Revisiting

I cracked open a book I have again for about the fourth time. It's been a while since I've read it and for some reason it piqued my interest again. It's not a fiction novel, or a novel of any sort, but rather an instructional book of sorts filled with advice and commentary.

The subject? Cartooning.
The author? Lee Nordling.
The title? Your Career in the Comics.

Yep, it's about comics, but not comic books. It's about comic strips, as in those 3-6 panel strips you see in your weekly papers, or much more prevalent now on the internet. The likes of Peanuts, Garfield and Beetle Bailey come to mind. Or for you net browsers, Yirmummah, Order of the Stick and even Dilbert.

Now, I know I have discussed this before, and I don't want to repeat myself, so I'll keep it brief. Before and after I wanted to be a comic book artist I wanted to be a cartoonist. When I was a kid I would buy the Garfield books and read them over and over again. I loved Charlie Brown, Garfield, For Better or Worse and all of those and still do. Before I decided to try my hand at comics I drew strips for the school paper and just for fun. And then when I gave up comics and drawing for five years I revisited my desire for cartooning and got Mr. Nordling's book.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I started looking to my former cartooning love for inspiration into my comic style artwork. I guess that rekindled my love for cartooning as well.

I have mentioned a few times about wanting to do a web strip and a syndicated one before, so this is nothing new. And I realize I tend to jump around from one thing to the next seemingly, but I assure you it's not as helter-skelter as it seems. I have many, many goals, most lofty yet achievable. The trick is finding the balance to put them all in motion without getting overwhelmed. And when you're a guy like me who hates monotony with a passion you have to keep revisiting things or you get bored very quickly.

Sometimes I feel like I'm allowing my writing to suffer because I'm involved in so many other things. But truth be told, it's all interrelated and it all works towards the same goal basically. Working in comics journalism, lettering, drawing and writing all lead to the same path in various ways, and that's into the comic industry, which I love. Of course singing and acting are different, but they're still creative arts, so I think they fit... somehow in this grand scheme of things.

But here I am with my lettering really starting to pick up, and with things going steady in the journalism area, and now I'm getting back into my art wanting to hone my skills, and now cartooning again, all while my writing seems to be the last on the list. Well, comic and novel writing that is as I do plenty of other types of writing every day it seems. But I'm enjoying every minute of all the things I'm currently doing.

But ironically, writing is one of the two things I love most, the other being singing. So I haven't forgotten my writing, and I did recently write two full scripts, but I just haven't found the proper flow to do a bit of everything.

Again, the problem with me is as analytical as I am, I still can't do things from a list as much as I try. Now I'm not talking about work. That's different, and when I do that I'm completely focused on the task at hand. But I'm talking about outside of that with writing, art, etc. I have to feel it and be in the mood for it. And right now, since I'm not getting paid for it, I can afford that luxury I guess.

But to get back on topic since I am WAY off, I have once again started thinking towards cartooning. I even drew some simple sketches tonight and they looked decent. I'm still trying to find my distinctive style though, even in that. As I mentioned before, that's one thing (among many others) that I have lacked, and I think it would help me overall to find that first and then work on the basic flaws of things.

I was looking at and thinking about various artists' work both in comics and cartooning and how distinctive and identifiable each were. If you see something drawn by Charles Schulz or painted by Alex Ross you know beyond a shadow of a doubt who illustrated it. The same can be said about the styles of Jim Davis, Lynn Johnson, Mort Walker, Jim Lee, Jack Kirby, John Romita Jr, Humberto Ramos, and the list goes on and on. All the greats in any form of art have truly identifiable and distinct styles, and it's part of what separates them from the multitude of artists out there.

But of course there's a lot more to it than that, and that's just the first step. But it's a step.

As for the cartooning, I've thought about trying to do a web strip for some time now, and I hope it won't be long before I'm able to do it. I do want to seek syndication as well, but that's a long, hard road, and it's an extremely hard field to get into. But who knows?

So anyway, I just thought I'd share that since it kind of fit in with recent posts both here and on the sketch blog.

And speaking of the sketch blog, as I make these new sketches I'll start posting them up there. I hope to update that blog three times a week, but it could be more or less depending on the time I have to actually doodle and draw. But we'll see.

B-Out