| The following is an interview with William Joyce that appears in Talking With Artists, compiled and edited by Pat Cummings. (Simon & Schuster 1995)
William Joyce was born on December 11, 1957.
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My dad says I was born with a pencil in my hand. I always loved drawing. I
started out drawing really ugly pictures of my sisters. That was my "Ugly
Sister" phase. Than I had my "Dinosaur" phase. Than I had my "Dinosaur
Eating Caveman" phase (I used a lot of red during that one, with guts
everywhere). Then I had my "Dinosaurs Eating My Sisters" phase. In school I
could draw "Dinosaurs Eating Teachers" better than anyone else, so I got a lot
of encouragement from classmates, but not from my teachers. Sometimes I'd
draw stuff for school like "Ponce De Leon Looking for the Fountain of Youth
in What Is Now Florida" and then I would get encouragement from my
teachers. My parents never discouraged me. They let me take art lessons. There
was never any talk about me growing up to be a rocket scientist or a plumber.
It was apparent that I would be an artist no matter what. Of course, my parents
thought I 'd be poor, but that didn't bother them too much. As it turns put, I
make more money than my dad, which is big relief for me and a really big
surprise for him.
I had two great art teachers: Mrs. Hogan and Mrs. Slagle. They were wise enough to just show me the possibilities and then let me figure stuff out by myself. If I got stuck, they'd help me out, but only when I was really stuck. They encouraged me to try all the mediums: watercolors, oils, pencils, pastels, charcoal, wood, canvas, paper. You name it. I liked some more than others. But knowing how to use them is a big help. Some stories are better in pen and ink, some in watercolor or oil. Then I went to college. I had already developed my art style, but in college some teachers wanted me to paint a different way. For some people that would have been okay. They might still have been looking for their style, but I knew what I wanted to do. So I got bad grades in art classes. Not for doing bad work, but because I wouldn't change. My parents thought it was stupid for people to try to make me change my style, too, so I quit art school and went to film school. I knew I wanted to tell stories and since movies tell their stories through pictures (they don't call them moving pictures for nothing), I thought I would learn a different way of doing my artwork. I studied animation a lot. Sometimes I would write a story and draw pictures to go with it. It seemed only natural after college to try to do children's picture books, so I did. The funny thing is now I'm working on movies based on my books. I love what I do. It's like getting paid for recess. |
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 ©1998 HarperCollins Publishers All art © William Joyce |
