Visiting Artist: Noelle Stevenson

Noelle Stevenson is a rising star in the comics world; a success that started with Nimona, that was followed by Lumberjanes.

In art school, Noelle struggled with what she thought of as illustration. One day a teacher saw her doodles in her notebook and encouraged Noelle to do more illustrations in that style. This led to her exploration of comics. As a kid, she was not interested in what comics had to offer and felt that comics didn’t want her as a fan. But as she explored comics more–through reading, taking classes, and making them–she became enthralled. Eventually she decided to do a comic as her final project to graduate. That comic? Nimona! She began posting it online as she made it. Looking over the pages, you can see her art change from beginning to end because she was experimenting and learning. She started with a simple gray and red palette but realized to explore the world she wanted she would need a full color gamut. Before she had completed the comic, and before she had graduated, she was receiving book offers. Nimona was a near instant success.

James Graham ’16, Sandi Getbamrungrat ’16, Ben Wright-Heuman ’16, and Dean Sudarsky ’16 (in the back) listening with rapt attention.

An interesting part of her lecture was about how fan art helped her rise to fame. While watching Lord of the Rings with her family, she got the idea for Broship of the Rings in her head and doodled out some Lord of the Rings characters. She posted these while they were fighting off the balrog and had gained about 1,000 followers by the time Merry and Pippin were captured by orcs. Broship of the Rings was enjoyable to draw for Noelle and so popular that she decided to continue with it.

Noelle talking about fan art, showing hipster Scooby Doo

The Center for Cartoon Studies is a pro-doodling school, so the following are some portraits of Noelle by students.

Portrait by Alex Karr

Portrait by David Humphreys

Portrait by Jarad Greene

Photos of the Visiting Artist event courtesy Abe Olson.