Fun Aunt, Two Ways
It started out with this illustrated post I made for my newsletter in June 2024.
A few months later, I revisited the concept during the InkyGoodness 28 Day Comics Challenge. We were given a spec brief from NYT Well art director Sarah Williamson to create a 5-6 panel full color comic around a wellness theme (think: mental health, relationships, fitness, emotional wellbeing, etc).
The goal of the challenge was to learn how to better leverage symbolism to make complex ideas easier to understand. What would it look like to use visual metaphor to portray these complex feelings I had, rather than all that text?
I landed on rain as a motif: a natural element, necessary for sustaining life, sometimes an inconvenience, and sometimes a joy. We naturally try to shield ourselves from the rain, but getting a few drops on us isn't harmful. As children, one of the greatest joys is jumping in puddles. As adults, there's the romantic notion of singing and dancing in the rain.
I felt it worked well as a visual metaphor for projected opinions – especially if I exaggerated the raindrops, making them really large and foreboding in one panel.
Here is my sketch and early color rough:
I reworked the third panel many times before landing at the final version, below. This solution helped capture two ideas I wanted to get across: that other’s opinions are as ephemeral as a water droplet, and that our perception does not always accurately reflect reality.
In hindsight, I was a little too influenced by the styles and color palettes from the examples Sarah shared with us. While the subject matter and compositions feel authentic to me, the overall tone feels a bit like I'm sitting in the neighbor's living room rather than my own.
If I were to revisit this piece again now, over a year later, with a more developed personal voice, I’d use a bright color palette with a bolder, cleaner line, perhaps going from desaturated color to more saturated as the panels progress, to show another level of stepping into my own light.
Nevertheless, I’m grateful that this new version of “Fun Aunt” found a home over at Modern Women.
