Divya Srinivasan Issue #27

The illustrator meshes personal experiences with an eye for good design in her myriad high-level projects

By Jen Hazen
Published: March 1st, 2006 | 12:00am

Whether you realize it or not, chances are you’ve seen artist Divya Srinivasan’s work at some point. For instance, she illustrated the album cover art for Sufjan Steven’s latest release, Illinois, and she worked as an illustrator on the 2002 film Waking Life. She also is a frequent contributing illustrator to The New Yorker.

However, unlike most who have a foot in the door at Conde Nast's most highfalutin’ publication, Srinivasan's career got off the ground in the Lone Star state, not Manhattan. She graduated as a history major from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, though not before a stint as a cartoonist for the campus newspaper and an animation course pointed her in a different direction. Upon graduating, Srinivasan pursued freelance work as an illustrator and programmer in San Francisco. But it wasn't until she returned to Austin and met up with director and fellow Austin-ite Richard Linklater, that she found her professional footing.

Her current work — whether on album covers, magazines, film animation, music videos, DVDs, children’s books, greeting cards, or posters — evinces both natural talent and a revelatory emotional quality. Venus spoke with Srinivasan about her idiosyncratic path to success and the risks that go along with transcribing one's most intimate feelings into artistic forms meant for public consumption.

How did you get your start in illustrating?
My sophomore year of college, I started doing a comic strip for The Daily Texan called "Another Knee-Locked Day for … Sexually Repressed Girl." It was the first time I had a large audience for my work. The strip was pretty personal and straight out of my day-to-day. I self-syndicated it to other university and college papers around the country, 20 in all. There were some letters to the editor written about the strip — some hating it, others loving and defending it. At the end of the day, I was putting my feelings out there, feelings I wasn’t particularly proud of, but [were] honest at any rate. I think because it was personal, a lot of students seemed to relate to the character, even though the situations were very specific.

Could you talk about your work on Waking Life? How have things changed for you as a freelance artist since that project?
Waking Life was the highest-profile project I’d worked on. It gave me a lot of exposure. I did character design, background design, and animation on the film. There was a lot of creative freedom on that project, which was great to have, and unusual for a feature film. After finishing work on Waking Life, the animation director gave me permission to use his proprietary animation software to do my own short [film], Everything Hits at Once, with music by Spoon. It screened in festivals including ResFest and got a good amount of play on MTV2.

In a roundabout way, my work on [Waking Life] led to my doing illustrations for The New Yorker, which I’ve been doing since 2003. That work has led to other work, such as doing the album artwork for Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois.

Most of my recent projects have come about based on my work from a previous [poster-designing] project. A Berkeley greeting card company, Peaceable Kingdom Press, who I’ve been working with for four years, first contacted me after seeing posters I’d done for a San Francisco comedy troupe. The posters also brought me to the attention of They Might Be Giants when they were looking for animators to work on their children’s DVD, Here Come the ABCs. Those animations paved the way for doing motion graphics work for Aveda in 2005.

All of your work seems to have a very raw, personal edge to it. Does that make you feel vulnerable, or is it a great outlet to purge your emotions?
I now try to be more careful in abstracting feelings, so an idea for a project might start from something personal, but I add layers so it becomes something different and somewhat separate from me.

I started doing my Web site, pupae.com, when I was going through a tough time, personally, and it was all I could do to feel better. Writing in a journal, drawing, taking pictures were all helpful, but it was when I put the different elements together on a webpage and made it an art project that I became truly engrossed and made something I liked. The process gave me perspective on my situation and made me feel better about things that had been upsetting. It also reminded me to laugh at myself, so it was cathartic.

Could you talk about the conceptualization of the album art for Illinois? Did you hear the music first and then create the work?
I was making the artwork as Sufjan was writing and recording the songs. He sent me some rough tracks and gave me a long list of objects and people that were being referenced in the album, allowing me to choose which I wanted to illustrate and how I would place them. In the end, I gave him the illustrated pieces in layers, placed where I thought they should go in the composition. He added the title to the front cover and shifted a few things around, and that was that.

What projects have you been working on lately?
I just did some animated pieces for an Arabic alphabet DVD for kids. I’m still doing illustrations for The New Yorker and cards for Peaceable Kingdom. I’m designing the cover of a book my uncle translated from Tamil to English. Also, sometime this year, I’m [planning] to illustrate a book written by They Might Be Giants.