Be careful what you say. It may inspire someone.

A tale of how some well-timed words shaped my life...

Hello there and happy Friday!
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Some folks have been asking me to talk more about myself and my humble origins. I'm not really a huge "I'm going to talk about myself" kind of person, but I'll try to keep things interesting.

So gather 'round! It's story time. I shall tell ye the tale of how I started drawing and why I decided to continue.

I knew I wanted to pursue art since I was 4 years old.

It's something I still remember quite vividly, despite this happening almost 35 years ago. In preschool, we had a tradition where when it was one kid's birthday, all the other kids in class draw them a picture. During one birthday in particular, the teacher's assistant said to the birthday kid "Oh look! You're in for a treat because you're getting a drawing from Matta, who's a really good artist!"

I want to start off by saying I was by no means a child prodigy and I can't even remember what gobbledygook I drew. In fact, I'm pretty sure my work wasn't any better than what any of the other 4 year olds did. I remember actively comparing my work to the others when all the pictures were put up on the classroom wall and thinking "Really? My picture looks kinda dumb. Sophie's is way cooler. She drew a van."

Sophie from preschool, if you’re somehow reading this, I hope you’re still drawing really awesome vans.

But the reason the compliment stood out to me was because it was the first time someone talked about something other than my appearance.​
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Back in the 80's/early 90's it was just commonplace to just... casually talk about a girl's appearance. I guess to an extent, today, it still is, but in the least people who do that nowadays get called out on it way more than they did back in the day. I was either told I was kinda pretty or got unsolicited remarks on how I could make myself pretty. That was the extent of people's interactions with me. Even as a 4 year old, felt grossed out by these comments and wanted to scrub off a layer of skin.

It wasn't fair because I grew up with an older brother who always got the compliments I wanted to get. Friends and family would call him things like "professor" and "super star" and "cool kid" and generally talk about how funny or smart or amazing he was. Then the same people who talked him up so much would look at me and be like "Oh yeah, she's kinda pretty I guess" or "hey, you'd look a lot better if straighten your hair" usually followed by cringey things like "I can't wait to go to your wedding!" TO A FOUR YEAR OLD!

It didn't make sense to me! I was also a smart kid and I got the same kind of grades as my brother (mostly 100's, high 90's A's and A+'s), I was way funnier, more creative and way more outspoken. But nobody ever acknowledged that and it really sucked. I was just a thing of debatable prettiness to eventually be married off wherein people would probably also debate my prettiness on my wedding day.

"She really should have straightened her hair for the wedding... "

So in preschool, here was someone in my early developmental baby years saying I was actually GOOD AT DOING SOMETHING and that blew my mind. I don't think I even believed it in that moment, but something about it made me actually want to get good at art.

I think it's because I realized that I like making things up. I enjoyed drawing my favorite characters (shout out to Ninja Turtles and Super Mario) and also making up original characters and sharing their stories with my friends. And now here I am, making my own comics (and other people’s comics!!) because one small positive comment at the right time was all it took to make me feel good about myself.

I guess the moral of this story is that if you see a kid doing something cool, please tell them that what they're doing is cool. That may be the only wonderful compliment that they've ever heard thus far in their young lives and you never know how that's going to shape them. Hell, you may inspire a kid to grow up and make some really great comics!

Thanks so much for reading this. Here's a picture of Muffin in a very tall box as a reward.

Do you have any childhood memories about things people said that shaped the way you are now? I'd love to hear it!

Have a great weekend!

-M

PS: If you haven’t yet followed the upcoming Kickstarter campaign for my 100 page hardcover full color artbook, here’s the link! We’re going live on January 13 and it’s a short and sweet campaign that ends on January 21. Don’t miss it because this book won’t be available once the campaign has ended. If 80 people order books, all I’m printing is 81 (the extra being for me).