What's Coming Up: The Charming-Yet-Infrequent Newsletter

In today’s newsletter:

  • 3 Tips To Do Creative Work

  • Summer Cartooning Workshop

  • Life on a Desert Island

  • The Shop for Mugs and Tees

  • A Fresh Crop of Greeting Cards

  • A Process Sketch

  • A Fun Collaboration

  • A Less Fun Collaboration

3 Tips For Creative Work

1. Get a Buddy.

I’m someone who likes feedback. I show my “finished” roughs to some editorial smarties, but at some time during the pandemic, I solidified another ritual— a weekly phone call with cartoonist Suzy Becker. This is where we toss our stinky, half-baked ideas at each other and see if they get a reaction. Prepping for this phone date makes me sit down and start writing.

2. Take a Class- It’s Your Institutional Buddy.

All you have to do is show up and the teacher takes it from there. Added bonus, this is where you meet aforementioned buddies.

3. Do it for someone else.

It’s so easy to to put off a pursuit if the results are for only yourself, but harder if that means letting someone else down. (Note: It’s perfectly worthy to do something just for yourself— it’s just harder.)

 

Summer Cartooning Workshop

I can be your institutional buddy. It’s five days of hard work and fun. So far, it’s in person at The Center For Cartoon Studies.

 

Life On A Desert Island

The last couple of years have felt like that, so cartoonists Ellis Rosen and Jon Adams put together SEND HELP, a collection of Desert Island cartoons. Here’s mine from the collection.

 

A Shop For Mugs And Tees

If you have a favorite strip you want on a mug, a T-shirt, or what have you, I’ll put it up on my Tee-Public Shop. If you want a framed print or a comic book, get that on rhymeswithorange.com. I recently put this chestnut up for a fan.

 

A Fresh Crop of Greeting Cards

Get ‘em at NobleWorksCards.com. Shipping is free!

I sell some other designs at Tree-Free.com.

 

From Sketch to Final

Every year I draw the mug for the Hot Chocolate Run for Safe Passage, an organization helping those who experience domestic abuse. This year there was a raffle to encourage more teams to sign up. The winner got a drawing highlighting their team. I worked it out on my iPad, then traced it onto nice paper and applied an ink wash.

 

A Fun Collaboration

My artist buddy Whitney Robbins helps run Stone Soup, a local Community Kitchen. They needed some more art for the wall, so I drew the black and white version on my iPad, then Whitney projected it onto the wall, painted it and colored it!

 

A Less Fun Collaboration

Not all help is helpful.

 

Thanks, as always, for tuning in!

Please tell your friends about this newsletter, so I can slowly take over the world.

XO!

HIlary