here, Derrick Sanskrit KC will answer questions about whatever. if you have a question about anything, be it related to content of this website or not, please email said question to sanskrit@gmail.com. answers are likely to be longwinded and relatively pointless.
Are you asking because you think I don't belong here? Well to hell with you! No, seriously...um. I always liked art and communication and what things in art may symbolize or suggest. It all traces back to when I was in pre-k and loved David the Gnome, and my mom would tell me how the gnomes represented Sweden and the way they interacted with the global community. After that, I started to pay alot of attention to advertisements. I thought they were great, the way they presented information in a way that managed to garner an audience's attention and communicate an idea (usually "buy this and people will think you're awesome"). In high school, I mixed this passion with a growing interest in politics in a club called Model Congress where we would debate a variety of topics. Because I'd spent my childhood memorizing effective methods of advertisement I'd seen, I managed to make many a swaying arguement and win quite a few awards, as well as building a reputation as one of the heavy-hitters (which was not easy considering the skill and knowledge of many of the other kids). When it came time to consider what I wanted to do with my life, I thought about my love for communication and affecting other peoples' ideas as well as my stacks of sketchbooks and decided that graphic design was the perfect field to keep my active and happy. I was surprisingly accepted to every art school I applied to, but Ringling had the most interesting graphic design work in their students' portfolios, so I left New York and here I am. Yes, I very much hope to spend the rest of my professional life in New York after this. I love New York.
Marker sketches with a limited color palette. Emphasis on the word "sketches." I love sketches, there's something very free and lively about them when compared to refined finalized pieces. You can see the lines and try to figure out how the artists' hand moved and why they made the decisions they did. Simple line sketches and one-color studies are great fun and can very often be more engaging that full-color pieces, but having one or two accent colors can be absolutely effective in conveying thoughts and feelings. Man, are they pretty sometimes.
That's not a question, however, please tell me why you don't like me and I'll see if its something I can fix. We all have annoying little quirks, I suppose.
Good question. I've been a fan of autobiographic comics for a while. I love documentation of daily life, its the best way to look back at seemingly mundane activities and see why your life isn't actually as boring as it feels like or why things occur the way they do following a pattern and such. I don't know, I just like them, but I never really thought much about doing one of my own because I don't really aspire to be a comic artist. The idea for the sketchjournal formed in my mind in mid-July 2004. I said "hi!" to James Kochalka and Craig Thompson at Jim Hanley's Universe in Manhattan when they were promoting their collaborative book Conversation, which I thought was a great idea for a book because the two of them have done really excellent autobiographic comics in the past as well as really interesting discussions on the existance of God, and that's basically what this tiny little comic was about, the two of them talking about that together. What interested me more, though, was Craig's new book which I picked up from him that night, called Carnet de Voyage. It was basically a travel journal he kept while on a book tour through Europe. He just kept a graphic journal, drawing trees and people and kittens and talking about hiw feelings and stuff and I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It felt like I was there with him experiencing his heartache and such. As opposed to his previous (fantastic) books, where I was watching what happened and moved to feeling sympathetic, something about Carnet actually moved me to empathy, feeling as if it was me with the crippling tendonitis and an utter sense of longing for home and loved ones. In all fairness, Craig gives credit to french collections of carnets from the past as an inspiration for his, so its not an original of his, but still, I was so enraptured by his that I felt compelled to try it myself. I tried to capture the locations surrounding me all summer after that and failed because I just couldn't draw fast enough. When the new year rolled in, I decided to give it another shot, and here we are. So yeah, its not technically a "journal comic," but its also not quite a "carnet" because I do a recap or scene a day rather than everything.
Tortelloni. No, wait...stick candles. Um...a cappella jam sessions with friends? The easy answer would be "sweet love" but...I'm gonna need to get back to this question after I have a bit more life experience.
I liked pina coladas when I was a kid, but I find them too sweet now, though I am still a fan of coconut. I do, however, love the rain. I like to run around in it. I ran around in a suit during Hurricane Francis last semester. Took a bunch of pictures, too. Umbrellas are for suckaz, by the way.
What the hell are you thinking? Lord of the Rings! The films were near perfect, from story, pacing, and visual standpoints...and whatever else, I suppose. There were only a couple of scenes in each movie where the computer effects were noticably separate from the actual actors. Just go ahead and tell me that the opening mountain shot of Two Towers didn't take your breath away. And now WETA (the team that did all the visual stuff for LotR) is doing the Chronicles of Narnia, which I loved as a child, so I very much look forward to that.You know what I like about Lemony Snicket? His work in the Magnetic Fields. Stephen Merritt can make anything amazing, which apparently Jim Carrey cannot, as much as I loved Eternal Sunshine (which I think was more a testement to Michel Gondry's fantastically underratted direction).