SUNNY WATERCOLORS

Mila Yaneva-Tabakova is an artist and illustrator whose work we have told you about on other occasions, so it might not be necessary to remind you who she is, but for those who need an introduction – she is "the dash between the book and the illustration." Her work as an illustrator includes Gertrude Stein's The World Is Round, Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, Mary Shelley's Maurice, or the Fisher's Cot from the series published by Leaf, Puk! by Valeri Petrov, as well as personal projects published as part of the Chark collective and the TI-RE platform. However, today we want to tell you about a very personal publication – the boutique graphic novel Souvenirs, which she self-published in a limited edition of a hundred copies just when the pandemic state of emergency was inroduced. In her review for Booklover – the only place where the book can still be purchased – Yana Punkina describes Souvenirs as a book with "very little text and very beautiful watercolor paintings" and calles it light because it tells you about a long and serene trip to the sea in a small and quiet town, where you feel the constant scorch of the August sun.

How would you describe Souvenirs in a few words?

Colorful, slow and spirited.

We first saw your book a few years ago at the first edition of the Sofia Art Book Fair. What path did the project take between then and now?

In 2018 I decided that maybe the place for Souvenirs is here in Bulgaria and in Bulgarian, because it was first created in English in Brussels, where I finished my master's degree. However, although this is not mentioned anywhere, the book is inspired by the Bulgarian Black Sea and the few remaining places on the coast that are not covered in umbrellas, hotels and sewage, and where there is still room for contemplation. I translated it, changed the format a bit, contacted the editor Elena Krasteva, who helped me to polish the text for free, and I published it in a small run of one hundred copies, which gave me a sense of closure for this whole project. Before that, I had had several relatively advanced conversations with publishers here and in Belgium (in 2015, excerpts from the book were published in the Belgian comic book magazine Stripgids), which unfortunately did not lead to a publication of the project. So I decided to do this on my own, albeit in a very limited edition.

What is specific about working on a graphic novel? What about it is difficult, easy, interesting?

It is especially exciting for me that a graphic book, or a comic book, tells its story primarily through images. This kind of book could still exist without any text, but it could not exist without pictures. This could be easy or quite difficult, depending on the story you want to tell, but it's certainly interesting. Not only that, but this kind of book is full of possibilities that stem from the hybrid nature of comics and their proximity to literature and, in a way, also to cinema. Like, for example, choosing and framing a specific image, and the sequence that forms the narrative, it's just like in cinema, or the different composition and saturation, through which you can try to recreate the sense of time passing, even though it's all imaginary...

This is still a relatively new genre for Bulgarian readers. What expectations should they bring to this kind of book, how do you recommend they read it?

It was a great pleasure for me to hear good reviews from people who used to be prejudiced against comics, because of the aesthetics of the most popular examples of the genre, or because they have never read comics, thinking that they are only for children. So I'd tell them: "Don't be afraid, this book is particularly well-intentioned, it just needs you to give it a little more time." The way comics are read is different from how works of literature are read, because they are usually made up of text and images that inhabit the same space, divided into many smaller units within the page. I often find myself looking at a comic book and first reading all of the text, and only then following the pictures. In the case of Souvenirs, and to some extent for that very reason, the graphic narrative runs independently, interrupted by pages of short text where another story unfolds, that of the characters who inhabit the panels between the pages.

Can you give us some examples of other books in this genre that have served as inspiration to you? 

Panther by Brecht Evans, Birchfield Close by John McNaught, The River by Alessandro Sana, Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, and not exactly in that genre, but John Klassen's Two Hats. Why not La mia vita disegnata male by Gipi, who was the first comic book author I fell in love with.

What type of stories do you like to tell as an artist?

Usually the ones I also like to read – natural, human, with an engaging atmosphere, a little sense of humor, maybe with some unexpected twist.

What souvenir keeps the spirit of summer alive for you?

For me, the spirit of summer is the strange feeling of eager anticipation of the future and at the same time – nostalgia for the past.

How do you imagine summer after this period of social isolation and the new experience of distance?

Let's hope that this new situation is an opportunity for many people to rethink their ideas of vacation and travel and be better, more moderate, and more respectful of nature. Otherwise, I imagine it will be more desired than before and, perhaps because of that, more uncontrolled.

The sea is ...a memory and a dream about the future.

A memory of the sea that I always carry with me... it's hard to pick just one, because I keep them all very carefully and I often revisit each detail with great attention.

The waves push me to... play, scream and think, depending on where I am and how big they are.

On the shore, I am...excited by the thought of new horizons.