But why? Interview with the author of the picture about a trolley bus from a loaf of bread
“So, with the help of simple devices, a loaf of white (or black) bread can be turned into a trolley bus ... But why?” It is unlikely that one of the regulars Habrahabr and Hiktaims has ever seen this funny picture - it often appears in the comments to the articles about homemade products, inventions of “British scientists” and in general any projects that came into being not because they were needed by someone, but because they were interesting to someone.
Today our guest is the author of this and many other equally interesting pictures - Boris Mogilin , better known in the network under the nickname Borya_Spec . Boris is not a professional artist and is not going to become one. His style of drawing comes from childhood, from the Soviet comics about Murzilka. His drawings are popular not only with adults, but also with children, although in their stories there are very few children, even if their heroes are funny animals or Carlson.
Boris, few of our readers did not see the picture about the trolleybus from a loaf of bread, and at the same time most of them didn’t even think that she had an author, and he still had many more mysterious and funny works. How do you feel about such "anonymous glory"?
')
In fact, it is not entirely anonymous, I have long been posting pictures on my Facebook page, LiveJournal, Leprozoria, Dirty. Everywhere there are people to whom such pictures seem interesting. They are not so many, but they are. As for my relationship, it can be described more as a joyful surprise. I used to draw the same “trolley bus” “on the table”, purely for myself. And it turned out like this.
And for a long time he lay "in the table"? What is the general history of its creation and when did you realize that the picture has become truly famous on the web?
I drew it in 2005, for some time it lay “in the table”, and then I posted the picture on the Web. By that time I managed to do several dozens of such things, but after the “trolleybus”, letters from my acquaintances began to fall down — they found some resources with the reposts of this picture, and the process was avalanche-like. Somewhere in a month, I began to guess that I had accidentally painted something. And last year, an acquaintance sent me a link where a search query for Habré was formed for the phrase “but why?”. I saw the number of mentions and was very, very impressed. And then finally understood, about the fame of this picture.
Wow! So she is 10 years old this year!
Exactly ten, yes. It seems to have already turned, I drew it in the summer, if memory serves.
People often use your picture with a trolley bus to demonstrate the meaninglessness and uselessness of some projects. Some, on the contrary, admire all useless, but funny. How do you yourself feel about such "trolley buses"? Is this picture a good humor or an evil satire?
Not exactly evil, I have good pictures. People often say that children like to look at my pictures. In addition, it is important for me that my creativity does not hurt anyone, By the way, I would not call it all humor either, I just paint what comes to mind, such akynism. That is, there is no purpose to mock someone, or even cause any emotions. “I see what I sing,” as they say.
Boris, who are you by profession and education? "Physicist" or "lyricist"?
Mathematician programmer, I have such a diploma. Programming, I don’t really do it, I work with numbers more, but all this, of course, is boring. Maybe that's why fantasy and developed so rapidly.
No desire to change the profession, for example, to become a professional illustrator? Do illustrations for authors like Daniel Kharms? Or draw ads for big money?
Since I am not an artist by profession, I don’t know how to draw, in truth, I have big problems with drawing on order, for money, or just at someone’s request. If I don’t burn myself with the idea and inspiration, it’s unlikely that something good will come out of the picture. And I would not like to show people mediocre. I'd rather bring joy to people just like that. As for Harms, he was so brilliant, I believe that any pictures only distract the reader from enjoying the text. Harms and so good.
If I change my profession, I have a dream - to live in a Greek village, on the seashore, get a hut and a boat, breathe the sea air, work as a bearded fisherman, in general.
Does it mean that you are not publishing books with drawings for commercial reasons? What then is the main motive?
That's how much I drew, so many of my friends, acquaintances, and just strangers from the Internet convinced me to make a picture book. But I doubted that it seemed that the people who would need this book could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And when in the end I decided, I had to postpone the funds for the publication, which is also another process. I thought so about myself — I’ll provide my relatives with books, and try to sell the remaining copies in order to discourage typographical expenses. So, in general, it turned out, but when the circulation of the first edition came to an end, I was pleasantly impressed by the geography, as it turned out, they know about my pictures in Africa, in Brazil, in Australia! But most of all interested were, of course, from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany and Israel. This is where the main part of my creativity lovers lives.
Are mostly Russian-speaking immigrants buying, or are local residents too? How easily do your pictures and stories overcome the cultural barrier?
Mostly Russian-speaking, of course. All the signatures in the book are translated into English, but since they know about my drawings only in RuNet, they simply do not catch the eye of the locals of other states. Although the cultural barrier, on occasion, is overcome, and easy.
In 2007, I was edited by the Czech magazine Umelec, a publication on contemporary art. They made very good material about my work, they translated the signatures of the pictures themselves (and in my case it’s not at all easy, as you know, it’s very easy to lose all the salt in translation). Compared with Saint-Exupery. It was very nice, truthfully.
And the British have not yet penetrated? After all, they have a very pronounced love of absurdity and paradoxes in the national culture - Limerick, “Alice through the looking-glass” ...
In England, by the way, a lot of books moved, but all of them moved to “ours”. No requests have yet been received from the indigenous people, apparently “our” do not demonstrate their copies to the local ones.
Continuing the theme of compatibility with other cultures - you read articles from the What if cycle ? Randall Munro? It seemed to me that many stories from there in spirit are similar to your pictures. He tries to give a rational answer to insane questions. You are trying to visualize crazy ideas and situations. What if the emoticon dies and is buried? What does Carlson have inside? What happens if rice leaves plov?
Unfortunately, these articles did not come across to me but my eyes, and in fact they, I see, are wonderful. Thanks for the tip. True, I have very few answers in my work - there are more questions. Here rice leaves plov, a trolley bus is made from a loaf of bread, a mechanic is photographed with oysters, and so on. But what will happen after this, and why everything is a big-big question. Like that.
You once wrote that Murzilka magazine had a strong influence on your drawing style. Now does it affect anything? Any favorite artists? Does it happen that any book or film suggests an idea? If you wish, you can see parallels between, for example, drug control dolphins and military junkie dolphin Jones from Johnny Mnemonic. Or between the Kid changing the valve seals of Carlson and John Connor, rummaging in the head of the Terminator. Is this a coincidence?
More than random. Say, the "dolphin" background was like this. I was traveling with a friend to St. Petersburg by train, and it happened to us to be in the same compartment with a submarine officer who had served his whole life on missile carriers. By chance, we had a bottle of brandy with us, we all quickly used it together, and then the officer in the dining car pulled everyone. We went several times, as a result, everyone was in a semi-unconscious state at the Latvian-Russian border.
Border guards came in, the documents were asked, it was then that the submariner woke up to their trouble. Without raising his head from the pillow, he gave the command to be, build, write out outfits. The border guards are very offended and promised to carry out a punitive operation in a single compartment - turn everything upside down to search for drugs, for example. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, the border guards realized that it was more expensive to contact themselves and disappeared. And then I remembered all this, and not by the plot, but rather by the mood I drew the picture.
I have a lot of favorite artists, but mainly I was influenced by the style of drawing from childhood. Here are the same drawings by Semenov from Murzilka, for example.
Do you store the originals of all the drawings? Did you offer to sell them? How do you feel about show business and the commercialization of art, copyright?
I keep, carefully keep, I would like to leave my son’s favorite things, as a memento. Several times the proposal to buy pictures came, if I see that a person really needs, I do not refuse, as a rule.
I treat the show business as neutral as he is towards me. But with copyright - my pictures are free on the Web for a walk, I'm just glad for this, the only thing is not very nice when the resources cover the signature and put their logo on top. Or a selection of pictures are titled “pictures of drug addicts,” “crazy draws,” and so on. That is sad.
Have you tried other tools besides pen and paper? Maybe a tablet and a stylus? Or do all these technological things just get in the way?
Other tools tried, and paint, and pencil, and on the computer in all sorts of ways. But since I did not like the result myself, I decided that on the handle, I would probably stop.
Today our guest is the author of this and many other equally interesting pictures - Boris Mogilin , better known in the network under the nickname Borya_Spec . Boris is not a professional artist and is not going to become one. His style of drawing comes from childhood, from the Soviet comics about Murzilka. His drawings are popular not only with adults, but also with children, although in their stories there are very few children, even if their heroes are funny animals or Carlson.
Boris, few of our readers did not see the picture about the trolleybus from a loaf of bread, and at the same time most of them didn’t even think that she had an author, and he still had many more mysterious and funny works. How do you feel about such "anonymous glory"?
')
In fact, it is not entirely anonymous, I have long been posting pictures on my Facebook page, LiveJournal, Leprozoria, Dirty. Everywhere there are people to whom such pictures seem interesting. They are not so many, but they are. As for my relationship, it can be described more as a joyful surprise. I used to draw the same “trolley bus” “on the table”, purely for myself. And it turned out like this.
And for a long time he lay "in the table"? What is the general history of its creation and when did you realize that the picture has become truly famous on the web?
I drew it in 2005, for some time it lay “in the table”, and then I posted the picture on the Web. By that time I managed to do several dozens of such things, but after the “trolleybus”, letters from my acquaintances began to fall down — they found some resources with the reposts of this picture, and the process was avalanche-like. Somewhere in a month, I began to guess that I had accidentally painted something. And last year, an acquaintance sent me a link where a search query for Habré was formed for the phrase “but why?”. I saw the number of mentions and was very, very impressed. And then finally understood, about the fame of this picture.
Wow! So she is 10 years old this year!
Exactly ten, yes. It seems to have already turned, I drew it in the summer, if memory serves.
People often use your picture with a trolley bus to demonstrate the meaninglessness and uselessness of some projects. Some, on the contrary, admire all useless, but funny. How do you yourself feel about such "trolley buses"? Is this picture a good humor or an evil satire?
Not exactly evil, I have good pictures. People often say that children like to look at my pictures. In addition, it is important for me that my creativity does not hurt anyone, By the way, I would not call it all humor either, I just paint what comes to mind, such akynism. That is, there is no purpose to mock someone, or even cause any emotions. “I see what I sing,” as they say.
Boris, who are you by profession and education? "Physicist" or "lyricist"?
Mathematician programmer, I have such a diploma. Programming, I don’t really do it, I work with numbers more, but all this, of course, is boring. Maybe that's why fantasy and developed so rapidly.
No desire to change the profession, for example, to become a professional illustrator? Do illustrations for authors like Daniel Kharms? Or draw ads for big money?
Since I am not an artist by profession, I don’t know how to draw, in truth, I have big problems with drawing on order, for money, or just at someone’s request. If I don’t burn myself with the idea and inspiration, it’s unlikely that something good will come out of the picture. And I would not like to show people mediocre. I'd rather bring joy to people just like that. As for Harms, he was so brilliant, I believe that any pictures only distract the reader from enjoying the text. Harms and so good.
If I change my profession, I have a dream - to live in a Greek village, on the seashore, get a hut and a boat, breathe the sea air, work as a bearded fisherman, in general.
Does it mean that you are not publishing books with drawings for commercial reasons? What then is the main motive?
That's how much I drew, so many of my friends, acquaintances, and just strangers from the Internet convinced me to make a picture book. But I doubted that it seemed that the people who would need this book could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And when in the end I decided, I had to postpone the funds for the publication, which is also another process. I thought so about myself — I’ll provide my relatives with books, and try to sell the remaining copies in order to discourage typographical expenses. So, in general, it turned out, but when the circulation of the first edition came to an end, I was pleasantly impressed by the geography, as it turned out, they know about my pictures in Africa, in Brazil, in Australia! But most of all interested were, of course, from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany and Israel. This is where the main part of my creativity lovers lives.
Are mostly Russian-speaking immigrants buying, or are local residents too? How easily do your pictures and stories overcome the cultural barrier?
Mostly Russian-speaking, of course. All the signatures in the book are translated into English, but since they know about my drawings only in RuNet, they simply do not catch the eye of the locals of other states. Although the cultural barrier, on occasion, is overcome, and easy.
In 2007, I was edited by the Czech magazine Umelec, a publication on contemporary art. They made very good material about my work, they translated the signatures of the pictures themselves (and in my case it’s not at all easy, as you know, it’s very easy to lose all the salt in translation). Compared with Saint-Exupery. It was very nice, truthfully.
And the British have not yet penetrated? After all, they have a very pronounced love of absurdity and paradoxes in the national culture - Limerick, “Alice through the looking-glass” ...
In England, by the way, a lot of books moved, but all of them moved to “ours”. No requests have yet been received from the indigenous people, apparently “our” do not demonstrate their copies to the local ones.
Continuing the theme of compatibility with other cultures - you read articles from the What if cycle ? Randall Munro? It seemed to me that many stories from there in spirit are similar to your pictures. He tries to give a rational answer to insane questions. You are trying to visualize crazy ideas and situations. What if the emoticon dies and is buried? What does Carlson have inside? What happens if rice leaves plov?
Unfortunately, these articles did not come across to me but my eyes, and in fact they, I see, are wonderful. Thanks for the tip. True, I have very few answers in my work - there are more questions. Here rice leaves plov, a trolley bus is made from a loaf of bread, a mechanic is photographed with oysters, and so on. But what will happen after this, and why everything is a big-big question. Like that.
You once wrote that Murzilka magazine had a strong influence on your drawing style. Now does it affect anything? Any favorite artists? Does it happen that any book or film suggests an idea? If you wish, you can see parallels between, for example, drug control dolphins and military junkie dolphin Jones from Johnny Mnemonic. Or between the Kid changing the valve seals of Carlson and John Connor, rummaging in the head of the Terminator. Is this a coincidence?
More than random. Say, the "dolphin" background was like this. I was traveling with a friend to St. Petersburg by train, and it happened to us to be in the same compartment with a submarine officer who had served his whole life on missile carriers. By chance, we had a bottle of brandy with us, we all quickly used it together, and then the officer in the dining car pulled everyone. We went several times, as a result, everyone was in a semi-unconscious state at the Latvian-Russian border.
Border guards came in, the documents were asked, it was then that the submariner woke up to their trouble. Without raising his head from the pillow, he gave the command to be, build, write out outfits. The border guards are very offended and promised to carry out a punitive operation in a single compartment - turn everything upside down to search for drugs, for example. Fortunately, common sense prevailed, the border guards realized that it was more expensive to contact themselves and disappeared. And then I remembered all this, and not by the plot, but rather by the mood I drew the picture.
I have a lot of favorite artists, but mainly I was influenced by the style of drawing from childhood. Here are the same drawings by Semenov from Murzilka, for example.
Do you store the originals of all the drawings? Did you offer to sell them? How do you feel about show business and the commercialization of art, copyright?
I keep, carefully keep, I would like to leave my son’s favorite things, as a memento. Several times the proposal to buy pictures came, if I see that a person really needs, I do not refuse, as a rule.
I treat the show business as neutral as he is towards me. But with copyright - my pictures are free on the Web for a walk, I'm just glad for this, the only thing is not very nice when the resources cover the signature and put their logo on top. Or a selection of pictures are titled “pictures of drug addicts,” “crazy draws,” and so on. That is sad.
Have you tried other tools besides pen and paper? Maybe a tablet and a stylus? Or do all these technological things just get in the way?
Other tools tried, and paint, and pencil, and on the computer in all sorts of ways. But since I did not like the result myself, I decided that on the handle, I would probably stop.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/365895/
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