Twelve years ago I sat down to do a live stream (I think on Justin.tv?) and drew a bunch of 3×3″ sketches on bristol. No expectations, no purpose, just drawing whatever came to mind. This was one of the drawings.
Not long after that I challenged myself to create a minicomic from scratch in about a week. Just an hour or two a day. And this bear drawing helped inspire the character of Boulder, one half of the titular team of that minicomic:
Boulder and Fleet: Adventurers for Hire Mini-Comic
I was making a lot of different kinds of adventure comics up until that point. Silver and the Periodic Forces, Switch Runners, The Replacements. They were all fun and imaginative stories, and a lot of fun to make. But I think this is the drawing where my interests shifted back to something I loved as a kid, which was drawing what C.S. Lewis called “clothed animals” stories. And my style started pointing to what my friend Dan Mishkin described as “action whimsy.”
Since then I’ve made a number of minicomics starring these clothed animal characters. And a number of graphic novel pitches. So it feels like the culmination of something to say that in autumn 2024 my middle-grade graphic novel The Inscrutable Doctor Baer and the Case of the Two-Faced Statue will finally be released.
I need to sit down to do more drawing without expectation. I’ll bet there are more meaningful twists and turns my subconscious has to offer.