my cartoons

Posted on May 5th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Cartoons.

About ten years ago, I started being cursed with cartoon ideas. New Yorker-style ideas, mostly, with the occasional Guindon-style idea. This was a curse because I don't draw. I have no talent for drawing. I have very little visual memory for anything, and (among other problems) I don't see in three dimensions when I try to draw. Everything I try to draw tends toward the flatly vertical. Drawing straight out of my imagination is worse: I can't picture anything.

So I have these ideas, and nothing to do with them. The ideas flowed for a while, but dried up when my subconscious realized I wasn't doing anything with them. My job, now, has bits of downtime, but the downtime isn't that useful for writing; the open time for writing can be spaced hours apart, and it's hard to keep a flow going. And reading books at the desk is discouraged.

But I can practice cartooning; it does no harm to the slow slow learning process to be interrupted. I already have the cartoon in my head, after all.

I figue I'll post some of them here, and see if practicing gets my subconscious going again. This is one of the old ones:

I botched the caption when I drew it; it should say "I'm in rocket science", not "I'm a rocket scientist".

I'm going to see if I can manage two of these a week.

7 comments.

LauraJMixon

Comment on May 5th, 2007.

LOL!

Marilee

Comment on May 5th, 2007.

I like it!

rich

Comment on May 5th, 2007.

it made me laugh out loud too! and by the way, harvey pekar doesn't draw either and look at him. on the other hand you don't need drawing skills for jokes like this. do you know david rees's 'get your war on'? just generic illustrations of people on the phone and at their work desks. if you came up with a visual motif for a milieu that is instantly indentifiable you could just endlessly recycle a few different caricatures. think on it.

Scraps

Comment on May 5th, 2007.

Thanks, nice people!

I do know Get Your War On, and I have been thinking about ways that I could applu that sort of thing to my captions. I need to come up with something original if I'm going to do that.

Gavin

Comment on May 7th, 2007.

I'm glad you're finally drawing these--they're funny!--and will add that there's nothing wrong with slavishly imitating somebody else's drawing style when you're learning to cartoon. At age 14, I drew a lot of fake Jack Ziegler guys, which became the template for my own cartooning style. If you draw a lot of pictures, you'll inevitably get better.

Scraps

Comment on May 7th, 2007.

Honestly, I don't think I'm capable of imitating someone else's style. I wish I were! I think the best I can manage is imitating someone else's conception of style.

(And thanks!)

Scraps

Comment on May 7th, 2007.

Incidentally, Laura, I believe you were the first person I saw use "LOL" sarcastically -- in the direction of Jerry Pournelle, on GEnie -- more years ago than I care to think about.

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