Fear of Success

No. 28

So I spent a bit of this week fretting. I had a post go low-key viral a few weeks ago. It nearly doubled my admittedly, quite modest number of subscribers in a day. Welcome everyone! Very happy to have you. That said, ya’ll are stressing me out!

But don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s me.

When I started this whole thing I didn’t really have a plan. I didn’t even know what Substack was when I wrote the first comics published here. Over time I built a somewhat vague thesis around “preserving human spirit.” What does that even mean? It doesn’t matter. It gave me permission to start making things again. It unlocked a door in my brain and I walked through it.

Preserving human spirit means a lot of things to me. Primarily it has to do with not hiding the process, accepting mistakes, and keeping the edges rough. It also has a lot to do with recording the journey, and above all, not being afraid to make that journey.

So when the zines took off and I somehow ended up going low-key viral on “Motivational Artist Substack”, I was, to put it mildly, quite surprised. Don’t get me wrong, I love motivational stuff geared toward artists. It’s dug me out of many a hole. I just never considered myself to be particularly motivating or much of a standard bearer in that regard. The stress I felt that somehow I had to try and be motivational was pretty overwhelming.

So what am I getting on about and what does any of this mean? It just means I’m gonna keep doing my thing. Whatever that thing is. Motivational or not. It might be motivational some weeks - and if it helps you in some way, that’s awesome and truly means the world to me. But I don’t think I’m going to be much of anything - least of all motivational - if I’m out here trying to be fit myself into some mold.

“If somebody doesn’t like what I do, I really don’t care. I’m not chained to public opinion, nor am I swayed by the waves of popular trends. I just keep on doing my own investigations.” - Tom Waits

I wish I was cool enough to not care what people thought. The opinions of others weigh on me as much as anyone. Maybe more. So while I can’t promise to not care whether or not you like what I do, I can and do promise to keep on doing my own investigations. It’s what going to the river means.

---

---

So, what have I been doing this week besides freaking out over a tiny bit of success? Well, it started with me diving deep into “Motivational Artist Youtube” - specifically the incredible work of Farel Dalrymple. Eventually I splurged on some nicer materials he recommends, paper, better ink, and some opaque white. Then I pulled my water colors out of storage since we already use the same set *squeal!* and set to some basic color theory exercises. Just to get my feet wet again.

I was planning to do a quick page to put my new kit through it’s paces when it quickly became apparent that I was woefully out of practice.

So I dug out some old books from the garage, bought a couple new ones and sent myself back to art school.

Ivan Brunetti’s book on cartooning is basically the text book for his class on the subject. I’m not even kidding. There’s literal homework at the end of every chapter. It’s wonderful. An early exercise involves drawing the same subject repeatedly on shorter and shorter timelines with the goal of discovering that sweet spot of no more and no less.

Another fun exercise involves making a big grid, and drawing quickly, from memory, a whole bunch of generic cartoon tropes. Cartooning has a lot in common with symbology and design and an exercise like this is great for distilling otherwise complex characters into near iconography.

At some point I got it in my head that I needed to use non-photo blue again. The nice thing about non-photo blue is you don’t have to erase the line work because it doesn’t repro on black and white copiers like the one I use.

Having a brand new pencil meant getting to customize it just so. I had some discussion this week with with

Duane Toops

about customizing your kit. And I have a lot more thoughts on the subject than just what’s contained in that conversation - for another day perhaps.

What I found interesting that we didn’t cover were some glaring layout mistakes. I don’t think it would take much to tie everything up into a more cohesive package. Time to slow down and stop skipping all those foundational steps like thumb nailing.

Here’s the actual pencil - fully customized P207 along side my P209 custom. If you’re curious about the actual modifications, here’s a great video from Van Neistat about it.

To wrap things up, here’s a couple pages from the sketchbook that I liked.

And just to keep me honest, here’s a more typical spread - much less refined. It’s a sketchbook - if you aren’t filling it with with mistakes you aren’t doing it right.

Anyhoo - hope you had a good week. Thanks for reading, I really do appreciate it. Your feedback and the resulting conversations are always fun and challenging and help me grow.

Thank you.

---