A few months ago, I came across the artwork of Petite-Madame, in the form of a Bucky Barnes Instagram account.

“This is awesome!” thought I, “but who is this mysterious and talented person?”

Petite-Madame, self-taught artist from Paris, professional illustrator, and self-proclaimed fan, is changing the way fandom looks and art and pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.

 The artist’s unique perspective on fandom compelled me connect with her in hopes of getting some insight into why and how she does what she does. The following discussion on art and social media is insightful and telling, while her commitment to creating fanart, a medium meant to help audiences understand and explore the characters we love, is commendable. If you haven’t checked out her MOL journal or Bucky art, please do. The links can be found below.

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The Collectiva Diva: Your use of art and social media, particularly the Bucky Barnes Instagram account, intrigues me. What is it about Bucky that fits this particular content (Instagram) so well? 

Petite-Madame: I find it rather funny that a super secret spy who’s described in the The Winter Soldier movie as “a ghost” could have as a main mode of expression an Instagram account where he shares his everyday life with his boyfriend Steve, his work problems, or what he ate for dinner. Superheroes are supposed to have secret identities (even if in the Marvel movies everybody knows that Tony Stark is Iron Man and Captain America has his own exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum) so, exposing Bucky’s life on a public medium such as Instagram is delightfully absurd, precisely because of this contradiction.

Also, it is very interesting to explore art wise because I have a lot of fun as an artist, trying to emulate an Instagram account and creating fake pictures of food and people in their natural environment; cooking or doing their laundry. I can play with the depth of field, the frame, the intensity of the blurs, the subjectivity of the point of view and of course, my weapon of choice, colors!

The 3^rd reason is far more pragmatic: posting a drawing with a short caption on Instagram and Tumblr requires FAR less work than a 1500 word fic and the complex drawings of Journal of a Man of Letters (JOAMOL). Launching the Bucky equivalent of JOAMOL would be impossible for me or I would have to win the lottery and leave my job for good!