JUNE SAW STUDENT INTERVIEW: LYNN VON SIEN

Introducing SAW’s Student Interview features with SAW member, Donna Druchunas.

“I am so excited to be able to share interviews with SAW students with you, so we can learn more about their work and influences and be inspired in our own creative journeys. Today, I’m talking to Lynn Von Sien (she/her), a member of the SAW Graphic Memoir Intensive group. Lynn has taken a variety of classes at SAW including: Going in for the Snakes, Storytelling Flow, Let's Make a Holy Book, Creating Your Graphic Memoir.

Lynn is a Minneapolis native, currently living on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota with her husband James. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Design from the University of Minnesota (1987) and has continued studies at MCAD, the Loft Literary Center, and SAW. Lynn is an adoptee/adoptee rights advocate and lifelong diarist. She is currently finishing work on a tragic/comic graphic memoir about caregiving her late mother.”

― Donna Druchunas, SAW student & enthusiast

Donna Druchunas: How and when did you get involved with comics? 

Lynn Von Sien: In my twenties and just out of design school, a friend gave me a copy of Frans Masereel Passionate Journey and it made me think about doing sequential work myself. At that time I worked at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and became aware of underground zines. I contributed to two of them: Losing Faith and Artpolice―regrettably only once for each. But I was focused on making my first book.

DD: Were you interested in comics as a kid?

LVS: Yes, I loved the funnies (especially Doonesbury) and also Mad and Cracked. I still have all my Peanuts paperbacks and once in a while bought Betty and Veronica comic books. My parents got The New Yorker and had Charles Addams books, and I loved looking at those. They also had some more adult humor like Arno, Starke, Steig, Partch et al.―most of which is so completely terrible in retrospect but made me giggle as a kid in the sixties. And, I observed some really great drawing at play in those. 

DD: What is your all time favorite comic or long-form graphic book or comics series? What do you love about it?

LVS: 

• Long form: I am a big fan of Miriam Katin's work. Her books are about trauma yet are so beautiful and/or striking to look at. 

• Short form: Peanuts.

DD: Tell me about your comics style and what makes it unique. 

LVS: I combine ink and colored pencil, which I haven't seen a lot of.

DD: Tell me about your creative process. Do you have a specific process for creating comics from idea to finished pages?

LVS: Write, source images/model, sketch, ink those on fresh paper using a light box, scan, layout in InDesign, then I go back and color, and get final scans. 

I do that so the drawings don't fight with each other on the page. I'm coloring drawings with their neighbors in mind. Sometimes I've done visual scripting―laying out the chapter with source images. It's helped to do this in some cases.

DD: What tools and supplies or apps do you use and why? Digital or Analog?

LVS: Analog! Various Copic ink pens and Uniball Vision Elite (refillables); Canson Classic cream acid free paper (takes ink and color pencil very well and I like the warmth); mainly Faber-Castell Polychromos colored pencils, with some Prismacolors and Verithins thrown in. I use InDesign due to being a retired graphic artist―it's my comfort zone.

DD: What projects are you working on now? Include links if you have any parts of this project online that you'd like to share.

LVS: I'm knee deep in my second full length graphic memoir "Snow Emergency Route" which is about caregiving and being an adoptee (thanks to the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council for grant support on this project). There are some snippets on my website, as well as chapter one being in the SAW anthology "The Rainbow Bridge." An early version of the prologue was in Solstice Literary Magazine.

DD: What projects do you have planned for the future? 

LVS: A sequel to the current work is looming in my head already. But at some point I'm just only going to draw cats.

DD: Where can we see more of your work and/or purchase your comics and books?

LVS: I'm in three SAW anthologies: The Rainbow Bridge, Socially Distant, and Echo: A SAW Diary Anthology. My first book Whatever You Wish to Keep is available everywhere. It's my Masereel-inspired collection of graphite drawings that focus on my young life. Also in this interview I'm including a small work in progress. I'm interspersing a few of my “Gruesome Tales” into the memoir just for fun, and as narrative-helpers. I have an Etsy shop with prints and a mini-comic available. 

Tell me about some important teachers, artists, courses, or schools that have influenced your work.

LVS: 

• Teachers: My junior high art teacher Mr. Waldoch, Eugene Larkin at the U of MN.

• Artists: Frank Gaard, dear friend and painter Wendy McCarty, Frans Masereel, Miriam Katin, Sparky - Too many artists to list here. 

• Schools: The Loft Literary Center, MCAD continuing education, SAW - naturally! But I really got a solid foundation at the University of Minnesota. I did a combined degree with Design and Studio Arts.

Is there anything else you would like to discuss? 

I want to encourage adoptees from all ends of our spectrum to tell your story in whatever way feels right―especially here in the USA where we have people in high places who would have you believe adoption is all sunshine and roses. It's okay to talk about our trauma.

I would also like to add that the Graphic Memoir Intensive Group at SAW has been crucial to my development. Thank you to the generous souls in this group and Tom Hart for creating SAW.

Thank you, Lynn. It’s been great talking with you and having the opportunity to introduce you to the SAW blog readers!