Interview With The Amazing Jill Thompson!!

Guess what? As a follow-up to my review of “Animal Rites”, I’m sharing an interview with Watercolor Artist Jill Thompson!

I asked her about a number of things (I forgot to ask her what her favorite color is. Darn...) including her creative process, the future of Beasts of Burden, and her inspiration.

Such an awesome artist HAS to draw inspiration from somewhere, right? When I asked Jill about where it all comes from, she replied:

“My creative process is…comes from all over the place…as far as where I get my ideas from I don’t know. They just kinda pop up out of thin air sometimes.”

Another thing I like that she talked about was her motivation for creating art and her mindset.

“If I do something to amuse myself, other people really like it. But if I really try and force it, and fit it into a box of like “What will other people like?” the it’s flat and boring and nothing really comes of it. But if I go “You know…what’s going to make ME happy? Then it usually makes other people happy, too”.

Of course, Miss Jill’s newest and biggest fan wants to know what’s next.

“Will there be another book as far as collection-wise goes?”

“I’m hoping that Dark Horse will want us to do more issues of ‘Beasts of Burden’. We’re doing one Hellboy/Beasts of Burden crossover, which actually affects both worlds a little bit. You know, it’s not one of these one-offs where you know, they kind of meet up and then it’s like they never existed. It will definitely affect the dog’s world.”

“When will that be available??”

“Um…when will that one be available? I just got the script and printed it out the day I came to this convention. So it’s supposed to be out by the end of the year. I heard that they had it solicited for October. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get it done in time for it to be printed in October cause it’s very involved, you know. There’s a lot of characters, a lot of things happening. And it’s painted. You know…a painted book. It takes a while to do that work.”

“What advice do you have for Watercolor, um, how do you make everything work?..Is there specific advice?”

“Um…how do I make everything work in Watercolor? Um…it is a lot of practice. It was something I just took to as far as a medium. I went to Art School and tried all of the mediums they offered but it wasn’t…you know…while I could do everything pretty competently, Watercolor just came really easily to me. Um…and I’d never picked it up before I went to school. The advice I would give is I guess (or yes?) it certainly is a lot of practice but when you start out, don’t try and go full color right away. I mean…we were not ALLOWED to go full color. We had to work for weeks and weeks uh…in just one color. You know…one color wash because you’re learning how to paint and you’re learning how to do values and you’re learning how to move your medium around and composition is the most important thing to that process.”

A HUGE thank you to Ms. Jill Thompson. I know you were really busy at the convention and I appreciate that you took time out to talk to me. ILOVEYOU!!!

You can find this and other comic book reviews at www.kryptodies.com where I post daily!