Week 34

Some drawings of trees

A one panel cartoon this week:

Recently I’ve been shopping for the perfect paper. I try to hide it from Rachel when I bring home another A3 drawing pad to stuff into our overflowing paper drawer, but A3 paper is too big to hide and the drawer is too full and she always sees it and raises an eyebrow.

I know that soon I’m going to be drawing 350+ pages of a comic book all in graphite pencils and I simply need to have a paper that I like. It’s got to be archival quality or at least acid-free so the paper doesn’t degrade and turn yellow. Nearly all the papers I’ve tried are too toothy, I want a smooth surface so I can get a very fine line when I want it.

There is one paper I love, but it’s too expensive. I’m talking more than 2 dollars a page, you do the maths. It’s a local paper company and I emailed them to ask if they would like to sponsor my book by gifting me some paper but they haven’t responded, even after I followed up with a gentle nudge. I thought it was a nice email, cute and self-effacing.

I read an interesting article about asker-optimality, which is kind of about the benefit of asking for things, rather than waiting to be asked. I think I have been asking for things. Jobs, for example. I’ve been applying, of course, but I’ve also been hitting up people. I’ve been catching up for coffees. I’ve been emailing people in areas I have any kind of remote interest in, sussing things out, asking if there are any opportunities going. So far, there are not.

I was in a gallery the other day and I thought, if this was another time— 40 years ago, or even 20 maybe—I would find the curator and I would say “hey, what is it that you do? Can I come and watch you curate sometime? Could I help you roll out some canvasses (I don’t know what they do). I feel like you can’t really do that anymore. You would need a degree to even ask the question, and then pre-existing experience to do the observing. The problem is there’s only so many degrees I can reasonably get, and my past is full. Maybe the problem is I’m not young anymore.

I’m only now seeing how the choices I have made have shaped my life. Life was all possibilities and now it is that I have some abilities and there is no time to cultivate more. You might say, “Well you could always go back and study this or that…” But even that sentence includes the words go back. You can’t go back. Because what you really want is the time to muck around and try things. And you can’t get that back. Because you’re an adult now, with responsibilities. And you’re emailing a paper company to ask for free paper for your doodles.

Anyway, this week I found a pretty nice paper that is more like a dollar a page. It’s not quite as nice but it’s at least smooth.

I have decided late on a New Year’s resolution. I will try to draw a tree every day. I will experiment with different media. It will be partly as practice for the book (which will heavily feature its forest setting) and partly as play. Though there is something perverse about drawing a tree on paper, which I have humourously flipped in the cartoon above.

Here are a few trees, the last one is on the new paper, can you see how it’s less toothy?

Do you have any art-related New Year’s Resolutions?

This Week I Learned…

I was in the park just sitting with my son. He had crawled a couple of metres away and was turning a toy car over in his hands, looking very intently at it. I was just watching him. And I thought to myself: oh, this is just like falling in love. Parenting is falling in love with someone as they slowly reveal more of themselves. And right now everything they do is funny and perfect and my patience is infinite. Obviously if it turns out rubbing avocado in his hair is not just a phase but a personality trait that will become annoying but right now it’s cute.

I was thinking another name for this newsletter might be Banal Revelations.

Better?