Artist Spotlight – Siddhi Surte
Who are you?
I’m me! A shameless magpie, doodler, printmaker, illustrator, jazz lover, compulsive reader, cat lady, tea fanatic, part-time poet, tumblr addict and overall confused comic artist.
How would you introduce your work to our readers?
It’s a little edgy and messy at the same time. I like to draw my surroundings in the same shaky, sketchy way it comes to me, whenever I revisit a place. Almost all my comics and doodles are recreations of memories and incidences and are as much a part of me as anyone else. The main aim is to make the viewer see and feel these with the same familiar nostalgia as I do when creating them. Also, I’m very partial to simple black and white illustrations with minimal coloring. So you’ll find a lot of my work with very little color and a lot of fun, overdrawn lines, and a lot of writing. Words are very important to me, I always add a line, paragraph or even a single word that describes my state of mind about that image in there. For me, there’s no difference between the visual and the written, I incorporate both to create a complete image, a narrative, that is most simply, me.
What are the tools you use to create art?
I must admit, I’m particularly partial to my black linc ocean gel pens! Since most of my work is done with pen and ink, I find these to be most handy and efficient. I also rely on brush pens and Chinese inks for all the writing and color highlighting in my images.
What are your influences?
Web-comics and independent graphic novels are constant influences, definitely. It’s great to see what people are coming up with everyday and how different materials affect your work in ways, websites like www.thisiscolossal.com keep me updated and help me experiment with my work. My favorites range from Caravaggio, Raja Revi Verma, Amruta Patil, I also read a lot of poetry, Neruda, Leav, Frost, Cummings, you name it! The words often push me to create something new and bring about some of that flavour visually. And if I’m ever really stuck for inspiration, my ever-faithful 8tracks playlists salvage my artists block, always.
How do you interpret art?
Art is just something that stays with you. A sketch, a story, a song, anything!
How would you define your relationship with sloth- the “sin”, not the animal?
Ah, sweet, sweet sloth. I think it is very necessary for all things. You can’t survive on a constant adrenaline rush all the time, always. And a little bit of over-indulgent sleep and laziness goes a long way for when you have to get back to work!
