How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
It’s a collection of Davis’s writing that was assembled after she had written these several tales, so the frame of “how to how to be happy” is a little tardy. She is a different author who has discussed the process of coming up with the title. She says that reading self-help books first started off as something of a joke for her, but that she now takes it very seriously as an author. She reads a lot of self-help books herself, so she felt a little bad using the term in a lighthearted way for the title of her book.
How To Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
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Davis is a phenomenally talented and varied artist. Her ability is on display in the book’s collection of comic strips. Her illustrations range in complexity from extremely straightforward linear and sketchy to very painterly and precise, from traditional realistic to vectorial compositions, from comic strip-like ezines to the surreal, and from slice-of-life to science fiction. She excels in black and white, but much more so in sepia or colour. Her hues are magnificent. Davis is a phenomenally talented and varied artist. Her ability is on display in the book’s collection of comic strips.
From a narrative perspective, Davis is able to write stories that concentrate on the inner life of her characters: their ideas, feelings, and way of approaching life. Her story is succinct, clear, and heartfelt. It is reflective, but also expressive and humorous.
The artist’s first book of graphic/literary short stories is titled How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis. Davis, who has been creating comics since the middle of the 2000s, is among the best cartoonists of her generation. Happy showcases her best work from her web and self-published projects, as well as for curatorial outlets like Mome and No-Brow. In her narratives, Davis achieves a special, subtly poignant quality that makes them both intriguing and elusive, full of mystery and a profoundly rewarding emotional resonance. Happy demonstrates the whole spectrum of Davis’s graphic abilities, from rough sketches to precise pen and ink line drawings to painstakingly crafted full-color painted panels, all of which are always in service of a story that builds to a subtly devastating finale.
