Daily Comics.

One of my big goals this year was to draw every day. This shouldn't be hard. Anyone who follows me has seen the absolute chaos that is my creative schedule- book covers, merch designs, stickers, silly little promo spot illustrations, event posters... Surely that means I am doodling a little every day. Right? RIGHT?! Sorry to tell you, friends, it really didn't! I would let entire days scoot by without touching a pen (digital or physical), procrastinate, then panic and draw like my life depended on it for painful amounts of stressed-out hours until I managed to make all the work that was on a glaring deadline. Voila! Art! In a way that is certain to keep your passions close to your heart and not at all become an awful burden of unfathomable hurt! Hah. Unfortunately this pathway is carved very deeply into my neurons. Even after doing a very deep look in the mirror and endeavoring to change this, I found it hard. "I deserve a breaaaaaaak," played in my head while I scrolled my fucking tiny doom machine (phone) instead of what I promise promise promised myself I would do instead. I even live with a man who actually does create every day. Jay writes every day. I sit next to a person who has the best dedication to craft I have ever witnessed and do absolute brainworms shit like watch Instagram reels for an hour instead of parroting the behaviour being beautifully exhibited mere feet away from me. Terrible. I was reading a substack post from a cartoonist I enjoy about their New Year's resolutions, and they said that years ago they endeavored to do a daily autobio comic. No matter how small or stupid, regardless of the quality of the finished product. That practice, they said, changed the whole way they create- it made them more appreciative of their day-to-day life, made them faster at spacial observation, and they even kept doing it for years afterwards. I have tried a daily thing nearly every year of my life- bullet journals, goal trackers, long form written diaries... it always seems like such a great idea that I keep at for about twenty days and then I forget a couple times and then I remember and then I mentally flog myself for being a dumbass and give up on the whole thing. Something about this, though, and their accompanying charming scribbled examples really hit me. As a big fan of https://hourlycomicsday.com it just... clicked in my brain. I immediately rustled up a small and kind of crummy notebook that had been discarded in the basement of the bookstore and drew my first daily comic right then.

It's Day 25 and I am happy to report that we are still going! I won't consider my curse to be broken until we have passed a three month mark (the same sort of math I issued to my sobriety), but for now. I get it! I give myself only a few minutes, and anywhere between 1-4 panels. It's a highlight reel of a day, really. Or sometimes just one panel where cartoon-Chris looks very tired. Art immitates life. The looseness of a throwaway daily practice has helped me immensely when it comes to approaching "higher stakes" projects- I'm faster with lines, with shapes. More decisive. I have more trust in my making. Also it is just cute to report what I did that day. Folks are enjoying their small cameos (even though I am horrified that their representations aren't more perfect or polished-- I swear you are all SO MUCH CUTER than you appear in my dailies). When I draw sticker designs, I'm swifter. Layout on covers, more percise. And generally, I am a little more present here, knowing I'm going to log my day in some way. Intentional about moving the needle forward, and looking back at some of the happenings like, "Oh, that was nice." Here are some of the dailies so far. There's some real rough stuff here! But some decent things, too. The exercise is about stretching rather than results, and in this way, success.

What did you tell yourself you were going to do differently this year? What's sticking and what's not? Let me know in the comments- or tag me in your own posted daily comics! I am very nosey and would love to see it!