Gracia Lam is an award-winning illustrator. She was born in Hong Kong and raised in Toronto. She became an illustrator because she found how you can communicate and bring stories into the light to the audience. Her goal is to visually communicate with the audience and to uncover hidden treasures every day. Gracia Lam designed what I found interesting at the museum. She designed art for Real Simple Magazine and it’s a scene where you can either think it’s a couple, friends, family, etc, sitting on a bench in the rain and the woman seems to be holding an umbrella but the umbrella represents as a waiting text bubble. This icon usually means either someone is waiting or the person is texting or complete silence.

This design stood out to me because I thought to myself how I relate to this design. What I got from this was waiting for a text from your loved one and not getting a response. However, the meaning can go in many different ways. I research an article relating to the art on realsimple.com and the article talks about disagreement with others. The article basically summarizes how if two people disagree, we shut them down and don’t connect with people who don’t see the world as you do.

Overall, I think the art shows a clear statement to the audience. She used great colors and textures to express darkness and the mood in the art. The two people show clear body language and the idea to have the umbrella act as bubble icon is really creative.

• SPIDER-MAN AND 12 VILLIANS 1989

The trip was actually really enjoyable since I kinda thought we were gonna stand in one place all day until the end of time. But it was a rather interesting find looking at all the award-winning Illustrations on display. But what caught my eye specifically was the Stan Lee section on the 3rd floor of the Museum. Sure I may not be a particular fan of Marvel anymore since I feel like it’s been oversaturated. But what really think stands out about it other than the actual artwork is the inking. I myself want to be a Manga Artist, so I would mostly work with ink and sometimes even color in my panels. Which working with color is a lot harder since I don’t have a full enough grasp of color shading with markers, pens, and other materials.

The specific piece I saw with Stan Lee (Writer) and John Romita Sr called “Spider-Man and 12 Villains” created in 1989. I particularly like the line and stroke difference in the cover. After doing some research on it I found out that Romita didn’t really want to draw Spider-Man, according to an excerpt from Comics Alliance.

“The only reason I did Spider-Man was because Stan asked me and I felt that I should help out, like a good soldier. I never really felt comfortable on Spider-Man for years. I had felt at home immediately on Daredevil. On Spider-Man I felt obliged to ghost Ditko because — this may sound naive, but I was convinced, in my own mind, that he was going to come back in two or three issues… The only reason it wasn’t better was that I couldn’t ape him any better.”

So it was a surprise to find out that this cover to that Spider-Man comic really only existed as a sense of a sense of helping a friend like Romita said, which I think is a nice sentiment.