What I Learned Drawing a Bi-Weekly Comic for a Little Over a Year

I’ve been drawing The Worried Well regularly for a little over a year now, and have slowly progressed from the Not Sure What I Am Doing phase to the Why is This Getting Harder, Not Easier? phase, and finally, onto the Huh, Surely I Should Have Run Out of Ideas by Now phase. This seems like as good a time as any to write about What I Learned in list-fashion, so on that note: 

What I Learned Drawing a Bi-Weekly Comic for a Little Over a Year

1. If you don’t have a lot to say on a topic, don’t push it. 
As some of you may remember, in 2015 I created a mini comic called The Illustrated Guide to $14 Cocktails. A few of the individual cartoons are still lurking around online, but overall I consider it one of my weaker books. But what happened? It sounds like it would write itself, no? Those overpriced drinks just begging to be mocked! All of those fancy ingredients only a handful of people could possibly care about! And so forth. But in the end, I ran out of things to say about pricy cocktails pretty quickly—I had maybe one or two cartoons worth of material that I tried to stretch into a book’s worth, and it just didn’t work. (Also, how do you write about drinking expensive cocktails without sounding like a jackass? Serious question. Please tell me.)
 
There are, however, LOTS of things that make me legitimately opinionated: the overabundance of Book Shaped Product (ie, contentless drivel packaged up nicely), inspirational items that are really not, Richard Price, the so-called circular firing squad of the left, feeling powerless and infuriated at our current administration but how we cannot use that as an excuse not to act, introvert fetishization, my controversial stance Valentine’s Day is actually a wonderful holiday, not feeling the way you are “supposed” to feel, and many others. My general rule is that if I encounter a topic that makes me want to go on a drunken rant, I might have something I can work with.

2. No one cares about the drawing. Except other artists. 
I knew this going in of course, but seeing it play out in real life is vaguely depressing. 

3. Nib pens are your friend. 
The advantage of using a nib pen? It slows you down and forces you to work in one place. The disadvantage? It slows you down and forces you to work in one place. Right now my favorite tools include speedball 512s, square yellow Post-It Notes for doodles, an assortment of Japanese Pilot pens from JetPens.com (thanks, Eric!), and various glass trays I purchased at thrift stores and garage sales for palettes. 

4. It's important to finish things. 
To paraphrase Tom Hart: "You can be the type of artist who finishes things or the type of artist who hates himself." And weirdly, one of my proudest accomplishments last year was applying for a cartooning residency I didn't get into. It was only after I completed the application that I figured out what I wanted a collection of my work to look like.   

5. It's still way more fun to draw stuff that doesn't have to make any sense. 
Easier, too. 

Resist! and other cartoons

I'm pleased to announce that my cartoon, "Beyond the Safety Pin" will be included in the print version of Resist! magazine. This is a cartoon anthology edited by Gabe Fowler, Françoise Mouly and Nadja Spiegelman featuring work from women and LGBTQ artists in response to Trump’s election, and will be distributed free in DC on Innaguaration Day. You can learn more about it and see more cartoons by the other artists here, and read an interesting NY Mag article about the project here. Apparently I am not the only woman who feels a sick aversion to drawing Trump.

Beyond the Safety Pin

Beyond the Safety Pin

I'm still figuring out how to address our new political horrorshow in my cartoons, and figuring out how but more on that later. In the meantime, I figured I'd use my limited talent for portraiture to draw people who are genuinely inspiring: 

Some more of my political cartoons (or more accurately, "politically inspired" cartoons?) are below. And if any readers would like some I'll Miss This Guy stickers [see above], please contact me and I'm happy to send some your way. 

The Troubled Mind: Post 2016 Election Edition 

The Troubled Mind: Post 2016 Election Edition 

WWFB_GoodNewsNoTime.jpg
Journaling IS a dumb word. 

Journaling IS a dumb word. 

Art for sale at the DC Design Week Pop-Up Shop

Mouse in a Cup original drawing. 5x7,’’ matted at 8x10.’’ $45, signed.

Mouse in a Cup original drawing. 5x7,’’ matted at 8x10.’’ $45, signed.

I will have some prints and drawings for sale at the DC Design Week Pop-Up Shop, where I fully expect to spend any money I make buying stuff from the other illustrators and designers. Below is a quick preview of what I'll be selling. 

The opening party is this Sunday, but if you can’t make it or don’t live nearby everything is available in the shop, too. 

When
Sunday, October 23
Opening party at 2:00 PM

Where
Cherry Blossom Creative
 2128 8th St NW, Washington, DC 20001

Ladies Drawing Night Print. 8x10’’ print.

Ladies Drawing Night Print. 8x10’’ print.

Adams Morgan Bingo - Color Edition. 11x14’’ print. 

Adams Morgan Bingo - Color Edition. 11x14’’ print. 

The Creative Process, Parts 1 - 6

As an artist, I’ve been fascinated by the amount of material that has suddenly blossomed about the “creative process.” Not only is it impossible to open my email without a barrage of “7 tips for boosting your creativity”-esque clickbait, there are now journals to help you along, Tarot cards to spark ideas, collections of inspirational quotes, coloring books up the wazoo, and all sorts of stuff I’m probably forgetting. 

And what always fascinates me is how little any of it helps when I sit down to actually work. The most they can offer me is solidarity; a “hey, it’s hard for all of us, isn’t it?” reassurance that’s handy to have in the back of your mind, but completely useless when trying to figure out what to draw and how to draw it. Perhaps for that reason I’ve always been more consoled by works like Isn’t It Romantic?–the brilliant 2011 David Rakoff essay where he describes in beautiful, agonizing detail the process of how a day devoted to writing will so easily go from “Pregnant with Potential” to “Freighted with Failure,”–than I am by encouraging posters. 

This is not to say I think less of the people who find books or journals about creativity helpful. It’s easy to roll your eyes at titles like “Unleashing Your Inner Something-or-Other” (and I may gently mock them in my cartoons now and then) but if someone feels as though they finally have “permission” to draw or paint thanks to a book, or a think piece, or even a wine and paint class, only a churl would begrudge them for it. (Besides, the fact that adult coloring books are a thing now can only lead to more jobs for artists and illustrators, so I’m sure as hell not complaining.)  

My Creative Process series adds to the pile of these guides, but without offering any useful advice whatsoever. The goal is just to show what it’s like for me, and, because I’m not particularly unique, what it might be like for other people. I finished it last spring but never got around to posting it, so Parts 1 - 6 are below: 

Evolution of the Social Media Fairy

One of the tricks I’ve learned about drawing comics is that your own internal (or occasionally external) rants are a handy source of material in a pinch. I couldn’t figure out how to articulate my contradictory 'social-media-is-poisoning-and-feeding-me-at-the-same-time’ feelings until it occurred to me to throw the Social Media Fairy into the mix. Monday's cartoon is the result: 

Some practice sketches and color blobs: 

And here are my original notes. I didn’t want the cartoon to be too text-heavy, so I cut down my original rant quite a bit. I also moved her to a bed, since I'm getting tired of drawing a figure at a desk behind a computer.

New Mini Comic

A few weeks ago I attended the Sequential Artists Workshop for a week long residency.  (Can’t say enough good things about it, by the way, and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to devote productive time to drawing and cartooning—but more on that later.) While I was there I created an 8 page mini comic, based on my disastrous experience trying to wait tables when I was 19: 

You can buy a copy here for $5, or see the online version on GoComics (part 2 is coming out on Friday, June 3).

Self help section

My self-help cartoon is on GoComics today. This was one of ideas that at first made me think, "huh! Why, this will write itself!" and then required coming up with about a bazillion aggressively unfunny book titles and lousy drawings (plus a trip to Kramer Books to research actual self-help books) before finally settling on the final version. Here are a few sketches: 

Ugh. 

Ugh. 

UGH. 

UGH. 

Getting there, but still ugh. 

Getting there, but still ugh. 

And the final version, at long last: