3 Questions with Jon St. Amant
I came across Jon and his work through Kids Comics Unite sometime back. I mentioned his One on One Drawing Coaching he offers in a recent newsletter. He’s been in my periphery for awhile so it’s exciting to see his and his wife Desi’s new graphic novel Three Bee Honey coming out this fall.
Also, I like bees. I have a very casual notion about having a hive someday. So the idea of telling a story about bees but more or less turning them into people characters is a pretty fun concept.
Why comics?
I love making comics because I get to be the director, set designer, costumer, and even get into the minds of the characters as I imagine them living in worlds that reveal themselves one frame at a time. I see each page as a challenging puzzle to solve, deciding on compositions and pacing that will hopefully get the readers to want to hurry to the next page- yearning to know what happens next- and maybe get them to return at a later time to linger on the art.
Reading comics is a physical and intimate experience, and each read reveals different elements. As a kid, my favorite images in books included details that were discovered with a slower read or a second pass, so I try to include little details that reward observant readers.
Something I do now that I wish I had done earlier in my career?
First of all, I wish I had started making comics earlier. I majored in Drawing and Painting in college, and my artwork kept veering into narrative and cartoony territory. The fine art world tends to be very serious and abstract (at least it was at the time of my college experience), and the oil-on-canvas medium in which I was creating art felt like ill-fitting pants. It wasn’t until after graduation that I began to fully rebel from my fine art training and started leaning into narrative illustration, which eventually led to sequential comics.
College is a great time to network with fellow creatives, and networking can be very important in getting hired into a desired position, collaborating on projects, or simply having a social group for the lonely process of comics making. While I made some good friends through my college experience, none of those friends are into comics, and most of them went their own ways in the years that followed graduation. I feel I missed out on establishing a solid creative group early on. Luckily, I have found creative friends by joining comic-making groups.
What I’m currently working on:
Too many things. My biggest obligation is illustrating the second volume of the graphic novel series my wife, Desi, wrote, THREE BEE HONEY. Book one hits shelves October 20th, and the artwork for book two is due in April 2027. After I satisfy my daily quota of drawing, inking, or coloring the TBH pages, I work on my other projects, including a Kickstarter comic of a character I’ve been developing since 2009 (Chubicorn: Kind of a Big Deal–this campaign closes on August 4th).
While I create content for my YouTube Channel, @MisterSaintAmant, I also started a Patreon (Jonathan St. Amant). I’ve recently launched a 1-on-1 drawing coach class program, and my wife and I are creating some new stories to pitch to our agent. Life is busy, but I am excited to see where these projects go.
You can find Jon online at
