Looking forward

Fun stuff. No, really! And there's a kitten at the end!

A rough concept sketch for an illustration I created for GZM Shows.

Me: “I feel like I’m being a whiney-ass bitch right now.”

Grace: “You are being a whiney-ass bitch.”

Sometimes all you really need is a phone call with a good, blunt friend to help pull your head out of your ass. (My pal Grace is a recently enshrined German citizen. I wouldn’t be surprised if her German-style directness played a part in her citizenship application being approved.)

So yeah, yesterday’s post was, admittedly, bleak. It’s a bleak time in our world. Putting all of THAT aside, I’m personally having a rough go at it. I’m yet again at a career crossroads. I’m grieving and flailing around a bit. And I have to reinvent myself again. But maybe it’s time for me to actually take stock of what I have, and figure out where I want to go. After all, it’d be nice if, when my friend and graphic novelist Wes Molebash texts me about what book ideas I have, I could reply with actual ideas.

I do have some things going on that aren’t just editorial cartoons. Here’s what I’ve been working on recently. Maybe I can remind myself that there are plenty of roads I still haven’t explored.

Books

I want to write and draw books. Primarily, books for kids. One doesn’t simply walk into Mordor create a picture book or graphic novel career overnight. This is a helluva mountain to climb, and even if I started today, I’d be shocked if I had a book career up and running by the time I’m 50. I need a portfolio, ideas, connections, rejections, and energy.

An inked two-page spread from the book.

I’ve been working on a picture book with my friend and former coworker, Lucy May, for about a year. We’ll be self-publishing it … once I actually finish it. It’s been mostly in the background as other work and life have had to take precedence. Well, that and I discovered that I don’t have any kind of scaffolding to keep my ADHD brain on track to finish a book. Over the last year I’ve learned that I need to have systems in place to help break down and organize large projects into smaller, more manageable tasks, and that I work best with concrete deadlines and accountability. This book has been a learning experience, both in the actual creation of the book itself and in discovering how I best work.

Comics

Just like with books, I’ve had to learn that I need a system in place to create comics. For a few years, while working at WCPO-TV in Cincinnati, I drew several short- and long-form comics journalism stories. Once I left the station, though, I all but stopped drawing comics for several years. In the last year I’ve begun drawing more comics, and I’d like to draw more. Perhaps more than anything, I feel like I’m a storyteller at heart. Comics, like books, are something I want to explore.

The most recent Scooter comic. This was the first comic in which Scooter walked upright. I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to make it look right while also keeping it in line with the previous comics where Scooter walks on all fours like a regular cat.

I’ve begun drawing one-page comics for Give Them Ten, a Cincinnati-based foundation that advocates for the spaying and neutering of cats. The comics feature the foundation’s mascot, Scooter the Neutered Cat. Initially I took the gig just because, well, it’s a gig and I needed the money. But I found that I love drawing these comics.

Do I have it in me to create longer comics? I don’t know. But I want to find out. Maybe now’s the time.

Illustration

I’ve always struggled as an illustrator. On paper, my having an illustration career should be a no-brainer. I can draw decently well. I like taking ideas and translating them into a visual medium. I enjoy telling stories through art. So why do I find that I hate most of my illustration jobs?

I’ve approached illustration and illustration gigs all wrong. For the past decade or so I’ve treated illustration as an afterthought. Something supplemental to my editorial cartoons. I’d take on illustration gigs for money, without ever asking myself if I was the right fit for the gig. Or, rather, if the gig was the right fit for me. I’d just take on any and every illustration gig that came my way with no regard to whether I was the right person for the job or if the job was something that excited me.

I’m going to be much more selective about what illustration jobs I take on. A recent gig was for GZM Shows, which produces narrative podcasts for kids. I created the key art for an upcoming show. While I can’t share the final art yet, I can share some of the concept work I created.

I mixed elements from this concept and the concept sketch at the top of the post to create the final illustration for GZM Shows. I’ll share the final once the show is released.

Cartoons

While I’m not longer drawing cartoons for Pepperspectives, I’ll still be drawing and posting cartoons here. And I’m occasionally creating cartoons for other clients. I’m currently working on a few cartoons for a nonprofit called Cartoons for Democracy, which turns editorial cartoons into postcards that are sent out to voters. Again, I can’t share the final images just yet, but I can share one of the rough sketches.

The rough sketch for my latest Cartoons for Democracy piece. I had to redraw the top caricature two or three more times before I moved onto the final. Also, cartoon yachts are difficult to draw from the back. Who knew?

While I may not be the world-class editorial cartoonist I strived to be, I can work with and support actual world-class editorial cartoonists. Last year I took up the role of Minister of Information for the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Our art form is at risk of dying. As the AAEC’s Minister of Information I work with some of the best cartoonists in the United States (and around the planet) to make sure that our voices are heard, our freedoms are secure, and our pens are sharp. I’m proud of my brave friends and colleagues, and I’m proud I get to serve them in this capacity.

I’ve worked towards being a professional editorial cartoonist since I was 15. Due to bad luck, bad timing, squeamish editors, and the collapse of the newspaper industry, my career as a cartoonist didn’t take off like I wish it had. That’s OK. Hell, even as I write this, I’m not even sure what my expectations for that career really were. And it’s not like I’m not continuing to draw cartoons. I’m just … shifting my focus. Giving myself space to really take a hard look at what I do, what I’ve done, and where I’ve yet to go.

I may be a middle-aged man with no college degree and no job prospects who is grieving a career that never quite launched. I can keep my focus on a past that can’t be changed. Or I can acknowledge that things are rough, that I’ve got a few mountains yet to climb, and start climbing.

And if all that fails, maybe I can just be a stay-at-home cat dad.

This is Calliope. I found her huddled on my front porch about two weeks ago.

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