Visiting Artists: Bob Sikoryak and Kriota Willberg

Bob Sikoryak and Kriota Willberg are a power couple in comics. Between them, they cover a strange span of comics incorporating literature and medical illustration between them.

Kriota Willberg and Bob Sikoryak

Kriota and Bob’s books

Kriota likes to do a lot of research. She makes smart jokes where she has to (read “gets to”) explain the humor, but she plays “the idiot” so she can explain the science. She took us through some of her comics. Each comic is presented like a lesson with red marks and arrows, but rarely is a lesson so funny. As a medical illustrator, she likes to play, so she also makes things like cross stitch samplers of her x-rays. She made a book of the pictorial anatomy of 007: scenes from the Bond movies where she shows what some of the bones and muscles are doing. She is very fond of the aesthetics in old medical illustrations, so she plays with this style in her illustrations.

Kriota getting into it.

Bob likes the process of making comics. He is most known for taking existing old literature, such as Dostoyevsky, and combining it with modern comics styles, such as Batman. When mimicking other creators and stories, he doesn’t editorialize—make meta comments—about the original sources. He remains as faithful as possible to both sources even though they are usually in almost direct opposition. To research the story, he finds illustrated editions and CliffsNotes. His process starts with thumbnails; he likes to work the images and text at the same time. Sometimes he will take the opportunity to refine his sketch with pencil on the Bristol before inking. He prints his sketched pages in blue on Bristol and inks that. To color in a way to maintain the original style, he uses the traditional 64-color palette. He letters each comic using a different font.

Bob speaking from his diaphragm.

The morning of their rousing talk, Kriota joined the figure drawing class. As a figure drawing teacher herself, she drew on the model (using washable marker of course) to show the students where the muscles and bones and tendons are. It was an inspiring lesson.

Tillie Walden ’16 talking with Kriota.

Someone made a very interesting point that captivated (from left to right) Dean Sudarsky ’16, Dave Humphreys ’16, and Bill Scavone, our figure drawing instructor and a medical illustrator.

Photos courtesy Abe Olson.