytelling and art have been lovers for

centuries, even if we’ve tended to shame them

into tip-toed secrecy, relegating the most

beautiful illustrations to the world of picture

books and grade school story times. Would Art

Spiegelman’s Maus have been as profoundly

moving without his stark black lines to guide

the reader’s eye through the horror of the

Holocaust? Visual language is one we feel deeply.

Lemire agrees. “I employed two drawing

and storytelling styles with Underwater Welder,”

he says. “h e book follows a man who’s a welder

of a deep-sea rig in eastern Canada. His wife is

expecting their i rst child and his job comes to

represent the pressure of impending fatherhood.

When he (the protagonist) is on land, I used a

strict, 12-panel grid layout and black-and-white

artwork to represent the claustrophobia he was

feeling at home. When he dives below sea, I

ABOVE:This spread

from Lemire’s

Underwater Welder

demonstrates the

author’suseofink

washes to make an

aqueous appearance

for the scenes taking

place underwater.

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