“Not Working,” Part I
I have a bad habit of completely dismissing the many things I make that aren’t my next graphic novel. “Oh I didn’t get any work done this week!” = “I was too busy with paid work or other obligations to work on my book.” Recently I haven’t been working a lot. Here are some things I haven’t been working on:
Ketubah for Sarah
My friend Sarah is an amazing painter, and she was asked by some beloved old friends of hers to make the ketubah for their upcoming wedding. After agreeing she realized she would need to write the text, which isn’t her strength, and she asked if I would help out with the lettering. So rarely does a cartoonist’s skills come in useful in an emergency! I was honored & delighted to help out. I set the type digitally to figure out how many lines would give me a squat rectangle, allowing room for the Hebrew text on top and signature lines at bottom to fill out a centered square of text. I don’t have a working printer, so I wrote the words out for spacing on a separate piece of paper, cutting and taping to make sure the spacing was correct. I used my light box to trace the words and inked with a dip pen on to the 20”x20” Rives paper, with a generous border for Sarah to paint. I’m so happy with how my part of this beautiful document turned out!
Family Portrait for School Fundraiser
I tried to hide the fact that I’m a cartoonist from my son’s school. Do I love kids? Yes! Do I love comics? Of course! Do I love talking to kids about comics, and making things for kids? It’s truly the best part of being a cartoonist parent! And also, I’ve heard so many stories from fellow artist-parents that schools & PTAs mark you as a resource without understanding the labor/time implications of requests, and it’s almost impossible to say no. Well, I got found out! Kindergarten birthday culture at my son’s school dictates that the birthday kid brings little gifts for their classmates, which means we get mountains of little plastic junk every few weeks. For my son’s birthday gift to his classmates in March, I bought some cheap bulk pocket-sized blank booklets and a custom stamp that said “Field Journal, From Ilan;” he stamped the cover, and, like a joyful fool, I made a little comic insert to explain to the kids how to keep a field journal. Art and science in one gift, and no disposable plastic—victory! The very next week, I got an email from the fundraising chair of the Parent Teacher Organization to see if I could donate something to the upcoming school fundraiser auction. Hoisted by my own damn petard!
(Kidding aside, of course, I was so happy to say yes. My son goes to a really wonderful Chicago public school where the teachers & staff do an extraordinary job with nowhere near enough resources for a school their size, and the invisible volunteer labor of the parents on the PTO fill in a lot of funding gaps. Go Edison!)
I offered to make a family portrait for the auction, and the winner of the item was a fellow kindergarten family. I tried to do a particularly good job so I wouldn’t have to hide my face from embarrassment for the next 8 years of school events.
Ask Ask
Since 2017, I have made the single-page comic “Ask Ask” for every issue of Ask magazine, a science magazine for kids from Cricket Magazine group, along with science journalist Ellen Braaf. Kids write in questions, and the characters I developed (Sage, a pigeon, and Briar, a chipmunk) answer them. I receive the finished script, get feedback on sketches from my friends on the Ask editorial team, and send in finished art every month. It’s a dreamy job that has only gotten more fun to work on as my kids have gotten old enough to read the magazine. This month’s question is, “How old is money?” I’m not contractually allowed to share work until it has been published, but here is an old comic to show the process:
Selection from the script I receive from Ellen:
Sketch (drawn digitally on my iPad in Procreate):
And final art (also on Procreate):
Other things:
I just got Jessica Campbell’s Rave in the mail yesterday, I can’t wait to read it!
Currently reading “To the Lighthouse” by Virginia Woolf, “The Swimmers” by Julie Otsuka, “Marvelous Things Overheard” by Ange Mlinko
I’ve listened to a lot of podcast interviews with Jessi Klein ahead of her book release “I’ll Show Myself Out,” a collection of essays about motherhood, which I have preordered and am really looking forward to. In one interview she said she framed the book around the hero’s journey, but instead of leaving to become transformed, a mother’s heroic journey is to stay, to be transformed in situ and not run away. I haven’t been able to get that out of my head.
My family & I just got back from a long weekend in St Louis to visit my husband’s family. Traveling with kids! Is! Not! Easy! It’s good to be home, and I feel very behind. Diary comics coming, but this email is already too long.
Xoxoxox M