As Meg described herself, she is an aspiring comic artist based in Pittsburgh. She's been drawing on and off for most of her life but only recently started taking cartooning seriously as a way to document her thoughts and feelings since she's "too lazy to be consistent with the diary."
Meg studied Fine Art at a community college for two years, during which time, according to the artist, she was a bit of a "shy art nerd". "I began illustrating my experiences and posting comics to Facebook since I struggled with openly expressing myself offline; I usually got good reactions, and my friend Toby suggested I put my work on Reddit. I had a few panels on there that did particularly well, and noticed peopled seemed to like my 'funnier' content (big surprise). After graduating, I took a few years off from making comics to pursue a career in art; that obviously didn't work out, so I'm back to making comics - but this time for fun, I'm way more extroverted than I was when I started."
There are a lot of different inspirations behind Meg's work. May it be everyday life, mental health issues or pop culture, it's whatever the artist is into at the moment. "Any time I've got a feeling, experience, or idea that I just can't get out of my mind I'll end up turning it into a comic; for me, the process of drawing out my thoughts and condensing it into 4 panels is a great brain dump."
What inspired Meg to create comics in the first place was Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes". "I remember reading through collections of them when I was about 7 or 8 years old, absolutely in love with the snarky dialogue and full-page watercolors. I also would race to the comics section in the Sunday newspaper, back when we would get them, and probably owe a lot of my comic inspiration to Zits and Foxtrot as well."
Since Meg's comics are based on her own life, we got curious if it's not difficult to share them with other people on the internet. The artist revealed that it is not that easy sometimes. However, the only way to overcome the discouraging thoughts, for Meg, is to try not to take herself - or anything - too seriously. "It helps to negate any self-consciousness I might feel about putting myself out on the internet. That, and I'm trying to get better about not reading comments. Some of the Redditors can get really mad."
With her comics, the artist is either trying to make somebody laugh or provide a relatable perspective; "if I can get a reader to either feel happier or less alone, my job's done. I'd prefer it if you'd all laugh though, I'm mostly tryna be funny out here."
Meg finds it very satisfying when people think that her content is either funny or relatable. While she would probably still doodle comics for herself, the support and reactions from her readers are what keep her illustrating. "I love being able to make someone laugh, and comics are a really accessible way for me to do that."
Whatever the artist is feeling passionate about gets turned into a comic. "Drawing out my feelings is a pretty cathartic experience for me; any time I'm feeling a strong emotion, whether it's happy or not, I often need to visualize it in some way in order to fully process it. Or just get it out of my brain in general."
When asked if Meg wanted to add anything for our readers about her art, she replied that "It's not much, but it's honest work".
