There's entirely too much too do, and as usual, I find something else much better going on in my sketchbook. This was a ripe morning; what with balmy temperatures, melting snow and no first hatching yet, I get to spend longer in the "office," "working on ideas." Rachmaninov and a lot of freshly brewed coffee (+ liberal dosage of Carolans for creamer) kick-started a productive session at the drawing board.
On top of the few freelance gigs now nibbling away, plus a batch of editorial panels brought about by recent shenanigans of Alaskan politicians (that never ends), and looming end-of-semester stuff, these little cartoons still keep rising up in the periphery of my awareness. Kinda like artistic whac-a-mole, doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, unbidden amusements sprout up like mushrooms (figure that one out), my personal creative "funny rings." Which helps explain my looking like Rip Van Winkle when I wander into town after a weekend of working alone in the cabin.
Actually "overflow" is the best term I've come up with; forced up by stress and the primal forces of nature at work within my brain. Sometimes it feels good to just doodle around for no damn reason; controversy, money, whatever, I just like to sit down every once in a while and just forget about all my problems and the troubles in the world. Sure, I could go on about psychological defense-mechanisms, denial and plain-old irresponsible behavior, but I'm going back to the drawing board, so nevermind.
Posted here today are the ballpoint-pen doodle scanned from the sketchbook > original pen & ink drawing (including over-eager-eraser-smears) > completed art > finished panel + text boxes/caption/header/signature. The latter step was done digitally as the words were done off the side on another page. Probably could have flogged this one to death and kept going with the gags, but started running out of room, and besides, enough's enough already. I had drawn out a bunch of arrows to accompany the text boxes, but after positioning everything, felt it was overstating the obvious, wasn't really needed and so deleted them from the final version. Only thing missing is a troll...
Meta-irony about blogging this particular cartoon aside, this panel's theme is familiar refrain around this neck of the woods; the contrasts inherent in a cabin-dweller's lifestyle is fertile ground (that's a another way of saying my life's a joke). And people wonder where I get my ideas...
"Art is the only way to run away without leaving home." - Twyla Tharp
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