Comic: My "How To" 🦔

This is too much fun to be called “a process” even if it is a creative process

Thank you, Jenny, for asking about how I pull the comic Hannah and Rosie together in a comment to last week’s post. This post is my answer to those questions. I hesitate to call this a description of “my process” since it all feels like play to me, but that’s probably what it is. I started making this comic for myself and for a friend a couple years ago. Drawing and painting seemed to become a necessity during the pestilence, the pandemic, the lockdown, whatever you want to call it, because it coincided with a very uncreative trough in my life. I bought a simple set of watercolor pens and gave myself permission to make the worst paintings that no one would ever have to see. Slowly but surely I began to care about what I was painting. And I bought a bigger set of watercolor pens. Then I got the idea to combine two of my favorite things: animals and thinking (philosophy, in this case).

This particular comic came together by the following steps, illustrated with images.

Step One: Read and write down cool ideas (yes, on index cards when possible)

Getting an idea for who and what Hannah and Rosie will encounter next takes some ruminating. This time, the hedgehog and the fox, are a bit on the nose as they’re based on Isaiah Berlin’s book of the same name.

Sometimes the animal occurs to me first and I figure out what philosophy it might be able to represent. There was never any doubt that a squirrel would be in the comic. They have taken over my yard and their fluid movement is perfect for watercolor. After I painted the tail, I thought of Descartes immediately, as one naturally would.

Step Two: Experiment with painting

Step Three: Write down cool ideas for the script of the comic

Having never painted a hedgehog before, I gave it a try, experimenting with color and amount of water. It doesn’t always work out, as the illustration below proves. As I was experimenting with painting a hedgehog, ideas for the text of the comic popped into my head.

These poor hedgehogs and fox.

Step Four: Sketch it in pencil

Here’s a different version of the same “scene.” I decided not to use it because all of the text would have had to fit into the middle space and I am not sure that would be easy enough to read.

(Should I paint it, to see how it turns out?)

The first sketch

Step Five: Just go for it

Because I erase as I go, I have to write the script down elsewhere. I paint and draw as best I can and see what turns out. Finally, I write in the script in ink.

There it is, how I bumble from ideas to a comic that amuses at least me.

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Pledges

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And, if by the end of 2023 I have five (just 5!) people pledging support, I will donate $100 to one of the animal rescues I talk about (but I won’t turn on paid subscriptions to do that).

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