"Wow, that's quite a bold statement," you might be thinking to yourself. Allow me to explain: as an artist with a multitude of artist friends, I've noticed throughout the years that we all seem to share the same love/hate relationship with our medium of choice. We complain about all the hours we spend on our work and the specific things we hate drawing/creating. My favorite science communicator, Cara Santa Maria, expresses a sentiment about herself as a writer that I completely agree with as a cartoonist. I'm paraphrasing but it's something like: "I love having written something, but I hate writing."
Drawing and making art have always been passions of mine and at the end of a project, I have an immense amount of satisfaction at what I've made; but sometimes during the process, I really hate drawing.
I think this statement can refer to most artists but as a cartoonist I'm going to specifically refer to cartooning. SO as a cartoonist, you need to know how to draw everything. You're required to create the illusion of a 3D space out of nothing and you need to repeat that illusion over and over again until you have a series of mini illustrations that make up a story. You toil hours on end for what: the reader to spend 30 seconds reading a page. Will they appreciate the bookshelf I drew in the background, the one that I spent some good time filling with books and knick-knacks, half covered up by the lettering anyways? Who willingly signs up for that kind of torture????
In order to fill the tall order of being a cartoonist and being able to deliver a finished piece by a deadline, you have to know when and where to take shortcuts. Cartooning is full of visual shorthand; why spend hours noodling away trying to render every single brick in a building when you can draw a few clusters here and there and the reader will get the same impression.
Sometimes you forget about the many tools cartoonist like to keep up their sleeves to save them time and tears. Like the time I saw this tweet and was reminded that you don't have to draw stairs!
When I first saw this on twitter, I nearly smacked myself on the head thinking, "Of course!" Stairs are one of the many things that fall under The Worst™ category of subjects to draw (next to perspective, hands & feet, crowd scenes...) And these example photos shown are just as interesting if not more so then drawing stairs anyways!
But then sometimes, you just have to draw a crowd scene.
This was a long-winded way of me to basically say I'm drawing a Where's Waldo-esque crowd scene and I'm dreading it.
I have a new project in the works, one where I'm documenting Key West street performers. This particular page is going to serve as a map for Mallory Sqaure, the hub of island where all the fun takes place. This is the rough sketch right now and I'm not looking forward to drawing all those people...
So wish me luck!
Ending Question
Key West is one of my favrite places in the entire world; it has such a great vibe and never seems to get old even after going year after year. What's your favorite place to visit?
If you'd like to keep up with more of my work you can check me out at the following:
Instagram: @la.fumettista
Tumblr: http://la-fumettista.tumblr.com/tagged/art
Twitter: @TheresaChiechi
Website: https://www.theresachiechi.com/
Go check out @drwatson, he's writing about the Ithaqa comic series we're working on together.