The creative process behind THREE INSTANCES OF NOT MEETING JARVIS COCKER

Three instances of not meeting Jarvis Cocker is not really about not meeting Jarvis Cocker, it’s a story about loss and the loss of love of all kinds.

Some of it is true, none of it is true

Some of it is based on things that happened adjacent to my life. I did work in journalism in the 1990s. I did have a flatmate who died, but the character of Hannah is entirely fictitious. She stands for all the people in my life that are no longer in my life.

It's about not only loss through death, but also the loss of friends as you get older. The sadness when you, or they, stop returning emails or replying to texts. Those people you met at university, when you always said you'd end up living as spinsters together in next door flats, with 14 cats, going down the bingo together. The slow realisation that isn't going to happen.

“When you are a student cups of tea take on a strange significance. You spend hours sitting in the kitchen, with your new friends, talking to the people you think you will know the rest of your life…”

Walking home together spread. Left hand page shows the merging of the gelli print background with hand-drawn jellyfish style creatures.

Writing and art: my creative process

My writing and art creative process is closely linked. I don't know if other graphic novelists write in this way. I specifically wanted this to be a hybrid. More of an illustrated fictional memoir than a comic. So, it takes elements of the language of a comic but sometimes subverts it. One of my favourite pages is the morning after sequence.

The morning after sequence in 'Three instances of not meeting Jarvis Cocker'

Though more sophisticated in style, I think it relates to my first graphic novel My Mind Is Free because it falls into the category of ‘speculative journalism’. Both are based on little parts of Truth but sandwiched between made-up bits. The art style of My Mind Is Free is more grungey and naïve, - I wanted it be sort of be ugly – because human trafficking is ugly.

In My Mind is Free I gave each person a slightly different style relating to an aspect of themselves so one character (Violeta) who was into art, has some doodles and her own art in the section of the story about her; and another character (Giang) who finds a fuzzy felt toy at his foster home, has some pages interpreted in fuzzy felt. The other characters who have photos as an important part of their stories have photo backgrounds and a more collagey look.

Colin's nightmare sequence from 'My Mind Is Free'

The art of THREE INSTANCES

For Three instances of not meeting Jarvis Cocker I've used a mixture of pen drawing and computer illustration using Procreate and Photoshop.

I started the images a few times before I found the look I wanted and I had one moment where about one third of all the work was irretrievably corrupted. It all worked out in the end as I changed what I wanted to do with the book.

Then I started experimenting with gelli printing and I really loved the way the prints looked when scanned into the background and it fits because Hannah is/was an artist.

Some of the images are based on old photos, some are completely made up. It’s a mixture of fact and fiction – like the contents of the story.

The black hole spread. Several gelli prints composited together in Photoshop.

COVID-19 got me back into drawing

I was really into art as a child, but then did badly in my Art O-level so didn't end up doing Art at A-level as I had planned. I thought I had to choose between writing and art, because I couldn't be good at both. But of course I could. I now know many artists who write and writers who are brilliant artists.

I was lucky enough to get Arts Council England DYCP funding during the pandemic to relearn how to draw and to adapt my play My Mind Is Free into a graphic novel. During my DYCP year, I spent loads of time researching (getting addicted to) graphic novels, and relearning how to draw. And 30-ish years later I'm now totally in love with the form!

You can buy My Mind Is Free and Three instances of not meeting Jarvis Cocker in the store.