I’ll never understand why some people feel the need to turn politicians into celebrities. I used to think people got into politics out of some altruistic desire to serve their fellow man. If you still believe that, please don’t look up the net worth of these people before and after they serve their term. Also don’t look up how much money they made selling stocks at just the right time. Some things you can’t unsee. Just like how I unconsciously made Drew Carey a character in my comic and now I can’t unsee it.
Keeping a Sketchbook
As a cartoonist I go through these phases. I’ve been thinking of it as a sort of restless cartoonist syndrome. That’s probably a real thing, don’t look it up. One day I’ll want to make a comic booky comic book kind of thing. The next day I’ll be inspired by some humor cartoon or comic and want to do comic strips. Another day I’ll want to do something super simplified and make a kids book. So for me to focus on one or two projects that last a while, like I’m doing with Change Log and The Atlantean, I can sometimes feel a sort of creative backup (I was going to write creative constipation, but that sounded gross in my head… probably applies here, though). I think in the past, this feeling would cause me to burn out my interest in my current project and move on to something else. This is probably why I’ve started and then abandoned so many projects over the past several years. But I think I’ve found the solution to this problem.
I’m actually embarrassed that it’s taken me so long to figure this out. I started keeping a sketchbook again, after having one for a long time. It’s pretty interesting and hard to describe how it feels, but I’ve definitely noticed a difference. I can use it to work through creative blocks or doodle out random things that pop into my head, then when I get back to my other projects I have a sort of clarity that I didn’t have before.
I’ve written before about how I’ll never be one of those artists who collects the drawings in my sketchbook into something I can sell. To me, a sketchbook is a place for me to unload and put out random nonsense that’s not meant for anyone else to see. That said, here’s a couple pages recently that I’m ok with sharing…
The page on the left was after a trip to Longwood Gardens, outside of Philadelphia. Cool place… lots of walking. I thought the one on the right was pretty funny so I did a cleaned up version of it in Procreate:
Like I said, the other recent pages are not for public consumption, but if you haven’t kept a sketchbook in a while (or ever), I highly recommend it to clear out your creative constipation.
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Have a great week!
-Brad