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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nI was lamenting that to my friend Erik Larsen, who offered to kickstart my comics-making career by giving me 2 pages a month in his comic to do my own thing. It made no money, but it got me drawing again on a steady basis. Soon after, I got a job drawing single panel cartoons for the Complete Idiots Guide books while also lettering. That was a crash course in cartooning. I was writing and drawing cartoons about Ancient Egypt one week and computer programming the next. It was steady work and my skills improved exponentially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, as my comic in Erik\u2019s book, called Desperate Times, continued, I submitted it to comic strip syndicates and Amy Lago at United said she really liked the strip and we worked towards making it their next strip offering. It wound up not happening, which was heart-breaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, the writing was on the wall. Newspapers were dying, comic strips weren\u2019t making much money and a whole new crop of cartoonists were making what was called webcomics. Instead of newspapers, they\u2019d offer their strips on their website. So, I decided I just wanted to do a strip for me. I didn\u2019t expect to make money, and boy, I didn\u2019t. It lasted over 2 years and had moderate success\u2026meaning a few hundred people read it. But, I got better by doing a daily strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did a book for Marvel called Franklin Richards, a book called Cow Boy, and then Brad Meltzer asked if I\u2019d do a line of children\u2019s books with him. And as I\u2019ve just finished drawing our 40th<\/sup> book of the main series, I realize that all that work has gotten me better. I know it\u2019s kinda obvious, but when you\u2019re in the middle of it, you don\u2019t realize it. By no means am I saying I\u2019m great by any stretch of the imagination, but I\u2019ve improved. I love what I\u2019m doing and I think it comes through in the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That said, I missed just drawing for myself. As a kid, I never felt happier than when I was in my room just drawing for the love of it. I loved trying to learn how to ink with a brush, work on improving my character design and style. I would use real pens, pencils, and brushes. Real paper. And make mistakes that couldn\u2019t be fixed with command-z.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in between books and other projects, I\u2019ve secretly been writing and drawing a strip for myself. I have about 8 weeks done and I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m going to post them. I may. They might not be any good, but I\u2019m doing the strip for a number of reasons. First, I love the meditative quality of the writing and drawing. My anxiety drops, I don\u2019t doom scroll, and I feel better in general. Second, I love the \u201chappy accidents\u201d as Bob Ross calls them. I like not trying to be perfect. Maybe the jokes aren\u2019t great, maybe I didn\u2019t draw something exactly as I wanted, but that\u2019s okay. I feel like I\u2019m learning to improve again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, I mostly work digitally these days\u2014it goes faster, it\u2019s easy to make corrections, and doesn\u2019t require scanning. So, to just slow down and draw and write has really been a joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, I don\u2019t have to change anything I don\u2019t want to. I live in a world where my co-creators will ask for changes, editors and publishers will have me make changes, designers will have me make changes. Now, that\u2019s part of the process of the business and I don\u2019t really mind, but I get to do this one thing for me. No one can ask for changes and if it\u2019s not good, so what? I\u2019m doing it for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, get off the grid and do something just for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was recently interviewed , well really just had a conversation with my friend Josh, on Talksplode, a segment of the iFanboy podcast. We discussed my lettering career and then my turn into children\u2019s books. I mentioned that I got … Continue reading <\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n