Whether you are a lifelong comic fan or just someone who enjoys scrolling through social media once in a while, I can assure you that you have stumbled across at least one of Maya and Yehuda Devir’s humorous illustrations. The couple’s beloved one-panel webcomics, which perfectly depict the highs and lows of married life and having a family while juggling a career, truly encapsulate the concept of “write what you know”, or in this case “draw what you know”. Indeed, it is exactly the truthfulness and relatability of the Devirs’ work that has captured the hearts of many across the globe, earning them over 5.5M followers on Instagram and more than 206k subscribers on YouTube.
This spring, Maya and Yehuda Devir released the YouTube mini-series The Heartists, bringing their audience even closer into their personal and professional lives. Created in collaboration with Wacom and Deviant Art, The Heartists is a compelling five-episode online series, which explores the day-to-day process of creating an engaging illustration for their popular webcomic One of Those Days, the collection the couple is best known for.
The series wasn’t the first collaboration between Wacom and the Devirs. As a matter of fact, in the past the couple has hosted multiple online Q&A and keynote speech sessions as part of Wacom’s Comic Week and ConnectedInk events, making them long-standing members of the Wacom family.
Devir Studio’s new mini-series, The Heartists, follows the lives of the successful couple Maya and Yehuda Devir as they give an honest insight into their relationship and how personal challenges can influence their creative process.
Maya and Yehuda are no strangers to opening themselves up to their audience, and it is precisely the candidness of their illustrations that has made them so relatable to anyone who has been in a relationship. The Heartists is no exception as it delves even deeper into the couple’s lives, uncovering difficult topics relating to their pregnancy and sharing how their partnership in art has helped them overcome the hardest of times.
The Heartists: Episode One
The first episode begins by introducing the couple and their entertaining hit webcomic One of Those Days as an international sensation, something that Yehuda and Maya still find hard to believe.
We follow the couple’s process, as they start their creative journey in the search of the essence of their upcoming illustration, that je ne sais quoi, or in other words the perfect way to reveal their big news to their audience: they are pregnant with their second child. However, what begins with a straightforward concept, turns out to take much longer than expected and the key message they want to communicate ends up being not as clear as what they first thought.
In a heartfelt moment, the couple bravely reveals the complications they faced after the birth of their first child Ariel. Specifically, Yehuda explained how difficult it was for him, and how it was only after a considerable amount of time that the couple understood what he was actually going through. It is clear that Yehuda finds it very hard to openly talk about his emotions and that he is much more comfortable sharing his vulnerability through his illustrations. It is when we see Yehuda in his studio drawing on his Wacom Cintiq Pro 32 and watch the time-lapse of his work that we begin to imagine how he felt at the time. For a couple that is normally so vocal about their life, it must have been so difficult to experience such a dark private moment.
Episode Two: Brainstorm
Maya and Yehuda’s art is all about telling stories, and their extraordinary skill lies in their ability to communicate a lot of information in a single frame. Truth, emotion, and harmony sit at the very heart of that message and for this reason, the brainstorming session is perhaps the most fundamental step of them all. Yet, creative discrepancies between the artists continue to persist throughout the episode, and the situation becomes even more complicated when their disagreements begin to affect every aspect of their lives.
The couple lives and breathes their work, and both stubbornly feel very strongly about the conceptual stage of their creative process. This candid peek into their art space gives their audience a unique opportunity to see the step-by-step operation that Maya and Yehuda go through to create the perfect piece for One of Those Days. However, as the couple sits at their desk in their art studio, brainstorming and sketching away, it becomes apparent that the process of creating the perfect announcement illustration is going to be a long and difficult one, filled with tension and a whole range of emotions.
Don’t miss what happens in The Heartists: Episodes Three, Four and Five as we are shown how Maya and Yehuda’s labor of love translates into an honest illustration of their emotional journey. To watch the full series on YouTube, click here.
If you feel inspired after watching Yehuda work in his studio and want to learn more about the type of setup he uses to illustrate, make sure to check out Wacom Cintiq Pro 32
Finally, if you can’t have enough of the Devir couple like us, grab yourself a copy of One of Those Days on Amazon.
