Sweet Time

by Weng Pixin

Overview

Vibrant swathes of paint build resonant portraits of heartache, childhood memories, and loneliness Sweet Time is an intimate rumination on love, empathy, and confidence. Singaporean cartoonist Weng Pixin delicately explores strained relationships with a kind of hopefulness while acknowledging their inevitable collapse. Her stories are like a series of snapshots in a photo album or the brightest highlights from an Instagram profile. Gorgeous image follows gorgeous image in a delicate quest to find connection. A night out turns into a chance encounter that is at first ecstatic and then quickly descends into awkwardness. A round of “he loves me, he loves me not” becomes a way of reading every action taken by a distant love interest. A couple find themselves in an artificially beautiful landscape, but the relationship can’t survive their difference of opinion on the illusion of its beauty. In Sweet Time, thick and bold strokes of color mingle with delicate lines. Weng combines the colorful realism of Maira Kalman with a gentle wit and introspection all her own, crafting infinitely relatable stories of everyday life and love now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770465213
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	04/16/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	246
File size:	37 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Weng Pixin (or Pix for short) was born and raised in sunny Singapore. She loves to draw, sew, make comics, tell stories, paint, create and construct using found objects. Pixin grew up listening to stories from her father, who was curious about the way the world works. In turn, when it comes to her art, Pixin loves to create semi-autobiographical comics that reflect her curious nature too.

Editorial Reviews

04/13/2020

Singaporean artist Weng presents a compendium of bittersweet stories that juxtapose the vagaries and pains of romantic relationships through her gorgeous, painterly drawings, creating a melancholic yet strangely enchanted mood. Several pieces feature protagonists in what seem like placid states, but slowly their buried feelings stir. In “Birds,” a couple visits a house whose owner collects wild birds, and as they peer through the gates at the lovely flora and fauna, they begin to argue. Though hurt by the exchange, the woman backs down, keeping her worst thoughts to herself (“We are not a good idea”). In “Pairs” and “The Boat,” couples ruminate and fight suicidal thoughts but attempt to reach out to one another. In the title story, a brokenhearted woman pours her heart out to a man in a bar before they go home together. Weng ends that arc with an erotic scene, the two looking deeply into each other’s eyes, begging the question as to whether a future together is possible. On a lighter note, Weng includes travel diaries where she jots down quotidian moments on trips to Argentina and other countries. Weng's rendering of sorrow leavened with hope results in a poetic, unified collection. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"This lovely semi-autobiographical graphic novel by Singaporean cartoonist Weng Pixin reflects her endless curiosity, vivid imagination and sense of wonder. Sad yet hopeful, this volume explores themes of love, loss, connection and compassion."
—Ms. Magazine

"Though the art of Sweet Time is by definition comics art, it stands impressively far above most of the conventions and genre expectations of the medium's mainstream publishing history... Whatever you call Sweet Time, it's a welcome expansion to the practical definition of comics as an art form."
—Pop Matters

"Weng Pixin’s wonderful debut, Sweet Time, is a medium-defining work... a melancholic assemblage of boxes, papers, threads, inks, oils, and watercolors." —The Brooklyn Rail, 20 Best Art Books of 2020

"Explosive colors, unexpected landscapes and graphic erotica define Weng's uncommon style; her characterizations are often child-like and unpredictable. Her hand-lettering—in size and content—is visually sporadic, leaving many pages and panels potently wordless...Beyond the intriguing stories, Weng's art proves to be her majestic accomplishment."
—Shelf Awareness

"Singapore’s Weng Pixin eschews comic-book conventions in favour of a loose and playful style of art that stitches together painterly expressionism and travel-diary immediacy." —The Georigia Straight

"This is wonderfully difficult to categorize, and comics fans searching for uncommon, emotional, and imaginative art will find lots of it here." —Booklist

From the Publisher

08/01/2020

DEBUT Melancholy and an intense interest in the human need for developing close relationships and understanding permeate the short stories in this first collection from Singaporean cartoonist Pixin. In "Birds," a couple searches for a house whose owner keeps a collection of wild birds in their lush garden. Once they find it, the sense of wonder they feel is quickly soured by a disagreement over whether they might make good travel companions. The titular piece, "Sweet Time," opens with a recently heartbroken woman forging a surprising bond with a man she meets in a bar. They go home together, and Pixin renders their bodies merging into an abstract field of color that then transforms into the sunset as the lovers wake and endure an awkward, silent breakfast in each other's company. Pixin's illustration complements her thematic interests perfectly, as her use of thick, colorful brushstrokes and fine ink lines evoke at once a warmth and poignant fragility, as though any moment might potentially lead to either a declaration of love or scathing rebuke. VERDICT Pixin's compassion and artistic ambition are evident on every page of this memorable debut.

Library Journal