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My Writing/Drawing Process

Note: I accidentally published this already, but I managed to back-date it to yesterday, so I deleted and am republishing. I apologize.

In the comments section yesterday, Caroline G. asked:

Really interested in knowing more about your writing/journaling/drawing process and practice!

And because I love being asked questions, I thought I would respond in a post!

Basically first thing each morning I drink coffee and draw for an hour or so. I usually draw whatever seems memorable from the day before. This is like three days worth of the journal comics:
comics-pages-journal.jpg
The habit started about seven years ago when I stopped drinking and found I had a lot of energy in the morning, and that I really enjoyed doing something manual while I drank a ton of coffee. So I began keeping a traditional journal, and then I started a second journal for sketching (following the classic sober advice of “you might still like doing the stuff you liked doing as a kid”), and eventually the two journals melded into one. Also I was reading a lot of Julia Wertz and Gabrielle Bell, whose work and diary comics have been very influential.

I started posting a few of the comics to an Instagram account in 2017, and I enjoyed doing that so much that in 2019 I quit my job to publish the comics to a newsletter instead, with the hope that I might one day charge people to read it and make a living doing so. That never quite happened (the making-a-living part), but it was going well and growing, until eventually the whole thing started to crumble, for reasons that are still not totally clear to me. But basically I stopped liking my work. I think I was shaping it to try to appeal to people. Or I had lost sight of something. Or both. Or something else. Also I had a baby who was turning into a toddler, and it was easy to accept being a stay-at-home-mom as an identity.

But I kept doing the journal comics, just privately. And a year+ passed, and then Jason Kottke asked me to guest-blog for him, and it got me thinking I might get back into publishing things again! (Plus some other factors, like general boredom and hunger for a project.) I’d love to find a new rhythm for my own newsletter, and I have a few ideas about how I might do it.

On a more technical aspect, I use Micron pens (size 01) and Staedtler Ergosoft colored pencils, on Borden & Riley Paris Paper No. 234. I scan it all in using a Canon LiDE 220 scanner and then tweak it using the Preview application on my MacBook.

Discussion  2 comments

Bison Bison

5:30-7:30am I am asleep. What. I have spent years of my life trying to be a morning person and failed. How? Why? Why do you not just enjoy the night? Why can’t we all just sleep in and stay up late as normal? Argh.

Marc B.

I agree, Bison! I want both in my life - to stay up late and wake up early. And get enough sleep too! Ahh well!

I seemingly always have had an itch to journal. I don’t know why. But I write in my journal (digital) frequently and it’s usually just a rundown of whatever I’ve been doing recently. Here and there I’ll write something deeper and more artistic and it’s nice to read those entries years later. I appreciate that your journaling includes these drawings. It makes things a little more dynamic.

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