How a Bipolar Cartoonist Stays Creative
Ellen Forney, the author of “Rock Steady,” candidly explains how she achieves stability with a mental disorder.
Talking about your mental health is hard. Illustrating it is harder. Cartoonist Ellen Forney does both, describing how she lives with her bipolar disorder and giving advice to others on how to stay stable. In her 2012 graphic novel, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me, she explored the concept of the crazy artist, finding inspiration from the lives and work of other artists who suffered from mood disorders. Her recently released follow-up, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from my Bipolar Life, delivers tips and tricks for coping with mental-health challenges with candor, humor, and plenty of personal insights.
For Forney, being a full-time freelance artist living with a mood disorder means being especially mindful of her own work routine. “Because I am bipolar, I am really aware of the things I need to do to take care of myself, and I have a lot of extra motivation to do that,” she tells Magenta, “Toward the end of Rock Steady, I was working so intensively that I was bumping up against my limits. Here I was, working on a book about taking care of yourself, and I felt like I was really getting to the edge of what felt like healthy.“ During these intensive periods, she makes sure to get enough sleep, take her meds, and exercise regularly — usually a combination of yoga, swimming, and biking. Even so, she rarely has a “typical” workday between her art practice and teaching at Cornish College. “The only constant is change,” Forney says. Here, she details how she manages to maintain her equilibrium amidst destabilizing forces.
Morning routine
I am very conscious about having a routine in order to keep myself functioning well, like a car engine that has all of its parts greased and liquids filled. Every morning I do “the usual”: the toothbrushing, getting myself in gear, 15 minutes of yoga and 15 minutes of meditation, and coffee. I have different coffee mugs I have different associations with. I have a New York Times mug, and those are the days I am a little more analytical and need to work very hard on things that are more administration-oriented. Then there’s a mug that has art by my favorite cartoonist, Kaz, on it, and that’s when things are more creative. There are two different handmade ceramics for days off, when things are a little slower.
Clocking in, clocking out
What works best for me to keep things rolling is to be in my studio by 9 a.m. Most of the time, I reach the end of a workday by deliberate effort, and I tend to go by the clock. I do my best to give myself time to wind down before going to sleep. For those of us who love what we do, it’s hard to stop. I do my best to stop by 9 p.m. I’ve already taken a break for dinner, ideally, and have gone back to work because it’s right there. Working until 9 p.m. does not mean I am working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. That’s one of the nice things about being a freelancer: On days that are “mine,” I can take off a few hours in the middle of the afternoon.
Getting creative juices flowing
Even if I am mostly going to be drawing, as a way to focus and get my brain warm up, I have a bunch of writing prompts from Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer.
When I want to puzzle out a page design or the wording for something, that’s a little more doing sketches and staring out the window…except it’s staring out the window with a disapproving-looking face.
Night job
I do a lot of puzzling-out problems and solutions at night: I keep a journal by my bed, and I can write pretty well in the dark, in a way that I can read anyway, and I can do some simple drawing in the dark. When I am in the middle of a creative project, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with a bunch of ideas that I will scribble down because I know that I am not going to remember them in the morning.
A space for every phase of creation
There are three areas I work in. One is the desk where I sit, and that would be where I write by hand, draw, and brainstorm. Then I have a standing desk, where I work on the computer. That’s where my scanner, tablet, printer, and all of those things are. Then I ink and do detailed pencil work standing up at a light table, which I’ve had it for my whole career. A friend of mine in 1994 gave it to me. It’s homemade. It’s a wooden box with frosted plastic underneath it. When I pencil and when I ink, one of the advantages of being at the light table is that you can flip it over and look at it in reverse. Some artists use a mirror, so that it’s easier to get a fresh eye on it. When I ink, I tape my pencil work to the back of my Paris sheet, so that when I put it on the light table when I ink, I can do it directly on the paper without having the pencil on the paper I want to ink.
The bane of creativity
The biggest thing that gets in the way is admin. It really is difficult to balance the concerns and needs of being a professional, self-employed artist and making sure there’s enough space and time for my creative work. There’s always stuff on the computer, things you have to follow up on, that are on hold. One of the best solutions I’ve come up with to remain focused is to make sure to get started on my creative work in the morning, keeping a habit of not checking my email and doing admin work until I’ve worked for a few hours.
An unlikely influence
One of my biggest influences is The Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen, a vegetarian cookbook from the 1980s. It’s a “classic” vegetarian cookbook: It uses a lot of cheese and sunflower seeds. It’s a cookbook that’s handwritten, and it’s illustrated by the author and has little asides in there. One of my biggest challenges is how to give specific information in a way that uses the language of the comic and bringing in visuals and pictures in a way that’s not just a way to make a bunch of text pretty, but to really integrate them. A lot of The Mooswood Cookbook’s sensibility and its approachability was something that really influenced my own work.
Tools of the craft
While I use my computer a lot — I use Photoshop, and I scan things and manipulate things — I am very attached to my traditional materials. It’s like going for a run with your favorite sneakers: You know those sneakers, and they work for you. I like drawing on regular copy paper, on 8.5 x 11. When I am brainstorming and need more room, I get reams of 11 x 17 paper. I use Pentel twist erase mechanical pencils in size 5, 7, and 9. I use sable brushes that I order from Rosemary & Company from the U.K., and I use Bombay India ink. I use Paris paper for pens.
The beauty of clunkiness
I don’t like working on a screen. I know screens are getting better and better, and they don’t glow at you, but I just really, really like paper. One of the big drawbacks to drawing digitally is that I think it’s more goal-oriented, like going for a particular arc or curve. I see my students with a finger on the undo button. When you’re drawing on paper, or inking on paper, you don’t have undo. To a large degree, you have to live with what it is that you put down. In that way, I am more attentive and have to stay more in the moment, both in the process of creating and of looking at it afterwards. One of the things I like about my own work is that it has a certain clunkiness to it. What I may consider a mistake while I am inking, when I come to it later, it turns out to be one of the things I like the most. There’s a certain spontaneity to it, and that’s one of the reasons I like to use a sable brush. It kind of has a mind of its own — it’s like riding a horse instead of driving a car.
Admittedly It’s easier to look at work that is precise: Chris Ware is a very precise, celebrated cartoonist, and Charles Burns also, and it’s difficult when you can’t help but compare your work. But here is my analogy: Their work is like sushi. It’s just beautifully presented and has a certain precision. My work is more like a plate of oatmeal cookies your grandmother made.
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
