A Shorter Spell than Expected...

My month-long dry spell has come to an end (last time I actually came up with a funny cartoon and not one of the comic book pages I've done was the Surgeon one on the 20th of February and boy, has it felt like a while since then). Anyway, hoorah! And thankfully much sooner than expected - 'phew!'. The last post was as much for myself as all you lovely people out there: I myself expected not to have anything for a while because the dry spell was going on for way longer than expected. But then I realised that I just wasn't trying hard enough. I had grown lazy and expected ideas to just pop into my head without me trying. And unless I did something about it I'd end up just wasting my own time. Can't have that. As many of you know, I hate time thieves. So I got off my backside and immediately sat down on my backside to draw (I mean who draws standing up?) Y'see, sometimes, when no one else will kick you up the arse, you just have to do it yourself (I'll leave the contortionist-esque physics of that up to your imagination). And kick I did by God, by ordering myself not to go to bed until I had squeezed three new - and, importantly, funny, cartoons from my brain.

It was five in the morning before my head made contact with a pillow.

Still, the job got done. Three lovely new cartoons, two of which have been drawn, inked and coloured in today, after a refreshing sleep. And I have to say, for three in the morning work they're pretty good. But as ever, I leave the final opinion to you folks out there. One will be up tonight, the others will be up over the coming days.

Anyway, the whole thing taught me a lesson - if you do anything creative, whether that's drawing, composing music, writing stories, coming up with jokes, riding a unicycle while juggling jugs, anything that involves you making something new, you can't be complacent and expect it new ideas to fall into your lap. You've got to go and look for them yourself. Nicole has a good article on her blog about this (www.a-writing-life.blogspot.com) in relation to writing. There are lots of things you can do to stir the creative juices, from going for a walk to going on a rollercoaster, just remember that you have to do it yourself. No one else can.

Right, I'm off to go think up a decent joke about Baristas and Barristers. Thanks for checking out the blog again, and hope you enjoy the cartoons that are coming up.

Rob x x x