Ink Stained Fingers: My Life as a Cartoonist

Ink. Thick, rich, deep and black; it courses through my veins and feeds my brain. It stains my fingers, dries beneath my cuticles, fills the ridges in my nails, and has dappled countless shirts and pants. It's the reason I wear black Levis. Other folks with a grasp of reality enjoy a color-filled world; not we reclusive cartoonists. We live in a stark realm of sharp contrast, bold black and white. It's in our nature to see things simply; scratchy pen lines, bold brush strokes, squiggly lines soaked into paper. We boil art down to its essence, shorthand, no frills, simple direct statements, drawn without hesitation. Cartooning. I love every minute of it. Always have, always will.

I was mesmerized at an early age by newspaper comic strips, those horizontal panels containing worlds with characters that were breathing, real flesh and blood, alive to my eyes and mind. Alley Oop, Lil Abner, Krazy Kat, Steve Canyon, Prince Valiant, whether rendered realistic or humorous, they captured my imagination. They made up my mind early on as to what I was going to be when I got older; a cartoonist. But make no mistake, as simple as a cartoon appears, the craft is demanding, a skill that requires you to strip away non-essentials, to draw without the crutch of color. That naked line must deliver, it must grab the reader, capture, not let loose. Nothing is more exciting to me than a clean white sheet of paper, brush or pen, ink, and the freedom to create your own world.