I'm a cartoonist and illustrator based in Toronto, my first book, "The Pleasure of the Text", came out in 2021 with Conundrum Press.

Website: https://www.samialwani.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sami.alwani/
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/sami__alwani

As a cartoonist I usually really love bright, vibrant and expressive palettes, but more subdued and natural feeling that synthetic pop-y colors. I am trying to break out of my usual habits with color, I often gravitate to warmer colors, find myself using a lot of pinks, whites, ochres, light blues and purples. Soft, happy colors and kind of a little gay.

I draw a lot of sexy gay stuff! I also draw my little dog-man self-portrait character, Saehmeh Aehlawahni, very often. A lot of my practice also revolves around observational drawings as well, with a big focus on the figure.

I came to visual art through comics first. I started as a prose fiction writer so my primary interest was narrative, then discovered the alternative comics scene and decided I wanted to make comics, so I forced myself to learn to draw.

When I worked as a docent at MOCA here in Toronto I would visit my friends working in Art Metropole, the printed matter book store house in the same building. We would pass the time during our shifts by drawing exquisite corpses which were always fun and inspiring.

Watch out for my debut graphic-novel coming out with Fantagraphics Books (in a few years...)