Sanika Phawde

🌹If you liked Wedding Juice, I have good news! 🌹 The next comic from my series “ Wedding Juice and other Melodramas “ was published in the New Yorker today!!!!! 😱🌹❤️🍰Here is a lil peek! To read the full comic please head to the link in my bio!! Thank you so much for your invaluable direction on this piece @craezy @emmaewallen ❤️ ✨🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 ✨ As with all the comics in this series, this one is dedicated to my father, who has always understood the value in putting on a show. #thenewyorker #newcomic #weddingcomics #weddingjuice #weddingjuiceandothermelodramas #dryice #rosepetals #comicsartist #autobiocomics #autobio #fathersday #wedding #weddingdecor #indianwedding #desiwedding #newyorkercomics #illustrationartists #bostoncomicsroundtable

!!!! Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas won the Ignatz award for Outstanding Series!!!!! I am so deeply honored and beyond grateful! If I had prepared a speech I would have remembered to mention how grateful I am to the judges who chose Wedding Juice to be a nominee, the friends, family and strangers who voted for it, and the entire incredible team that organizes @spxcomics , and nurtures this amazing community. I would also have remembered to thank Sean @athenaeumcomicart and Neil @radiator_comics for believing in Wedding Juice from the early days. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this dream come true.

Happy Pride Babiiesss!✨✨✨ I made this comic a while ago for Paper Planes Magazine @joinpaperplanes and just realized that I never posted it on my own page. Sending bohot pyaar to AD @ayeshapunjabi ❤️ And thank you so much @rsikoryak for letting me read this at Carousel! Most pyaar to my Ma for consenting to this❤️❤️❤️ #comic #illustration #comicsartist #colourpencils #colorpencil #queerartist

🪟🐸 ⒶＮ𝕥ħⓞ𝕝𝔬gץ 𝕒𝓝ήό𝓤𝓝c𝒆ᵐ𝒆Ｎ𝕋 😈💅🏻 Five ephemera enthusiasts merged their comic worlds into one big book. She’s tall, combed up, and ready to be read! Be careful cause she reads back! 💋 Overview: Witch Window is a comic anthology featuring experimental stories by five New England artists. This regional grouping consists of Kyle Canyon, Jill Lydon, Sophie Page, Sanika Phawde, and Ana Two. The broad range of works expresses the artists’ joy of the medium and their dedication to keeping ephemera alive and well. The anthology is risograph printed on found paper and assembled by the artists. A witch window, in American architecture, is a diagonal window found in Vermont homes. This technique allows a full-length window to fit in the narrow space between two roof lines. The term “witch window” also connects to superstitions from folklore. Specifically, witches cannot fly through tilted openings. In our anthology, Witch Window serves as an entryway to the contrasting sections within. The chapters resemble architecture- a collection of odd “rooms” filled with each artist’s unique ideas. The short stories mirror the functional absurdity and magical rumination that define a witch window. Cover: Kyle Canyon & Sophie Page Back Cover: Sanika Phawde Photography: @vinceruvolo

💖SPX 2026 Banner 2💖 This one was inspired by the covers of old Archie’s comics double digests that I would read during sleepovers at my best friends house in high school. 💖💖💖💖 When I was given the opportunity to make the banners, flyers and poster for SPX 2026, I knew I wanted to make something that would celebrate autobio comics. I wanted to talk about the joy of making them, how they have always helped me communicate with and relate to the world around me, helped me feel seen and represented, and and also how they have completely taken over my life and made me a menace to my loved ones. If you read the 2 banners, the poster and the flyer in the order in which they will be released, it might form a comic! 👀🥰 @spxcomics #spx2026 #smallpressexpo #posterdesign #handlettering #handletteredtype

💖SPX 2026 Banner 1💖 When I was given the opportunity to make the banners, flyers and poster for SPX 2026, I knew I wanted to make something that would celebrate autobio comics. I wanted to talk about the joy of making them, how they have always helped me communicate with and relate to the world around me, helped me feel seen and represented, and and also how they have completely taken over my life and made me a menace to my loved ones. If you read the 2 banners, the poster and the flyer in the order in which they will be released, it might form a comic! 👀🥰 Other details: The bicycle: The bike and the background scene is inspired by a tandem bicycle named “The Beach Comber” that John and I almost bought on Craigslist during the early days of the pandemic. For a second we thought it would be a good idea to ride it around Brooklyn. The back of the bike that holds books is inspired by @lucyknisley ‘s incredible bike book storage that she built herself, and that I think about all the time. The bicycle helmets: I just really like elaborate helmet decorations and I really love fish. The SPX balloon letters: They are inspired by a cover of ZAP that I saw in the incredible comics exhibition at @centrepompidou in Paris in 2024, and by shiny Valentine’s Day balloons hanging indoors in a seafood restaurant in Salem. @spxcomics #spx2026 #smallpressexpo #posterdesign #handlettering #handletteredtype

We are very pleased to share with you the SPX 2026 Banners done by Ignatz Award winning cartoonist, Sanika Phawde AKA @thejackfruitslayer ! They’re so beautiful and we are so in awe of your talent! Thank you so much, Sanika!

Thank you so much @brokenfrontier for this incredibly kind and generous review of Issues 2 and 3 of Wedding Juice and Other Melodramas!🥹🎉💖😊 As I was reading the review I learned that Wedding Juice was nominated for a 2025 Broken Frontier Award in the Best Periodical Series category!! Which is such a dream and an incredible honor! And I am so grateful to the team who chose the nominations!! It means the world to me that my stories resonated with you! THANK YOU💖💖💖 @brokenfrontier

Hourly Comics day 2026 Part 2/2 This is the emotional roller coaster part of the day. #hourlycomicday #hourlies #hourlycomics #bcaf

Hourly Comics Day 2026 started off chill and then turned into an emotional roller coaster. Part 1/2 #hourlycomicday #hourlycomics #bcaf #sketchbook

We were lucky enough to meet some guest artists at Sketcher Fest (@sketcherfest ) last summer, including Sanika Phawde (@thejackfruitslayer )!⁠ 🍫⁠ Sanika Phawde strives to capture and communicate instances of emotional connection, queer immigrant culture, and the quirks of family tensions through autobiographical comics, visual essays (pictured is an excerpt from “The Cakes that Shaped Me”), and illustrated interviews. She continues to be blown away by the extent to which drawing on location and making comics help her mental health.⁠ 🗯️⁠ Sanika has a new favorite tool every couple months because she constantly switches things up to keep from getting bored. The tool that she is currently obsessed with, and trying to master, is the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. She also loves painting with gouache!⁠ 🎨⁠ About the portraits: Sanika illustrated Eric, Ambreen, and Anne, who call the lands to the Eastern Appalachian region home, and whose audio stories were recorded in celebration of Public Lands Day, exploring their ties to land, history, identity, and more. Find out more on her website, sanikap.com.⁠ 🏞️⁠ About Sanika | Sanika Phawde (she/they) is a Boston-based illustrator, educator, cartoonist, and reportage artist who was born and raised in India. You can follow Sanika over at @thejackfruitslayer .

Come together to share the practice of creating comics every hour of the day. Join a panel of local cartoonists Damian Alexander, Caroline Hu, and Sanika Phawde in a discussion moderated by educator and comics-maker Jerel Dye. Happening at Comicazi on 2/1 at 5pm! Register at /event-details/hourly-comics-day-2026