Telling ‘The Story of Kamin’ — one pen stroke at a time

It takes imagination, time, patience and a lot of creativity to create a piece of art. A canvas, a freshly painted white wall, a restaurant napkin or on the side panels of a notebook can all be materials to create something amazing after a moment or two of inspiration. For some, the act of creativity is an innate feeling and it can result in amazing work. Back before iPads launched and applications took over, comic books and comic strips in newspapers were a source of entertainment for many and it takes a lot of dedication to come up with ideas. The art of creating a comic book is very intense, one must come up with a unique idea and theme and go with it, the flow of thoughts can be difficult but for one artist, it’s his passion and drive that keeps it going. Momad, the creator of the “Kamin Stories” is a passionate artist, a dedicated artist and an idealist when it comes to “Kamin” and the world that surrounds it.
It was quite early in his life when he had a defining moment and made the decision that he had to, scratch that, need to, make comic books all the time. “I was infected with the compulsion to story-tell and illustrate from a young age. I still remember the night when it all became clear to me that this is what I had to do,” exclaimed Momad. He was hypnotized by Todd McFarlane’s intense five part Spiderman Series “Torment” which had Spiderman being hunted by The Lizard through the streets of New York, it was that night as a child of flipping through the pages that was the moment for him.
Having grown up watching famous shows on TV such as Grendizer, the original macros series and Sindbad the animated series, young Momad made the decision that he will one day dedicate his life to sketching. Any comic book that he or his friends would sneak into Saudi Arabia at the time, young Momad would devour every page and taught himself perspective and anatomy from them. “When you hear about people snapping suddenly and losing their mind... that’s what happened to me but in a good way, I think. After graduating high school and university, I attached myself to a job I’ve enjoyed for quite some time but the feeling was still tingling in me and I wanted to sketch and nothing else.” His influences grew as he grew, from Da Vinci to Frank Frazetta, which captivated him as well.
The process by which one can create a comic is more difficult than a painting. The creation of a storyline takes patience, a lot of sketching, different variations of one scene to the next and many many sleepless nights just to get the sketch right. Trial and error is norm until perfected, Momad simply cuts to the chase. “A lot of times a rough quick sketch ends up having raw energy and strength that cannot be easily recreated in a finished piece. You tend to stop using your spontaneous creative nature and start to try and copy your sketch, I found that it didn’t work for me so i decided I should develop a way of working that made the final creation be a sketch in essence thus shortening the distance between the idea and the creation of the idea. So instead of penciling then inking, I just ink right away. I just focus on the story, the characters and what I’m seeing in my mind on the yet empty page.” It took Momad years of experimenting and obsessing, self-doubt included to reach the level of perfection that he found satisfaction and along that process, all external and internal factors helped shape “The Story of Kamin”.
The story of Kamin goes like this, “On the day of his birth, Kamin’s mother hid him inside a tree of stories so he can escape death. Inside this tree of stories was a tower of boxes, each box was a different story... To live forever, and escape death, Kamin must ironically die a lot. He dies at the end of one story only to be reborn in the next. That is how he can travel through the tree of stories, Kamin is searching for a way back to his home and back to the first story. He finds himself in different and bizarre fables, he must play a part in the story, he has to make each story good, because when he dies that story finds its way into the ear of a girl long asleep outside the tree of stories, his stories sustain her till the next night.”
When asked about the motivation behind keeping his character alive in his stories, Momad tries not to be too rigid with the process of telling the stories. If he’s enjoying the story, he’ll continue because they need to be fun and it’s a fun challenge not knowing what comes next. He often puts Kamin into a corner to see how he gets out of it, he uses his brain to depuzzle fables and get through.
Momad has showcased his work in a number of galleries around London, UK and Sydney, Australia as well as participated in London’s latest Comic Con where many were very intrigued by not only his storyline but the method by which he drew. With practice, it has become easy for him to sketch Kamin, but he is a perfectionist; he uses one type of pen, different strokes and only in black ink to create Kamin and other characters of his comic. One method and one color is all it took for Momad’s creation to appear and he’s not stopping, the artist is in the process of creating new stories, new art and ways of presenting them.
Be sure to keep up with “The Story of Kamin” through the website www.thekaminstories.com along with the Instagram page, momad.ink.
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