Al Polston
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Silview
🕑 Added 2024-03-03 04:54:03 +0000 UTCAbout 5 years ago I released my first comic/poetry book Silview. It was an odd project that I started without knowing in college. Junior year, in studio one day, we were told to pick out 5 paint color cards at random. Once we all had our paint cards we were told we had to illustrate a fictitious book cover, where the title of the book had to be the name of one of the paint cards and we could only use the colors we pulled on the paint cards. (also the author name had to be our childhood pet and the street name we lived on as a kid)
One of my paint cards was Silview, it was a sort of greyish green/blue. It was a weird word and when I googled it the only thing that came up at the time was a town in Delaware. It really meant nothing to me, but it was interesting so I made it the title. Here is the resulting cover I made:
Pretty edgy, at the time I was very nihilistic. I was also a pain in the ass and always trying to find ways to not follow the rules. I decided using shades and tones of the paint colors was an appropriate interpretation of "use only the paint card's colors". In hind sight, I would have learned so much more just following the instructions and challenging myself. Also in hindsight, this is a direct behavior to avoid pain. If I bend the rules and get points off, it's because I didn't follow the rules and not because I was bad at art. Oh the therapy I've had since then. ANYWAY.
It's now senior year and our main goal for this year is to complete a thesis project. My idea for my thesis was to write a book, specifically Silview. I didn't originally plan to even illustrate it, so great idea for an illustration major. I started writing it but as usual got in my own way. I ended up giving up on it and changing my thesis to.... basically nothing. I filled up a sketchbook as a thesis. This has continued to be a talent of mine to fill out endless sketchbooks. I think I deserved to fail my thesis, but I think having a panic attack and throwing my script out the window for my thesis presentation somehow got me an A. Here is a fun little slide from that presentation that makes me cringe for you all to enjoy.
So where is this going? Well fast forward to a couple years out of college and I'm STILL thinking about this book. This time, I actually set to work making it. I write everyday. Eventually I run out of things to write, and I have this little comic idea I end up blending with it. It doesn't have any dialogue itself and I found it pretty artistic at the time. Everyday after work I made a goal to finish one page a day. It was actually pretty painful to do because almost every single day I didn't want to do it. I doubted myself immensely. Wether it be my ability to draw, my ability to tell a story, or the fact this might all be incredibly embarrassing and pointless. More than anything, I wanted to self sabotage so bad, but for some reason I didn't.
Finally, Silview was born.
Silview ended up being the emotional vomit I had been holding in over my past relationships. I had felt so hurt and victimized for so long. But only by myself, I was free to quit being this way anytime I wanted. And Silview was my way to do that. Now that I am 30 and these relationships are so far behind me, it feels so silly. But at the time it was so important to me. I had lived my entire life to that point without feeling loved by anyone in my life, my relationships were all I had. Now, I feel I could be alone very happily. I love my husband, but that void I felt doesn't need someone else to fill it anymore.
Silview definitely feels like the melodramatic 20 year old I was. At the end, there is a moment where I doubt my ability to overcome these feelings. But I now know I was more than capable, and I am glad the ending isn't so ambiguous anymore.
Soon I will be selling the last hardcopies of it. I don't have any plans of reprinting any time soon. So, I am making it available here as a digital PDF.
I hope you enjoy it.
