Paint, BB8, and Dismantling Oppression: An Interview with Priya Huq, An Artist Using Comics for Self Care

As I started to read more and more web and digital comics I also began seeking out female cartoonists and artists online. This is when I first became became acquainted with Priya on Twitter after I bought one of her comics and discovered her Tumblr, and it all went down from there. I noticed that several of ther comics and doodles were painted or had some element of paint used in their creation. I also discovered her autobiographical comics known to many as “auto bio comics,” which gave their audience a defined look into her life’s many experiences as a woman of color. BNP: So I know you use watercolor paint to color some of your art, and there’s a scanner involved, but what exactly is your process? In a day and age where I see many artists using tablets, stylus pens and the like, I’m utterly fascinated to see strokes of an actual paint brush on the pages of the art you make. Is it wrong to view your art and techniques as more “traditional”? Priya Huq: I don’t know if it’s wrong, but I do think it’s interesting how we tend to categorize techniques as either “digital” or “traditional” (maybe because of DeviantArt categories?). It’s especially interesting given the cultural history of watercolors, because if I remember my Euro art history right, watercolors were considered to be the cheater’s method of painting when they first came out. But oils were also considered blasphemous back when the only “real” way to paint was fresco (because with fresco, you basically have one pass a…