Day 180 - Draw a Political Cartoon

Date: July 5th, 2010

When I was younger I wanted to be a comic strip author.  I never tried though.  Mostly because me and art are mortal enemies.  We have tangoed many times lo this past six months and art has always kicked my ass.  Remember that necklace from day five (an oldie, but a goodie)?  Yea, the clasp broke on that about a month ago.  Remember my mousetrap car?  It is in dire need of repair.  So freehand drawing was something I generally avoided.  See, the way I figure it is, if you can't learn to square dance, trying break-dancing might be hazardous to your health.

As this lovely weekend came to a close though, I realized that it was probably time to step outside of my comfort zone again.  Though, as every week has been, it was a week of new things; they were familiar, comforting kinds of new things.  So I decided to propel myself as far outside of my comfort zone as I reasonably could without significant pre-planning.  I looked through my master list of things I've never done before and settled on drawing a political cartoon.

I'm pretty political.  I have lots of opinions on many things.  It shouldn't be too hard to come up with something hilarious and insightful.  The first thing I had to do was figure out what I wanted to draw.  I settled on the statue of liberty.  Cause she's hot.

Then I had to come up with a message for the cartoon to convey.  There's a distinct possibility that I did that entire process backwards, but last I heard, the creative process was unquestionably personal.  There is no wrong in art!  So I thought about jokes involving 4th of July, birth of the country, the statue being a gift from France; and I got nowhere.  There was nothing both funny and concise that I could come up with.  So I took a nap.

Again, you can't question it.  Its the creative process.

After I woke up, I settled on the joke I wanted to tell and finished drawing the rest of the cartoon.  Bring fairly critical of my own work, I held onto the original, but drew several more versions that now exist in balled up form on the floor of my place in Lansing.  Turns out, the original best captured the mood I was going for.  Did you know drawings could have moods?  I didn't.  Until last weekend.  Can't question it.  Creative process!

Once the finishing touches had been put on (a few more lines here, some dots for good measure), I stepped back and marveled at my work.  Not New Yorker material, by any means, but not as mind-numbingly terrible as I'd expected when this whole endeavor began.  Then I put on a bathrobe and did a chicken dance.  No questions!  Creative process!

And voila:

Freakin' liberals.