Author: hamishmacdonald

I switched pens when drawing in my diary comic book yesterday, which my gut told me was a mistake. Sure enough, my linework went all to hell — like tightrope walking in ice-skates.

Nobody else would or should care about this, but I’m self-conscious about how scratchy the drawings turned out.

Anyway, whatever. Here are those entries.

Last night I had Comics Club at my house. We talked about colouring in.

For a whole evening.

It was just Tyler, Christian, and me. I missed the others, but with such a small crowd I didn’t feel bad that we talked about this issue at such length, mainly for my benefit. And I came away (well, I was home, so I didn’t go anywhere) feeling like I’d just been through a crash college course about illustration.

The down-side is that I need to rework the colouring I’ve already done on my comic. (Oh yes, I haven’t yet properly announced that here — because it still isn’t ready to show!)

I want to keep moving forward, telling more of the stories that are rushing into my head. Of course, the whole thing is a learning experience, and I expect that my cartooning will evolve as I go along. I developed the first chapter, though, to be part of a publication for Comics Club, so this colour business will need to be sorted out for that.

The gist is that I started using all sorts of colours for my comic, just like I do in my Strategic Coach illustrations. While I think they look nice, each panel is a lot of work, which will hold me back from putting this thing out.

I’ve been reading a biography of Charles Schulz (which has me hooked, and is stretching my imagination of what comics can do — plus it’s quite frank about his anxieties, his competitiveness, and his selfish moments, too).

One thing that really strikes me, looking at the cartoons peppered throughout the book, is how beautifully economical they are. Schulz isn’t drawing in a ton of background detail because it would detract from what the characters are doing and saying.

Working on a full-colour panel, I now see after last night’s conversation, demands that I render everything in the scene (versus Schulz’s blank backgrounds). And because of all the colours, I’m having to create lots of separations and layers and stuff, and all this takes time.

A nice side-effect of reading about Schulz is that it’s looping me back to childhood, when I pored over his pages, looking at his linework. I didn’t much care for the characters — they’re always so mopey and mean, except for Snoopy and Woodstock — but those lines were a big influence on me.

I just stumbled across this video, which made me cry.

Hm, why is that? I think it’s because they’re both just so cute and vulnerable and human. They both clearly want a connection and understanding — which is what we all want, right?

Deaf Strangers’ Blind Date

I read my first anti-anti-technology piece on Wired this morning (tl;dr “I switched to a flip-phone and hated it”). It had nothing enlightening to say, feeling like it was written by a young person whose friends all wanted him to do digital things so he abandoned the exercise for them.

That’s always the trend, though: one looks inspired when saying something contrary. Now that there’s a movement toward questioning the prevalence of technology in our lives and suggesting we increase our analogue-time, of course the smarter-than-though naysayer line will be “Meh, technology is fun and useful.”

Sure, it is. But if we pay attention, we all feel this other thing in our gut, this heaviness, a malignant brain-food hangover, and that’s not going away.

I want to invest in my analogue life this year. I was doing really well there for a while, listening to music and jamming out in my head, drawing for myself when I had spare time, but over the holidays I fell back sometimes — not always — into a pattern of escaping into the digital, of not knowing what to do with free time.

It’s most difficult when I don’t have a lot of spare time, when a small space of time opens up in-between other commitments, and changing gears quickly would be a challenge. The solution may be to figure out beforehand what else I could do (both work and play), so I’m not entering an empty space and trying to find direction at the same time.

I am the hero of my universe right now! I finished my comic for the Comics Club publication we’re planning to put out next year. Actually, I may be the only person who’s done anything yet — but I’ve been yearning to produce something of my own for years, and I needed this specific focus, deadline, and accountability structure to make it to happen.

Comics Club has not only given me an instant cadre of friends, very talented peers, and constant laughs every Thursday night, it’s also helped me deliver the work I’ve been wanting to get started on ever since I got back into cartooning. The characters and world of this little comic feel like pieces I could move about in infinite combinations.

It doesn’t feel like time to share the comic yet — it’s still forming in my mind and vulnerable to being scuppered by the wrong thing said. But I have one four-page bit completed, and I’m very happy about that right now.