Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joanna Comstock. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Joanna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
This is something I have personally struggled with in my work. A lot of what I’ve created in recent years has been based on bulking my portfolio with mostly original work that I thought was aesthetically interesting in order to stand out at comic conventions in seas of fanart. Not a lot of it thus far has had some profoundly meaningful backstory or exciting history attached to it aside from a few standouts brought to life out of some personal struggles. For that reason, this year I aim to dive deeper into incorporating more storytelling with my imagery, and relate to people on a more personal level and push that emotional connection to my pieces, for myself as the artist, as well as facilitating an experience for the viewer. I’ve had fun just drawing cool stuff, but I want more out of it, and I think that will resonate with others also. To date, I would say my 2024 Parade of Hearts painting that I just completed means the most to me. It will also likely be relevant to a larger audience over the Kansas City metro and will illicit feelings of joy and pride with the peacock fanned out on the front, and a celebration of diversity and culture symbolized through colorful Kansas City Zoo and Aquarium animals on the back, echoing the mentality and strong community in Kansas City.
On a personal level, doing a project as large as this, (roughly 5 feet across and 5 feet high, fully painted front and back) that will get a lot of visibility across the city during its display April – August means so much to me as a little-known, local artist and small business owner. I pushed myself to add a ton of elements and so much detail into the painting, I finished before the deadline, and it is the 2nd largest artwork of my professional career. I am exceedingly proud of myself and incredibly pleased with the outcome of the work.
Joanna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was born and raised in Kansas City, MO, and it’s where I currently live and create with my husband Justin and our two dogs, Pepper and Stella. To start at the beginning, I’ve been drawing as far back as I can remember, being inspired by dinosaurs, animals, cartoons and comics. After a childhood of drawing fanart of my favorite anime characters and creating my own creepy creatures and characters, I attended a few summer art programs towards the end of high school, most notably the Pre-College Art Lab at the Kansas City Art Institute. It was at that time I had my heart set on attending college there to learn animation. It took a lot of convincing for my parents to agree, and after freshman year at community college, I completed the remaining sophomore through senior years at KCAI and obtained my BFA in animation in 2011.
After getting my degree, I realized animation was not something I wanted to pursue as a career, and the severe burnout I experienced after a grueling senior year completely halted my creative journey for 2 solid years. I spent that time working multiple jobs to pay off my student loan debt.
As time passed, I began going to comic conventions with my friends, and became totally enamored with artist alleys. I fell in love with that atmosphere, and found my inspiration again, making it a goal for myself to get back into drawing, build up my portfolio, and get myself into a convention. I got back to my roots in illustration, and started making fanart and original work, starting off at a couple small events, and working my way up to the biggest convention in KC: Planet Comicon. I told myself for years that my portfolio wasn’t big enough, that I didn’t have enough work to do well at an event that size, but with the encouragement and support of my husband and friends, I threw caution to the wind (and busted ass to make a lot of new work) and got accepted to Planet for the first time in 2022.
To my surprise, my original works were very well received, and now with this year being my 3rd year in a row vending in the artist alley at Planet Comicon, I continue to expand on my original ideas and am phasing out my fanart altogether. Having this event to look forward to inspires me as an artist, and motivates me to improve my illustration work year after year, and I’m still so thrilled every time attendees respond to my work!
I love that what I was interested in as a child still resonates to this day and that I can continue to draw dinosaurs, animals, and creepy creatures, just now with a more defined point of view. Fans of my artwork have mentioned time and again that the way I draw looks like tattoos. Being a person with tattoos and being inspired by tattoo art, I loved this realization about my work and have continued to lean into that aesthetic with my pieces. I would describe this approach as a sort of creepy, quasi-surreal, hybrid-illustration/neo-traditional tattoo style usually featuring bold colors, clean linework (which is my favorite part and am very proud of), with minimal backgrounds to highlight the main focus in the work. My specialty is utilizing traditional techniques to create different effects, typically rendering with pen, alcohol marker, and colored pencil, then playing with additional elements such as cutout areas, specialty marbled and metallic papers, mounted layering, blown ink, painting, foiling, etc. The type of products I make are original illustrations, paintings, or mixed media artworks, prints of my work, stickers, bottle cap pins, and temporary tattoos – most of which are available at markets and conventions I vend at as well as on my webstore depending on availability. I also design beer bottle labels, and am interested in providing apparel options and enamel pins in the future. I am open to commission work like pet portraits and memorials, tattoo designs, and mural work for homes and businesses.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
For me, it is all about connection, and there’s a lot of facets with that to be taken in a lot of different ways. When a viewer experiences the work for the first time, that emotional response – or visceral reaction, striking some kind of chord, being able to relate to the feeling of a piece, or purely piquing interest because of the subject. Having something about an artwork that conjures an emotion or memory in a stranger with an image that I created is a surreal and thrilling feeling. Somehow what I created was able to affect someone else is a connection between me as the artist to them as the viewer, at the same time that they are connecting in whatever way to the work itself. This goes back to my goal for this year, pulling more meaning into my work so I can better facilitate those deeper connections to make lasting impressions and give myself and the viewer more to think about, not only for myself throughout the creative process and my personal connection to the piece, but the viewer forming their own connections with their own experience of that work. Sometimes those thoughts are shared, and other times my audience reveals their takeaways and might offer perspectives I hadn’t considered or didn’t intend, and it opens up a chance for us to connect over a dialogue about the work where that conversation wouldn’t have happened otherwise. That connection, for me, is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Right in line with pursuing deeper meaning within my artwork and facilitating connections, both of which are goals in their own right, I think my mission is just to keep taking myself seriously, and push further down this path because for me, there is not another option. I’ve tried! I’ve spent a lot of years working soul-sucking office jobs, and while those positions did provide me with more financial stability, I need to take care of myself. Being frustrated, stressed, and emotionally drained from full-time jobs, then trying to squeeze out something creative in the couple hours I’d have to myself after all of that mental abuse is not healthy. I’d sit there with all these ideas bouncing around my skull and not being able to get them out. It’s incredibly depressing. This is my passion, and what I’m good at. It’s what I’m meant to do with my life. My mission is to keep fighting for it so I can realize these visions in my imagination. It’s my goal to connect to people through my work, visually sharing my struggles with mental health, exposing my fears and juxtapositions of life and death, grappling with faith and greater powers that be as an ex-catholic, topics that induce my anxiety and the imagery I can use to work through that for personal growth. This mission is more than a desire, it is a necessity.
Contact Info:
- Website: joannasaurusart.com
- Instagram: @artofthejoannasaurus
- Facebook: facebook.com/artofthejoannasaurus