Diary, February 24

Diary, February 23

Diary, February 22

Diary, February 21

Some doodlings

So over the past year, I've been doing more of these long-form comic stories that are generally more introspective, more thought-out, and I'm trying to be more serious and convey an actual "message", maybe. I don't know. I know that in the beginning I was drawing these short little strips about funny things that happened or funny things that were said, or a funny thought that I had. Of course I still record these little gems religiously, but I find myself shooting for something bigger with each new comic - a bigger picture, a richer world. But one consequence of that is I've been getting too serious about comics, and every time I draw it has to have a Purpose. I don't really sketch for fun so much anymore. I used to. I'm going to try to do that more.



Every Thursday night I go to this pub trivia quiz where we get lots of paper and pencils and we sit at a table and whisper answers to each other, and write them down, and second-guess ourselves, and have lots of fun. I think it's my favorite ritual of the week. And I find myself doodling there a lot, usually when there's a "sports" round and I zone out and leave the task to the boys. I realized the other week after a particularly intense doodling session (it was a particularly intense "sports" round) that it was the most fun I'd had drawing in a long time. Just pure and simple enjoyment - no worrying about whether it was "good" and whether people were going to like it, whether people were going to click "Like" on it.


This week I'm keeping a daily comic diary just to get back into the practice of drawing comics for fun and not agonizing too hard over them. I'll put those up soon.


(These are our rivals, the aptly-named Douchebags. I drew this to intimidate them but it didn't really work.)

A couple of things:
- I should give credit to a book I read this year that I enjoyed but later decided I didn't actually LIKE all that much, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. A mother refers to her son as her "designated understander" or something like that.
- That ideal state of mind where I'm in the oak tree? Extremely rare. Usually it's somewhere in the middle.

From the diary of Kathy MacLeod, age 11 on Prezi

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