Goodbye to Summer

And Letting it All Out!

Aug 22, 2023

Prologue

From time immemorial, artists have navigated the desire to create, the freedom to create, and the ability to create. I see it as a privilege and as a right, and I don’t take it for granted. As my summer vacation comes to a close, and I get ready to return to my kindergarten classroom, I am forced to say goodbye (for now) to all my extra time to think and draw. I love teaching, so don’t worry. But change is change, and I don’t do well with it! Wish me luck!

My Artist Needs

I love to draw. Some things I post for free (social media), some things I try to get paid for (cartoons, publishing deals, freelance), and some things I throw out there as a kind of amalgam (Subtack!) It’s nice having access to all of the above.

I don’t wait for inspiration to strike, I grab it by the tail and hope it doesn’t strike back. To do that, I need the world. I need to read, to connect with people, and to explore. I need to experience love and loss, hope and worry, serenity and itchiness, and those three glorious seconds as an aspiring runner right after you hit your stride but right before you run out of steam.

And time. I need time. I need a long runway of time to think and ponder - to do all the wrong things before I do something right. Time! As I’ve been working on my second picture book, I’ve spent three-hour chunks writing and drawing pages that didn’t go anywhere except to get me to pages that might be somewhere. It’s a process! And the one thing I never took as an artist was -

Marketing 101

I try to draw what I want to draw, but am I drawing for me? What does it mean to be an artist without an audience? We all have stories to tell, ideas to present, new ways to see the world, ideals to fight for, and so on. With social media now, creating the marketing for your work is an art form in and of itself. It’s not not fun, in its own way, but wow, is it a lot!

And don’t get me started with Tiktok. It’s where it’s at! It’s where I’m at! I think? I have three whole videos up now, and I feel like an old man. But, as I was once told, life is an escalator. If you stand still you end up just going down. (Also, I think I now know where my anxiety comes from.) (And also, why are we assuming we’re standing on the down escalator! Why can’t I stand still and go up?)

There’s just so much more to being an artist than sitting and drawing. My good friend, a talented musician and dentist, understands this and is my marketing guru. He helps me see through the confusion of the who, what, where, why, and how. He also consumes books and podcasts at a rate that I’d never be able to keep up with. So, it’s good to have a friend like Erez. It’s good to have -

Community

Nishant and I exchanging sketches of oneanother

I need other artists. Through an arcane combination of Instagram and Substack, I met

Nishant Jain

, the amazing urban sketcher also knowns as The Sneaky Artist. We got together in lower Manhattan to sketch, talk art, and discuss the state of things. My one regret was not having a notebook open to write down all the insights, advice, and plain old wisdom that Nishant generously shared with me. (I did my best to return the favor and share the small amount of knowledge I cradle in my own brain.) From showing me how he uses one line to capture a shape to drawing an inverted marketing pyramid to help understand the humanity of subscribers (all of you!), he gave me so much to think about.

The opportunity to spend time with someone so talented, and who comes at art from such a different yet wonderful direction than I do, is incredibly special. We each have our own distinct voice, but we also speak the same language.

I feel the same way when I get together with my New Yorker cartoonist friends and colleagues. Who else can understand my anxiety at how finished my cartoon roughs should in each week’s batch? Who else can show me how many ways you can draw dogs, trees, people, etc. And they are so funny! You have to be at your best just to keep up with them! All these people make me better.

The End

I will now get back to my regularly scheduled doodles, cartoon requests, and all that. Thank you for letting me get this out of my system as I wrap my free time up. I’m going to leave you with this one question, that you can respond to right here: how does one say goodbye to summer?!