Technical Aspects of Fun Home- Colour, Images & Action

Post by Sarah H

Colour:
In the graphic novel/manual entitled “Understanding Comics”, Scott McCloud (1994) speaks about the role of colour in the history of comics. He says, “Throughout Art history, color has been a powerful, even predominant, concern of great artists everywhere” (p. 185).

The colour or lack of colour that an artist utilizes is used purposely to convey atmosphere and mood; colour helps to portray the artist/writer’s message. Scott McCloud informs us that the Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky believed “colors could have profound physical and emotional effects on people” and that “Colour can be a formidable ally for artists in any medium” (p. 185).

McCloud tells us that colour revolutionized the Comics medium, yet he acknowledges that the medium, in the past, has been limited by the technology and colours available to artists (186). That is no longer the case. Technology has advanced, and all the subtleties of the colour palette are now available to artists in this, and in any other, print-based medium. What McCloud acknowledges, is that although colour, when used well, can be incredibly powerful and influential, “color will never replace black and white entirely” (192).

So with all the colours in nature available to her, Alison Bechdel chooses to portray her memoir in black line art, with a blue ink-wash. One might wonder, why would Bechdel choose such a monochromatic colour palette? In an interview with Virginia Harabin & Susan Skirboll, Alison Bechdel states that “I had to find a mode of expression that wouldn’t directly compete with them [her parents]...My dad was this kind of design genius, obsessed with color. I feel like in a way I became a cartoonist by default. It was black and white, it wasn’t literary. It was a way of flying under their aesthetic radar” (para. 4). Alison seems to imply that, because of her father’s love of colour, she was able to keep her work more individual, if she created her art in black and white. Perhaps, it was another way that she juxtaposed herself against her father. Alison felt that she was butch and her father was a sissy; her father loved a colourful aesthetic, and so, she chose monochrome.

Additionally, blue is a colour that can represent melancholy and even the distance of memory. Rarely, are all our childhood memories vivid; they often tend to be murkier and less distinct, as though we are looking at a landscape in the evening, from a distance. The artwork in Fun Home evokes a melancholy atmosphere which enhances her difficult childhood narrative.

“The shading technique I used did help to create more emotional resonance than if I had stuck to crosshatching, like I do in my comic strip. I worked with ink wash, which enabled me to get a lot of subtle tones and gradations” (Bechdel 2014, as qtd. in Harabin & Skirboll 2014).
In an interview with Lynn Emmert (2012), Alison Bechdel says, "I’ve always loved ink wash, the way that that looks. It’s so sensual, and … I don’t know, there’s something about the contrast between the rich black lines and the gray tone that just gives me a deep visual pleasure" (as qtd. in Emmert, 2012).

Images:
Alison Bechdel took 7 years to complete Fun Home. Part of this time was focused on the laborious process of creating the images and drawing the artwork.
In an interview with Margot Harrison (2006), Alison describes the process she used to create her images which included creating the text boxes on a computer program and laying out the framework of her panels, followed by rough pencil outlines.

Her Process is as follows:
 “The first thing I do is I write on the computer in a drawing program, which enables me to make these little text boxes and move them around, make my panel outlines”...Next Bechdel “starts doing very rough pencil sketches.....Then I do several successive refinements of that sketch, and in doing that I take reference photos of myself, in the poses of all these characters," she says...Like her father slaving over his historical renovations in Fun Home, Bechdel likes to nail down the details -- "I can only deal with particulars,"(as quoted in Harrison, 2006,  para. 23). Alison Bechdel states:
"The next step is to put the refined sketch on a light box and trace it to the final drawing paper. The inked version is scanned back into the computer, where Bechdel fills in black areas using Adobe Photoshop, then combines her text and artwork files. In the last stage, she places the new print-out on the light box and shades it using an ink wash, creating a subtle two-color effect... " It's quite a freakin' process" (Bechdel 2006, as quoted in Harrison, 2006. para. 23-25).

Photo retrieved from Wikipedia “Fun Home”

When Fun Home was released in 2006, there was some blowback regarding some of the gay content, which some considered to be pornographic. This led to an attempt to have the graphic novel banned in Marshall, Missouri. In her interview with Lynn Emmert (2012), when asked about this controversy, Bechdel states:
“My first reaction is: What a great honor! My second reaction is, it’s a very interesting situation, and it’s all about the power of images, which I think is something people need to talk about. I can understand why people wouldn’t want their children to accidentally think this was a funny comic book and pick it up and see pictures of people having sex. I can understand that. I think banning books is the wrong approach" (as qtd. In Emmert).


Action:
Scott McCloud says that “From its earliest days, the modern comic has grappled with the problem of showing motion in a static medium” (110). “Each panel of a comic shows a moment in time. And between those frozen moments- between the panels- our mind fills in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion (p. 94).

Alison Bechdel uses both “showing” and “telling” as techniques in her graphic memoir. Sometimes there are only one or two panels which indicate the entire scene and then she moves on, thereby requiring the audience to fill in the action. Other times, no action is conveyed to the audience: like the times in the memoir that Bechdel reproduces her journal entries and documents as artwork, or when she uses panels depicting landscapes as if they were photographs, or when she creates dictionary definitions as artwork:




Other times, Bechdel creates artwork that vividly portrays action in a way that the audience can almost see the movement taking place between the panels:




Alison Bechdel’s use of colour, images, and action, were in no way accidental in her graphic memoir, Fun Home. Her work is skilled and deliberate; each visual choice she has made helps to convey her intended meaning. From her use of an almost ethereal and bleak blue ink-wash to her interplay between showing and telling her story, Bechdel's choices create a work of art that is visually pleasing, emotionally compelling, and highly entertaining.

Scott McCloud's book, Understanding Comics, is a great resource for those interested in learning about the technical aspects of the genre.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0vtKqkt0q-bNTk1MzlhMmYtMmMyNS00Yzc3LTgzMDEtMjEzNDI3ZmZjMzAx/view?pli=1



Sources Consulted
Bechdel, A. (2006). Fun home: a family tragicomic. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Emmert, Lynn. “The Alison Bechdel Interview,” May 22, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.tcj.com/the-alison-bechdel-interview/.

Harabin, V., & Skirboll, S. (2014). 10 Questions with Alison Bechdel. Retrieved from https://www.politics-prose.com/book-notes/10-questions-alison-bechdel

Harrison, M. (2006, May 30). Life Drawing. Retrieved from https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/life-drawing/Content?oid=2127266.

McCloud, S. (1994). Understanding comics the invisible art. NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0vtKqkt0q-bNTk1MzlhMmYtMmMyNS00Yzc3LTgzMDEtMjEzNDI3ZmZjMzAx/view?pli=1