I was pretty sure I had taste. I knew what good looked like. I knew Richard Thompson1 could draw a fencepost with three lines and make it feel like the whole emotional weight of suburbia hinged on that fencepost. I knew a Roz Chast squiggle could hold more neurosis than a whole year of tele-therapy. I knew what worked.

And then I tried to do it myself.

Spoiler: it did not work. At all. The punchlines were obvious. The drawings were stiff. Everyone’s arms looked like soggy churros. I once drew a hand that looked like an undercooked prawn trying to dial a phone. I knew it was bad—and worse, I knew why.

It’s what Ira Glass famously calls “The Taste Gap.” (He didn’t trademark it, but he probably should’ve.) It’s that weird, humiliating limbo between what you love and what you’re currently capable of making without weeping into your cup noodles.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you: The better your taste is, the more painful the gap feels.

It’s like having the palate of a Michelin inspector, but the only thing you know how to make is singed toast and runny scrambled eggs. And yet you keep making those eggs. Over and over. Because one day, maybe, you’ll finally Bourdain something that doesn’t taste like pure regret on toast.

Most people quit in the middle of the gap.

Which makes sense. It’s dark in there. There’s a lot of echo. And the only way out is through volume. You have to make an unreasonable amount of stuff.2 Embarrassing amounts. The creative equivalent of lifting weights in a Planet Fitness parking lot while wearing Crocs. (I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it.)

But every now and then, after years of crumpled pages and flopped sets and jokes that landed with the grace of a cinder block to the face, you’ll crap out something that feels… right?

It won’t be perfect. But it will match your taste. And you’ll think: “Oh. I’m getting closer.” And that’s enough.

At least until tomorrow, when you make something new and the gap yawns open again like a sinkhole in your soul. But that’s just the process.

Anyway.

‘til next time!
Your pal,

PS. If anyone wants a cartoon of an undercooked prawn trying to dial a rotary phone, my inbox is open.

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Hey, friends!

Before I start: I just wanted to finally let you know that I’m so excited to have the best-selling author of two of my favourite books of all time on Draw Me Anything. The special guest is none other than — Author of “Daily Rituals” and the excellent substack .

You may have heard an I talking about Mason’s excellent books on our episode this week. If you missed that one, you can see the replay here. I’ll be speaking with Mason on Substack Live on Tuesday, 17th June @ 1pm EDT. Add it to your calendar now!

Okay, on with the show…

Five years ago, I was sprawled on my couch at 3am, completely absorbed in Mason Currey's Daily Rituals: How Artists Work—scribbling marginalia like some deranged graduate student. When I finally looked up from the last page, the streetlights outside were flickering, and the sun was rising over the city. Tell me the last time you had an experience like that with a book?

On my second reading, I went through and highlighted something I found as a very interesting correlation across 400 years of the greatest writers, artists, poets, composers and other creative minds detailed in the book.

The people I’ve excerpted below are from just the first book, and they aren’t just a random collection of artists and thinkers; they’re some of the most influential minds who ever lived.1 Everyone from Stephen King, to Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Darwin, Beethoven, Mozart, Truman Capote, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, George Orwell, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Murakami, Yeats, Stravinsky, Charles Dickens, David Foster Wallace, Jung, Arthur Miller, and dozens of others.

I've always had this delusional notion that real artists chain themselves to their desks for 8-10 hours daily, grinding through to-do lists with mad hustle! (Yes, I actually used that phrase unironically.) It's completely unnatural—like trying to force creativity through a meat grinder. Thankfully, other artists have also figured out this approach is bullshit. The pattern that emerges from actually successful people is much simpler.

So, there are a few variations on the theme, but the very distinct pattern is this:

Most artists work in solitude for around 3–4 hours, usually first thing in the morning.

Sidenote: Many of them have a daily walk somewhere in their schedule, too, but that’s a less common correlation.

Significant Examples from excerpts:

David Foster Wallace
‘I usually go in shifts of three or four hours with either nap or, like, you know, fairly diverting do — something — with — other — people things in the middle,’

Stephen King
He works in the mornings, starting around 8:00am or 8:30am. Some days he finishes up as early as 11:30am, but more often it takes him until about 1:30pm to meet his goal.

Truman Capote
Capote typically wrote for four hours during the day, then revised his work in the evenings or the next morning, eventually doing two longhand versions in pencil before typing up a final copy.

Albert Einstein
At about 10:30am, he left for his Princeton office, walking when the weather was nice; otherwise, a station wagon from the university would pick him up. He worked until 1:00pm

W. B. Yeats
Yeats described his routine in a letter to his fellow poet Edwin Ellis: “ I read from 10 to 11. I write from 11 till 2, then after lunch I read ‘til 3:30pm.

Ernest Hemingway
When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next, and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that.

Charles Dickens
He rose at 7:00am, had breakfast at 8:00am, and was in his study by 9:00am. He stayed there until 2:00pm.

Charles Darwin
The first, and best, of his work periods began at 8:00am. after Darwin had taken a short walk and had a solitary breakfast. Following ninety minutes of focused work in his study — disrupted only by occasional trips to the snuff jar that he kept on a table in the hallway — Darwin met his wife, Emma, in the drawing-room to receive the day’s post.

Henry Miller
working from breakfast to lunch, taking a nap, then writing again through the afternoon and sometimes into the night. As he got older, though, he found that anything afternoon was unnecessary and even counterproductive.

Francis Bacon
Despite his late nights, Bacon always woke at the first light of day and worked for several hours.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
My hair is always done by six o’clock in the morning and by seven I am fully dressed. I then compose until nine.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Beethoven rose at dawn and wasted little time getting down to work.

Morton Feldman
I get up at six in the morning. I compose until eleven, then my day is over.

Simone de Beauvoir
I first have tea and then, at about ten o’clock, I get underway and work until one.

Jean-Paul Sartre
“Three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. This is my only rule.”
Sartre worked in his Paris apartment until noon,

W.H. Auden
Auden rose shortly after 6:00am, made himself a coffee, and settled down to work quickly, perhaps after taking a first pass at the crossword. His mind was sharpest from 7:00am until 11:30am, and he rarely failed to take advantage of these hours.

Henri Matisse
From nine o’clock to noon, first sitting.

Carl Jung
“I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working, all the same, is a fool,” he said. He generally set aside two hours in the morning for concentrated writing.

Voltaire
He spent the morning in bed, reading and dictating new work to one of his secretaries.

Patricia Highsmith
Highsmith wrote daily, usually for three or four hours in the morning

Ingmar Bergman
…he followed essentially the same schedule for decades: up at 8:00am, writing from 9:00am until noon, then an austere meal.

Bonus tip: He said that it’s a very good idea that after you write a little bit, stop and then copy it. Because while you’re copying it, you’re thinking about it, and it’s giving you other ideas.

Søren Kierkegaard,
he wrote in the morning, set off on a long walk through Copenhagen at noon,

Benjamin Franklin
With this view, I rise early almost every morning, and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading or writing. This practice is not in the least painful, but on the contrary, agreeable; and if I return to bed afterwards, before I dress, as sometimes happens, I make a supplement to my night’s rest, of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined.

Anthony Trollope
an unvarying early—morning writing session. It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5:30 A.M., and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy.

All those I think who have lived as literary men, — working daily as literary labourers, — will agree with me that three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

Thomas Mann
Then, at 9:00am, Mann closed the door to his study, making himself unavailable for visitors, telephone calls, or family.

Haruki Murakami
Murakami wakes at 4:00am. And works for five to six hours straight.

Gustav Mahler
He woke at 6:00am or 6:30am and immediately rang for the cook to prepare his breakfast: freshly ground coffee, milk, diet bread, butter, and jam, which the cook carried to Mahler’s stone composing hut in the woods. ( Mahler could not bear to see or speak to anyone before settling down to work in the morning,

Richard Strauss
I get up at 8 o’clock, have a bath and breakfast ; 3 eggs, tea, “ Eingemachtes ” [ homemade jam ]; then I go for a stroll for half an hour by the Nile in the palm grove of the hotel, and work from 10 till 1.

Joan Miró
[ A ] t six o’clock he got up, washed and had coffee and a few slices of bread for breakfast; at seven, he went into the studio and worked non — stop until twelve,

William Faulkner
Wake early, eat breakfast, and write at his desk all morning. ( Faulkner liked to work in the library, and since the library door had no lock, he would remove the doorknob and take it with him. )

Arthur Miller
“I get up in the morning, and I go out to my studio and I write. And then I tear it up! That’s the routine, really.”

Benjamin Britten
“I can, without much difficulty, sit down at nine o’clock in the morning and work straight through the morning until lunchtime,”

Günter Grass
After breakfast, I work, and then take a break for coffee in the afternoon.

Toni Morrison
For the morning writing, her ritual is to rise around 5:00, make coffee, and “ watch the light come. ” This last part is crucial. “ Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process, ” Morrison said. “ For me, light is the signal in the transaction. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives. It enables me, in some sense. ”

Joyce Carol Oates
writes from 8:00am or 8:30am until 1:00pm.

Chuck Close
And if I work more than three hours at a time, I really start screwing up. So the idea is to work for three hours,

Nicholson Baker
He revised it to 4:30. “ And I liked it, I liked the feeling of getting up really early,” he says. “ The mind is newly cleansed, but it’s also befuddled, and you’re still just plain sleepy. I found that I wrote differently then.”

“A typical day for me would be that I would get up around four, four-thirty. And I write some. Make coffee sometimes, or not. I write for maybe an hour and a half. But then I get really sleepy. So I go back to sleep, and then I wake up at around eight-thirty. ” After waking for the second time, Baker talks with his wife, drinks another cup of coffee, eats a peanut — butter — and — jelly sandwich, and goes back to his writing, this time focusing on “ daylight kind of work,”

B. F. Skinner
I rise sometime between 6 and 6:30am, often after having heard the radio news. My breakfast, a dish of Cornflakes, is on the kitchen table. Coffee is made automatically by the stove timer. I breakfast alone. At the moment, I am reading a bit every morning of Bergen and Cornelia Evans ’ Contemporary American Usage. A couple of pages every day, straight through. The morning papers ( Boston Globe, NY Times ) arrive, thrown against the wall or door of the kitchen where I breakfast. I read the Globe, often saving the Times till later. At seven or so, I go down to my study, a walnut—panelled room in our basement. My work desk is a long Scandinavian — modern table, with a set of shelves I made myself for holding the works of BFS, notebooks and outlines of the book I am working on, dictionaries, word — books, etc. On my left the big Webster’s International on a stand, on my right an open-top file containing all current and future manuscript materials. As I sit down I turn on a special desk light. This starts a clock, which totalizes my time at my desk. Every twelve hours recorded on it, I plot a point on a cumulative curve, the slope of which shows my overall productivity.

Henry James
He wrote every day, beginning in the morning and usually ending at about lunchtime.

Igor Stravinsky
“ I get up at about eight, do physical exercises, then work without a break from nine till one, ”

Generally, three hours of composition were the most he could manage in a day, although he would do less demanding tasks — writing letters, copying scores, practising the piano — in the afternoon.

Somerset Maugham
He wrote for three or four hours every morning, setting himself a daily requirement of one thousand to one thousand five hundred words.

When he wrapped up his morning’s work at about noon, Maugham often felt impatient to begin again. “ When you’re writing, when you’re creating a character, it’s with you constantly, you’re preoccupied with it, it’s alive, ” he said — adding that when you “ cut that out of your life, it’s a rather lonely life .”

John Cheever
“I used to wake up at eight, work until noon, and then break, hollering with pleasure; then I’d go back to work through to five, get pissed, get laid, go to bed, and do the same thing again the next day. ”

Kingsley Amis
He would rise a little before 8:00am, shower and shave, eat breakfast ( grapefruit, cereal, banana, tea ), read the newspaper, and sit down in his study by about 9:30am. Picking up where he left off the previous evening — he always made sure to stop writing when he knew what would come next, making it easier to begin the next day — Amis would work at his typewriter for a few hours, shooting for his minimum daily requirement of five hundred words, which he usually managed by 12:30pm.

Martin Amis
“Two hours. I think most writers would be very happy with two hours of concentrated work.”

Maya Angelou
I usually get up at about 5:30am, and I’m ready to have coffee by 6, usually with my husband. He goes off to his work around 6:30, and I go off to mine. I keep a hotel room in which I do my work — a tiny, mean room with just a bed, and sometimes if I can find it, a face basin. I keep a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry in the room. I try to get there around 7, and I work until 2 in the afternoon. If the work is going badly, I stay until 12:30pm. If it’s going well I’ll stay as long as it’s going well It’s lonely and it’s marvellous.

Richard Wright
Wright got up by 6:00am and promptly left the house, to avoid the domestic chaos that erupted when the Newton children woke. Carrying his writing supplies — a yellow legal pad, a fountain pen, and a bottle of ink — Wright walked to nearby Fort Greene Park, where he would install himself on a bench at the top of the hill and write for four hours.

H. L. Mencken
Then the couple worked for three or four hours in the morning, ate lunch, took naps, worked for another few hours, ate dinner, and returned to work until 10:00am

Frank Lloyd Wright
“Between 4 and 7 o’clock in the morning, ” he told her. “ I go to sleep promptly when I go to bed. Then I wake up around 4am and can’t sleep. But my mind’s clear, so I get up and work for three or four hours. Then I go to bed for another nap. ”

Joseph Heller
Sitting at the kitchen table in his Manhattan apartment. “I spent two or three hours a night on it for eight years ”

“I wrote for two or three hours in the morning, then went to a gym to work out.”

Chester Himes
“I like to get up early, have a big breakfast and work at one stretch until it’s time for lunch ”

Flannery O’Connor
Her religious obligations fulfilled, O’Connor would turn to her writing, shutting herself away between 9:00am and noon for her daily three hours.

Edith Sitwell
What is certain is that Sitwell liked to write in bed, beginning at 5:30 or 6:00am, this being “ the only time when I can be sure of quiet. ”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
He found that he could muster the necessary creative energy only in the mornings. “ At one time in my life, I could make myself write a printed sheet every day, and I found this quite easy, ” he said in 1828. “ [ N ] ow I can only work at the second part of my Faust in the early hours of the day when I am feeling revived and strengthened by sleep and not yet harassed by the absurd trivialities of everyday life.

Franz Schubert
Schubert “used to sit down at his writing desk every morning at 6 o’clock and compose straight through until 1 o’clock in the afternoon.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Each morning, he wrote or read until it was time for the midday dinner.

Georgia O’Keeffe
“I like to get up when the dawn comes, ” O’Keeffe told an interviewer in 1966. “The dogs start talking to me and I like to make a fire and maybe some tea and then sit in bed and watch the sun come up. The morning is the best time there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.”

Sergey Rachmaninoff
As he wrote to a friend in 1907, “Today I worked only from 9am to 12:30pm.”

Vladimir Nabokov

I awake around seven in winter: my alarm clock is an Alpine chough — big, glossy, black thing with a big yellow beak — which visits the balcony and emits a most melodious chuckle. For a while, I lie in bed mentally revising and planning things. Around eight: shave breakfast, enthroned meditation, and bath — in that order. Then I work till lunch in my study.

Le Corbusier
After waking at 6:00am, he did forty — five minutes of callisthenics. Then he served his wife her morning coffee and, at 8:00, the couple ate breakfast together. The rest of Corbusier’s morning was devoted to painting drawing and writing. This was the most creative part of his day, and even though he often spent hours on paintings that had no direct relation to his architecture, and which he showed to no one other than his wife, he attributed his professional success to these private mornings of artistic contemplation.

V. S. Pritchett
He would write all morning, breaking at about 1:00 for a martini and lunch downstairs.

John Updike
Updike rented a small office above a restaurant in downtown Ipswich, Massachusetts, where he would write for three or four hours each morning, netting about three pages per day.

He told another interviewer that he was careful to give at least three hours a day to the writing project at hand; otherwise, he said, there was a risk he might forget what it’s about. A solid routine, he added, “ saves you from giving up ”

Willa Cather
“I work from two and a half to three hours a day,” Cather told him. For me, the morning is the best time to write.

George Orwell
This left him almost four and a half hours of writing time in the morning and early afternoon, which, conveniently, were the times that he was most mentally alert.

Carson McCullers
McCullers wrote every day, sometimes escaping their drafty apartment to work in the local library, taking sips from the Thermos full of sherry that she would sneak inside. She typically worked until the middle of the afternoon.

Jean Stafford
Stafford wrote in her upstairs study each day, from about 11:00am to 3:00pm

Donald Barthelme
Barthelme spent mornings on the porch, sitting down at his manual Remington typewriter at 8:00 or 9:00am and working there until noon or 1:00pm

Anne Rice

It’s always a search for the uninterrupted three — or four—hour stretch. ”

“ Because you won’t get those four hours if you’re spending most of the day worried about getting to an appointment and back, ” she says. “ What you have to do is clear all distraction. That’s the bottom line. ”

William Gass
Gass is an early-riser. In a 1998 interview, he said that he works mostly in the morning, finishing his serious writing by noon.

Saul Bellow
Every day, beginning early in the morning, breaking off around lunchtime.

Gerhard Richter
He’s in his backyard studio by 8:00am, and he stays there until 1:00pm.

Georges Simenon
His typical schedule was to wake at 6:00am, procure coffee, and write from 6:30am to 9:00am

Order a Copy

Order a Copy

I squeezed tightly into 's packed book launch for Glass Century at a bookstore on the Lower East Side.

I didn’t realise it would be so full, so I stood awkwardly at the back of the room with a plastic cup of wine, pretending I knew anything about being a writer. Barkan’s insights on fiction writing from that night have been rattling around in my head ever since. As someone who thinks deeply about writing, he offered some refreshingly honest takes on what makes novels work—especially when it comes to grounding big stories in specific details.

I’m going to geek out about writing for a minute, I hope that’s okay. It’s a new world to me, so I’m still finding my feet. I’m assuming if you’re reading this, you like reading, and you like New York. And don’t worry— I’m not going to review the book. It’s great. I’m on the last chapter, and I don’t want it to end. There are far more qualified people to dissect this novel than me. You’ll probably find them lurking around Substack.

I have to confess, I was never a big reader growing up— not really. My literary diet consisted chiefly of Spider-Man comics and MAD Magazine. I didn’t come to the enjoyment of reading until around 2007, when I discovered Christopher Hitchens and David Sedaris. From there, the whole literary chasm opened up and I fell in. I think reading is one of the best things anyone can do to get better at just being a human; getting to inhabit the mind of other people for a time, and live a zillion different potential lives within one lifetime. It’s like a cheat code to the human brain (and empathy).

"You can read a 19th-century book and get an excellent sense of the day-to-day life of that period," Barkan observed at the launch. "You can find out what things cost, you can find out political dynamics." He lamented how contemporary novels often feel "intentionally made" rather than lived-in, missing those crucial particulars that anchor readers in time and place.

"There are so many ways to get at New York," Barkan said, while being interviewed by , "which is what I love about it."

The same could be said for his approach to fiction—multiple entry points, all grounded in the specifics that make stories feel real rather than simply ‘constructed.’

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Today, I did something different on "Draw Me Anything" — I pitted my human sketching skills against the mighty ChatGPT 4o. Me versus the machine that has apparently digested the work (and employment opportunities) of every human artist who ever picked up a pencil or stylus.

Would twenty-odd years of professional cartooning stand a chance against an algorithm that's supposedly going to replace us all?

The challenge was simple: I took your drawing requests and raced against ChatGPT to complete them. For each prompt, I punched the exact same request into ChatGPT, then we both drew simultaneously. Dog poop, vintage jukeboxes, dragons, human flies, pencils on romantic dates — we covered quite the artistic spectrum.

I don't want to spoil the results, but I kept finding myself finishing drawings while staring at ChatGPT's little "still generating" animation. Turns out there might be some life in this old dog yet…

As I mentioned during the stream, I've been thinking a lot about what calls "aliveness" in creative work. There's something uniquely human about art made by, well... humans. Even when AI produces technically impressive results, there's often a deadness to it once you know it's machine-made.

The full video of this AI vs. artist showdown is available for paid subscribers above. If you're curious to see whether I beat the robot (and by how much), or just want to watch me frantically draw a horse riding a bike while playing a French horn, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Speaking of future episodes, I've got some fantastic Substack Lives lined up:

• , recent Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist

• from (Add to calendar)

• from

• (who I'll be joining on his Substack live next Tuesday at noon)
  …and more!

Thanks to everyone who tuned in and submitted ‘prompts’. I'm not even tired.

‘til next time,
Your pal,

The future is knocking, and it's not tapping gently.

A note by from today got me animated yet again about the brazen gaslighting leaders are doing when it communicates to staff about AI and what it is doing to their jobs.

“The story always sounds the same: Technology will change everything. Adapt or perish. Yet adaptation mysteriously always means producing more for less, with an ever-smaller slice of the pie.”

I’d highly recommend you read the full note below, then the insufferable CEO memo from Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman.

The Future of Jobs, The Future of Art.

The latest Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) is out, which might as well have been titled "Have You Considered a Career in Food Delivery?"

Subscribe now

I was reading it on my phone at Grind Café on West 43rd as one of three baristas with an arts degree handed me some latte art so perfect it made me question my entire career. The irony wasn't lost on me— I was simultaneously admiring human artistry while reading about its imminent obsolescence.

OpenAI's Sam Altman —a man whose casual tweets or vocal-fry utterances can send entire industries into an existential spiral— recently announced that AI will soon "…do what only very talented humans can do today." He dropped this with the nonchalance of someone mentioning a slight chance of rain on Wednesday. He went on to explain that creative fields will be the first to fall, with cognitive and physical labor following behind — a sort of digital Hunger Games where the artists are sent to die first. How thoughtful.

"Soon, AI tools will do what only very talented humans can do today. (I expect this to go mostly in the counter-intuitive order--creative fields first, cognitive labour next, and physical labour last.) Great for society; not always great for individual jobs."

"When anyone can create amazing art, there will be incredible upside for humanity, but downside for most individual artists,"

…he tweeted, presumably while a team of human designers crafted his slides for his next TED Talk about how wonderful the future will be. So there you have it. Both business leaders and the AI industry itself agree:

‘AI is coming for your jobs, and no one is safe.’

That said, it's not all digital doom and gloom. The WEF report also suggests that while traditional artistic roles may decline, the broader design field shows promising growth in other areas: UI and UX design ranks as the eighth fastest-growing job category, which is essentially saying, "Don't worry about losing your job designing billboards — you can always design the interface that helps the AI design billboards."

Something I've been saying for years is that design and illustration aren't really about being able to "use Photoshop" — it's about applying creative thinking to real-world problems. And according to the report, that's something humans still excel at. For now.

Employers consistently rated AI's ability to replicate creative thinking as "very low" or "low," with creative thinking ranking fourth among skills expected to grow in importance by 2030. This suggests that while AI may automate certain technical aspects of creative work, actual human creativity remains difficult to replace. I'll drink to that — and I did, finishing my now-lukewarm latte with a smug sense of temporary job security.

This optimism comes with an asterisk the size of the Empire State Building:

While employers believe AI has limited capacity to replicate creative thinking, they express more confidence in AI's ability to perform design and user experience tasks. In other words, while clients might still need your brain, they might not need your hands. Great news for my carpal tunnel syndrome, terrible news for my landlord.

So what's an artist to do in this brave new world of artificial "creativity"?

Here's my back-of-the-napkin survival guide, written from the trenches:

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Add it to your Calendar now!

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Thinking in Watercolor with Jessie Kanelos-Weiner

I had the pleasure of hosting watercolor extraordinaire, on today's Draw Me Anything! We dove deep into her fantastic book "Thinking in Watercolor," which I've been devouring since it came out.

Unlike traditional watercolor books with rigid techniques, Jessie's approach is refreshingly forgiving and experimental. She shared that she wrote it for "the younger version of herself who liked drawing but didn't know what to draw" - someone with time but not necessarily resources or training.

As a self-taught artist living in Paris, Jessie believes watercolor helped her discover herself after moving to a new country. We compared our watercolor setups (my Windsor & Newton kit versus her Kuretake Japanese watercolors) and discussed essential techniques.

Some key watercolor tips from our session:

• Use H pencils (4H or 6H) for preliminary sketches - watercolor makes regular pencil marks permanent

• Watercolor pencils make great sketch tools that blend with your washes

• Always identify your light source to add dimension

• When stuck, change your physical position (stand up, work larger, flip the paper)

• Patience is crucial - "it's literally watching paint dry"

• Make test swatches before committing to your good paper

• For quick-drying emergencies: radiators, hairdryers, or sunshine (but never put your watercolors in the oven!)

Jessie also shared a brilliant Paris art supply store roundup!

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There's something uniquely torturous about illustrating jazz. It's like being asked to draw what water sounds like, or sketch the taste of a Wednesday.

Early in the pandemic, I found myself hunched over my drawing board, locked in my East Village apartment with a commission that felt both thrilling and completely terrifying – my first jazz album cover. The musician, Seattle-based Ryan Burns, had been using his quarantine time with suspiciously productive energy, recording sessions remotely with his bandmates from their individual isolation chambers. The album title, "Postponed Parade," was so painfully apt it made my molars ache.

To Ryan's eternal credit, he not only insisted on paying properly (a radical concept in the arts), but gave me complete artistic freedom. "Just listen to the music and do your thing," he said, which every artist knows is simultaneously the best and most paralyzing instruction possible.

I’m lucky enough to live next door to Birdland— one of New York’s most iconic jazz clubs. I get to see a lot of live jazz each week. (For my money, though, nothing beats Mezzrow or Smalls… except maybe Ornithology) But I digress… My favourite jazz album art of all time is for Dave Brubeck, and happens to have been drawn by one of my favourite people in the world: Arnold Roth. Arnie signed my Brubeck album covers for Sophie and me many years ago, and they’ve proudly hung in every apartment I’ve lived in New York, if for no other reason than to remind me ‘how it’s done.’

I slid my headphones on, cranked up the volume, poured a hefty glass of whiskey, and sank into that peculiar purgatory where creativity and self-doubt engage in mortal combat. After three hours, and what felt like sixteen midlife crises, I managed to produce something that didn't make me want to fake my own death and start over in New Zealand.

What emerged was a drawing that captured the energy of five musicians playing together while being forcibly apart – a visual representation of the strange, disconnected-yet-connected reality we'd all been living in. The design had a certain chaotic harmony to it, much like my apartment after what I call a "cleaning."

Ryan Burns wanders onto Chicago stages like a midwestern shaman who accidentally grabbed a banjo instead of a staff. His music emerges from some unholy matrimony between John Prine's storytelling and Fleet Foxes' harmonies—if those harmonies had spent a winter in a Chicago apartment with broken heat.

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I’ve visited two life-altering projection art exhibitions recently—one at Mercer Labs here in Lower Manhattan that’s absolutely worth the trek downtown, and an even more mind-blowing installation in Tokyo called Borderless by a group called Teamlab.

Picture the villain in that Spider-Man film where drones use projectors to create entire immersive worlds out of nothing, and you’ve basically got Borderless. The Japanese, unsurprisingly, have mastered the art of making you question whether you accidentally ingested something hallucinogenic on your way through the door.

The technology today is staggering. Artists paint with light the way Michelangelo carved marble, except no one’s getting carpal tunnel from a chisel. I wandered through digital waterfalls that responded to my movements, thinking about how twelve years ago, when I was still in Melbourne, projectors were basically glorified slide machines with the ambition of a government employee on a Friday afternoon.

Back in 2011, while New York was still a distant dream involving roaches larger than the rodents in my apartment building, I accidentally became the “projection designer” for an experimental theater production in Melbourne. A generous title, considering my qualifications consisted of “can draw things” and “knows how to Google technical problems without crying.”

The Kin Collective, as they called themselves, was a troupe of eight alarmingly talented actors from various backgrounds—basically the Avengers, but of acting. I was their Jarvis: a disembodied voice backstage, trying to make technology behave while superheroes performed in front.

My task was deceptively simple:

Design a set for their debut show, Glimpse, without actually building anything physical.

Instead, I’d digitally draw and animate environments that would be projected behind the performers as they moved through vignettes developed using improvisation techniques from New York acting coach Larry Moss. (In Australia, casually name-dropping a New York coach gives you theatrical diplomatic immunity.)

Pitching the idea to the venue went about as well as you’d expect when saying, “We want to replace scenery with light.”

“So… no set?” the venue manager asked, looking at me like I’d proposed performing in the nude while juggling live ferrets.

“No, there’s a set,” I said. “It’s just… theoretical.”

The technical challenges began immediately. If performers stepped into the projector’s path, they’d suddenly have someone’s living room projected onto their faces—disorienting for everyone, unless you’re doing a show about human furniture (which, to be fair, is probably happening somewhere in Bushwick right now).

We spent days testing projectors and lenses, trying to find the maximum keystone angle (adjusting the tilt of the projector to avoid image distortion—a term I definitely didn’t panic-Google at midnight). Lighting designer Chris Chaney had the impossible job of blending stage lighting with projections so there were no harsh edges. It was like convincing cats and dogs to form a basketball team, but somehow he pulled it off. And I definitely didn’t just finish watching Air Bud before writing this...

My design philosophy was minimal: “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” This stood in stark contrast to many digital artists today, whose mantra seems to be, “If the audience isn’t having a seizure, you haven’t used enough effects.”

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Don’t forget, you can now order my book online from www.realdogowner.com

Today, I’m really excited to finally share something with you that I’ve been working on for over a year.

Over these past 12 months, I’ve been scribbling away in my studio on an official collaboration with the team at Waking Up, which culminates in a series of shirt designs, wallpapers, and a personally curated playlist for app users to listen to. I’m really proud of how they’ve turned out, and you can jump in to take a look now at: wakingup.com/jasonchatfield

See the Full Collaboration Now

The best habit I ever started (and didn’t abandon after two weeks) is meditation.

After 12 years, it’s become hands-down the highest yield return on my time for creative work, stress management, and general mental health amid the chaos of life in New York City. With this ridiculous, bag-of-cats brain of mine, I’d be completely hopeless without it. The handful of minutes I spend meditating each day probably saves me hours of distracted thoughts and procrastination, which in this new attention economy is basically like printing money. Time is literally the only thing in Manhattan more valuable than square footage.

The Art of Paying Attention

Meditation might not immediately register as a creative skill, but I've discovered over the years that it works hand in glove with my artistic process. Not to get too woo-woo about it, but it honestly opened doors in my mind that I never even knew existed—like finding a secret room in an apartment you've lived in for a decade. I've woven the profound lessons from the app into my artistic practice, which mainly means I've stopped drawing while simultaneously texting, eating dinner, and watching three YouTube videos at once. (You’ve probably noticed it if you subscribe to Process Junkie.)

Conversation Portraits

As some of you may know, I’ve been fortunate enough to be the official portrait illustrator for Waking Up and have drawn over 100 portraits of the world's top meditation teachers, yogis, psychologists, and other experts in their field who feature on the app. I always listen to their voices while I’m drawing to make sure I’m letting that seep into the art.

Each is made by hand using a hybrid process of dip-pen ink line and wash supplemented with digital finishes, specifically ’s Photoshop brushes, which brilliantly mimic real-world tools. I approach each one individually, based on the personality and specialty of the person.

What even is Waking Up?

Waking Up isn't just a meditation app but a vast reservoir of wisdom. A brain's trust of knowledge from philosophers, therapists, Buddhist monks, yogis, and meditation teachers from across the globe.

In the stinking hot summer of 2014, I started reading “Waking Up” by while waiting for the F train. About halfway through his story about his first experience on MDMA, I looked up to see the train doors closing; I didn’t even notice it had arrived. I was so compelled, I finished the book in a day. I don’t remember the last time that happened.

Do your own thing. Don’t be weird about it.

The overarching element that resonated with me most about the book (having initially practiced Transcendental Meditation, which is, sadly, laden with weird, culty elements) is that he sets the stage for a secular approach to spirituality, one that seeks to understand the nature of consciousness without resorting to religious dogma. Without being preachy or condescending, he asks you to consider that spiritual insight comes from examining the mind through practices like meditation, informed by scientific inquiry. It was the scientific inquiry that really appealed to me, and who better to delve into it than a bona fide neuroscientist?

For me, meditation was a really difficult thing ot learn. It’s not the ‘trying’ to make something happen— It’s the ‘not’ trying that’s my problem. For years, I’d been living in a constant state of ‘striving’ to get somewhere. Some far-off place where I’m zen / happy / content / organized, not realizing how futile that striving really was. It reframed a lot of my life.

An App Emerges…

As the years passed and the book gained popularity, he and his team developed it into an app of the same name. I immediately signed up for the first version, which was pretty boilerplate, but I was excited. Calm, Headspace, 10% Happier, Insight Timer, and a slew of other meditation apps had flooded the app store, but this one had something very different.

My favourite thing about the app is that there's nothing prescriptive about it; there's no one-size-fits-all approach, and there is no rigid doctrine to follow. You're encouraged to chart your own course through the mind. It's like being handed a subway map of your brain, where all the lines are running, and you get to decide where to exit. Trusted voices let me delve into anything from CBT to non-dual mindfulness, time and attention management, or Stoicism.

Unlike other meditation apps that feel like they're designed by wellness influencers who subsist on kale smoothies. It's refreshingly bullshit-free, which, as a New Yorker, I deeply appreciate. My tolerance for nonsense maxed out four meditation apps ago. Go figure.

Karaoke for the Mind: My Personally Curated Playlist.

Consider this playlist a small selection of my favourite Waking Up hits-- If I were in a Karaoke bar, these would be my go-to songs that I know by heart, and could belt out at a moment's notice without even glancing at the lyrics. I hope they sink into your mind the way they did mine. (Click on the phone to listen)

Easily the most creatively fulfilling project I’ve ever worked on.

I got free rein to experiment and dive into my own personal interpretation of what the app means to me and my process. It was like being a kid with unlimited art supplies and no adult supervision. I used everything from pencils to inks, washes, paints, and digital tools to work through the mess of ideas that fell out of my head.

My studio looked like a crime scene where the victim was a Michaels craft store. After weeks of manic creation followed by ruthless editing, the Creative Director and I managed to whittle down the chaos to the few designs you see on the official page. The cutting room floor of my studio is still littered with the corpses of rejected concepts that weren't quite weird or wonderful enough to make the final cut.

If you've never tried meditation before, I'd genuinely love to hear about your first experience with it. And if you're a seasoned meditator, drop me a note about your practice—what's worked, what hasn't, and how it's affected your creative process. I'm particularly curious about any unexpected ways it's crept into your art or writing.

In the meantime, I'll be here in my studio, trying not to overthink things while simultaneously overthinking the act of not overthinking. It's a special talent of mine. At least now I have some cool shirts and wallpapers to show for all that mental gymnastics.

‘til next time,

Your old pal,

PS - If you download the wallpapers, snap a screenshot of your home screen and tag me—I'd love to see them out in the wild. It's almost like being famous, but without the paparazzi following me to the bodega when I'm buying emergency 2am Ben & Jerry's in my pajamas.

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Thank you to , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app next Thursday May 1st, at 3pm US EDT. Click here to add it to your calendar.

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Drawing Dogs & Talking Shop with Claire Powell

I recently had the absolute pleasure of live-streaming with the brilliant UK illustrator, , where we nerded out about art tools, techniques, and our shared love of dogs for nearly two hours!

We dove inky-hands-first into the world of traditional drawing tools – Claire's impressive collection of dip pen nibs (stored in an old Quality Street chocolate tin!), her experiments with reed pens, and my obsession with fountain pens and bronze nibs made by Dan Berry. We bonded over our mutual admiration for master illustrators like Ronald Searle, Gerald Scarfe, and Ralph Steadman, discussing how these influences shaped our styles.

Claire shared her journey from digital illustration back to traditional media, revealing that finding the right medium was key to developing her distinctive style:

"I think you find your medium, and then you will find your style."

We swapped stories about drawing under pressure – Claire's experience in TV graphics and my newspaper deadline days – and how that adrenaline rush can actually improve your work by making you less precious about perfection.

The conversation took fun detours into dogs in British countryside pubs, the challenge of capturing canine energy in drawings, and Claire's quest for the perfect dog breed for her lifestyle.

As we sketched away on camera, Claire revealed her surprising evening plans: watching snooker championships (the most British thing ever). I surprised her with a drawing from my book featuring a dog on a snooker table – the perfect parting gift

Our book "You're Not a Real Dog Owner Until…" launches Tuesday, and Claire's got a copy making its slow way across the Atlantic. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share it with someone you think might enjoy it.
I really appreciate your support!

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Your pal,

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Here is a small selection of the drawings from today’s session…

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As you might have heard me bleating about ceaselessly, my writing partner and I have a book coming out next week. It’s a nerve-wracking process, flinging a book into the world— so many things have to go right at the same time to give it any chance of success; and even then, a tariff, a news story on launch day, or a shipping issue could upend the entire enterprise.

We’re lucky so far, however! The book has been getting great early reviews and is now the #1 New Release for Comic Strips and Graphic Novels on Amazon!

When we’re collaborating, we have to kind of block out all of these things while we’re coming up with the thing to keep our spirits high and dive head-first into the process of writing and drawing the thing. So, today, I’m going to peel back the curtain (my studio doesn’t have a curtain, but you get it) on the most important parts of the process behind creating a book from scratch.

Before we kick off: If you like this kind of thing, you can subscribe to our podcast called “Is There Something In This?” which is our writers’ meeting for coming up with jokes and cartoons for the New Yorker. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or click here.

Research

The first part of the process involves looking at every other dog book we can find and making sure we don’t replicate what’s already been done, as well as learn from the incredible cartoonists who have done work with dogs before. I dove head-first into the incredible George Booth’s back catalogue, as well as the creator of the Mutts comic strip, Patrick McDonnell. They both have an incredible ability to capture the spirit of dogs in a way I don’t think anyone else can. (That said, I have also studied the work of Nick Galifianakis, Peter DeSéve, and to see how they capture dogs, and somehow imbue them with human qualities without it feeling too hamfisted.)

I make countless studies and sketches to get a sense of the level of abstractness in the cartoons- I want the dog breeds to be recognizable, but also feel like they have a unique look.

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We have about 110 gags to draw, so the ideas have to match the style of the drawing— they need to be silly, but grounded in truth. The entire premise of the book sprouted from a stand-up bit I’d been doing about New Yorkers and was developed into a series. Here’s a short clip detailing the backstory:

Keeping Track of the Jokes and Avoiding Replication

Scott and I have our own process for coming up with these, which involves using the app “Miro,” which is kind of an infinite whiteboard with sticky notes (we did our first book using actual sticky notes, and it got… a bit messy.) Using Miro means we can work from anywhere. Including New York bars that let you bring laptops.

We draw on the experiences we’ve had as dog-owners over the years, we talk to friends, family members, strangers waiting for the bus, other people picking up poop on the street in the morning— anyone who can give us insights into how common these premises are understood to be. This is where Scott shines in the process—his ability to vacuum up slices of life, vet premises, and stress-test the veracity of the scenarios is unrivalled. He’s a monster.

RELATED READING:
If you’re a creative worker and haven’t had the opportunity to collaborate with someone, I highly recommend it. It took me over a decade to start working with someone else, and I can’t tell you what a difference it makes.

The Order of Things

We throw a zillion jokes into a Google spreadsheet before transferring our final selection to Miro, separating them into themes/chapters to see how the order and flow feel. Our editor goes through each one, making notes and edits, moving things around, and showing us how the sausage is really made.

Cast of Characters

We did a bit of ‘world building’ and created families that would own the dogs, as well as ensuring we weren’t continually portraying the same kinds of people. These characters live in the “Parent” and “Dog-Owner” variants of our book series, and will no doubt make reappearances in future titles. It helps to have this bible to refer to, and to make sure we break up their appearances in the book so we don’t have 4 pages together with the same people.

Pencils

This part also requires us to get together and —similar to our New Yorker cartoon process— match scenarios with each joke that aren’t just ‘see-say’ (ie. The cartoon doesn’t always necessarily have to depict the exact joke; it can be its own related scenario that has jokes of its own embedded, including chicken fat*

(*Coined by MAD Magazine: Little background gags that you have to seek out by exploring the image carefully.)

I use a mechanical pencil wrapped in gauze and tape so my hand doesn’t fall off. Also, a pacer pencil I bought at CVS. I start with light blue, then build up with red lead for clearer lines.

I wanted to make sure there was a clear and consistent rule across the book about anthropomorphizing the dogs: we didn’t want them standing on two legs, doing human things; we very much wanted them to be grounded in the reality of the real world, but just heightened for cartoony effect.

Example Idea: Dogs on Beds

One of the more common ideas that kept coming up was that, despite people saying they trained their dog to sleep in their own bed, many owners confessed that they actually let their dog sleep on their bed— and often at the expense of their own comfort. Depending on the dog, they contort their bodies to ensure they don’t wake their precious pup.

We attacked this idea from a few different angles and established our ‘no-anthropomorphizing’ rule from here. You can see we started with the dog in pajamas, in bed reading “Eat, Play, Love,” but it was too absurd. We wanted to pare it back a bit to just show the reality of the joke, which, in itself, was a punchline.

Once we get the word economy and order lined up, we lay out all the book pages in a separate section of the Miro board, along with the pencilled out drawings that accompany each joke.

Inks

Once the pencils are done, we move to the final inks, then colours. I used a flat for the first time in my career with these books, and I feel like an idiot for only just thinking of it now. Nahia Mouhica was a lifesaver in doing the flats for the book before I went in and added shadows, wash, and highlights.

Keeping track of the pages is done in both Miro and manually, on my drawing board with a big printout of every page. It’s intimidating to look at, but it keeps you panicked enough to sit down and get it done.

To keep from becoming a hunchback, I would often ink on a lap desk in the living room, with Morris sitting nearby for quality control and farts.

This joke ended up being the first one in the book, so we made sure it had a nice contrast with the rest of the jokes that followed:

Next time, I’ll delve a little more into the process of book-making, but I thought you might like this little peek at what goes into every page of making a book like this. We’re really proud of how it turned out, and would love you to buy a copy for the dog-lover in your life. It drops one week from today!

‘til then, Your pal,

Pre-Order Your Copy Today!

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to today’s “Draw Me Anything” — the second one so far. The suggestions were much more creative this week, making the 30 minutes fly by.

Here is a small selection of the drawings from today’s session…

Tune in next Thursday, 3pm for more #DMA! Tell your friends.

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‘til then,

Your pal

One Dip Wonders: The Magic of Creative Constraints

There's something absolutely liberating about working with limitations. Today, I want to share a technique I stumbled upon during what I can only describe as a "drunken fugue state in Paris" (hey, some of the best creative breakthroughs happen this way).

Picture this: I'm wandering the streets of Paris, sketchbook in hand, when I realize I'm running dangerously low on ink. Instead of packing up and calling it a day, I gave myself a challenge that would forever change my approach to sketching:

The One Dip Rule: Complete an entire portrait using only one dip of the pen in the ink well.

That's it. One dip. When the ink runs out, the drawing is done – whether you think it's finished or not.

The Hidden Power of Constraints

This seemingly simple constraint forced me to make quick, deliberate decisions. No overthinking. No fussing. No endless tweaking that so often leads to what the late, great Nick Meglin described perfectly: "Overwork can strangle a piece of art rather than breathe life into it."

What Nick meant, and what I discovered through this exercise, is that what you leave out of a drawing is often as important as – sometimes more important than – what you put in. When you have unlimited resources (time, ink, energy), there's a temptation to keep adding... and adding... and adding... until you've killed the very spark that made the drawing interesting in the first place.

Masters of Knowing When to Stop

I've always admired artists who know exactly when to put down the pen:

• William Steig

• Sam Gross

• Liana Finck

• Bill Watterson

• Patrick McDonnell

These artists are masters of minimalism. I imagine their waste bins are filled with rejects and iterations – not because the drawings were bad, but because they had too many lines. They kept paring down and down until only the essential remained.

Steig's journey is particularly fascinating – from traditional drawing with hatching, color, and chiaroscuro to a style defined by what isn't there. Take a look at Lee Lorenz’s book about Steig here.

How to Try One Dip Portraits

Want to give this a shot? Here's how:

1. Grab a dip pen (I recommend a Crowquill or Hunt 102 – something small that holds a decent amount of ink without drooling all over the page like a Hunt 101 Imperial).

2. Dip once – and only once – in your ink well.

3. Start drawing your subject, knowing that when the ink runs out, you're done.
   (If you like, you can bleed the Ink with your finger or a waterbrush, as long as it’s the same ink already laid down on the paper. But try to do it without wash if you can restrain yourself.)

4. Embrace the result, whatever it may be!

   

This exercise isn't about creating perfect drawings. It's about training yourself to make confident, deliberate marks. To capture the essence rather than the details. To know when enough is enough.

The Liberation of Limitation

There's something profoundly freeing about working within tight constraints. When you only have one dip of ink, you can't afford to second-guess yourself. You're forced to trust your instincts, to focus on what matters most in the drawing.

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And here's the beautiful thing: constraints don't just apply to ink. You can impose limitations on any creative endeavor. Time limits. Color restrictions. Single-line drawings. Each constraint becomes a creative challenge that pushes you to find solutions you might never discover in unlimited conditions.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes. Share your one-dip portraits in the comments or in reply to this email– I'd love to see what you create when you embrace the beauty of limitation.

'Til next time,

P.S. If you're a premium subscriber, check your inbox for your free toolbox of brushes and resources. Not a premium subscriber yet? Join us to access exclusive tutorials, brush sets, and more!

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Drawing the New York Literary Elite: An Artist Interloper at an Upper East Side Soirée

The invitation arrived via Paperless Post—the modern equivalent of a wax-sealed envelope delivered by footman. "Private Dinner Party. 6:30pm. Friday. Upper East Side."

I have another book coming out at the end of the month. I’m new to the authoring world, so being summoned to a Manhattan mansion opposite The Met is not a common occurrence for me —a cartoonist who still gets excited about free bread at restaurants. It’s the New York literary world's equivalent of being called to Hogwarts. Except the other students are dressed in haute couture and drinking 25-year-old scotch. These can be the kind of parties where book deals are conjured out of thin air between the amuse-bouche and the main course while I'm still trying to figure out which fork to use for my endive salad.

I got a follow-up email from the hostess, Deborah Roberts. My inclusion was clearly a clerical error that had been discovered. Or so I thought… that was until I received a very novel request from the hostess:

"She wants to commission me to draw portraits of the guests for custom place settings," I read aloud, which was true but sounded like something I made up to get the doorman to let me in. It was ingenious, really. Most of these parties have printed place-cards; some have a calligrapher hand-write them, but I would be creating hand-drawn original artwork for each guest as a place setting and a take-home party favor.

Just when I thought the value of my hand-drawn art was drying up, a new idea like this popped into the world, and I was animated to get scribbling again. I hope hand-drawn, tangible art like this is valued in the future over cheap, soulless AI-generated slop.

RELATED READING:

I got to work right away, sourcing reference images from the hostess and their individual author pages and Substack bios. After a bunch of experimentation, I landed on simply drawing them on paper, in pencil, then pasting them onto cards to fold over for place-cards.

(Above: Portrait of the writer Francesca Fartaj of A Life Considered)

There’s something nice about going back to basics with drawing— not adding a hat on a hat with ink and colours, washes and paint splodges; just basic pencil lines and a bit of shading. I used a blending stump from Blick Art Supplies for some of the art, where I needed a softer edge on facial features.

Drawing exercise for you:
Try drawing something in pencil, but push as gently as you possibly can— try to get to the point where you’re barely making a mark on the paper. See how gentle you can push. Set this as your base level for pressure when using pencils from now on. There’s nothing worse than a deeply engraved pencil line that you can’t erase. Try also holding the pencil on its side, for an extra gentle grip.)

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I worked away day and night to try and land on a good likeness for each guest, drawing multiple versions of each face to get it just right. I used a lightbox to get the rough shape of the face, then worked from sight on the features to make sure it didn’t just look like a facsimile of a photo (Difficult with portraits from photo reference. Caricatures are easier to add flair to.)

I’d like to say I used a fancy mechanical pencil to do it all, but in truth, I just used a basic number 2 pencil I bought in a box from my local CVS. Once in a while, I switched to a basic Bic pencil for small details, but that was only for 1 or 2 of them.

The great chronicler of New York City: Anne Kadet of CAFÉ ANNE (above)

Author Cici Sullivan

I arrived fifteen minutes early, which is twenty five minutes too early for a New York dinner party but precisely on time for an interloper with crippling impostor syndrome. I had the drawings tucked under my arm in a dog-eared folder, ready to plop on the beautifully decorated dining table with moments to spare before the rest of the guests arrived. The immaculately dressed doorman gave me a once-over that started at my scuffed shoes (I took a bike) and ended at my hastily-combed hair with an expression that said, "I've seen better-dressed people trying to deliver Amazon packages." I mumbled something about the dinner party, and he switched gears: smiled broadly, then let me through while tipping the shiny brim of his cap.

I was warmly welcomed by the hosts*, and glared at skeptically by the true boss of the house, who was named Sophie. It was not the first skeptical glare I’d received from a Sophie that week.

*(Both writer and editor of Sparks from Culture by David Roberts)

David and Deborah’s apartment was incredible: they’ve hosted several writer events before, inviting authors, journalists and substackers of all stripes to their epic abode with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a vast array of artwork from around the world, and a guest bathroom bigger than my apartment. The kind of New York I’d only seen in old Architectural Digest features and scenes from Gossip Girl. (Yes, I watched it. xoxo.)

Twenty minutes later, I was positioned near the entrance, Dutch courage in one hand and a pencil in the other for last-minute panic edits to the portraits, though I briefly considered using it to stab myself in the thigh should I say something mortifying.

The doorbell announced the arrival of the guests, who flowed in as we sipped drinks in the sitting room (the sipping room?): A prize-winning novelist, a formidable editor and journalist, a renowned poetry teacher and author, and a slew of best-selling writers and substackers. I introduced myself in what I hoped was a casual, professional manner, but sounded more like a peacock with an antipodean accent being gently strangled to death.

The editorial team of The Metropolitan Review filed in, led by , who gave me a collegial nod as if to say, "Yes, we both belong here," even though I absolutely did not. and followed, engaged in what appeared to be an intense debate about the proper use of semicolons. Ross has a novel out this May called The Glass Century— putting any combination of words together around him feels like I’m still learning English as a third language.

I’d actually drawn a totally different version of Django’s portrait, before throwing it away and working from a photo I’d taken of him at another event the night before. The first version looked as much like him as I do George Clooney.

RELATED READING:

New York Cartoons

Sketchbook: The Launch of The Metropolitan Review

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a year ago · 59 likes · 8 comments · Jason Chatfield

Sidenote: I’ve since been enlisted as the Cartoon Editor for the The Metropolitan Review. So I guess I retroactively now belonged at the party.)

To my relief, the reactions to the portraits ranged from genuine delight to polite appreciation, with no one discovering they'd been accidentally given a third eye or errant mustache—always a risk with my hasty line work.

The dinner conversation flowed like the expensive wine being liberally poured. Topics swirled and eddied: the death of the publishing industry (announced annually since 1901), the impossibility of getting good reviews ("Times critics these days!"), and whether audiobooks counted as "real reading" (My feeling: yes, but only if narrated by someone with a British accent).

We all shared bits of business and publishing horror stories before retiring for post-dinner drinks in the sitting room. (I’ve always wanted to say I retired to another room. It’s less impressive when I say it in my one-bedroom apartment.) I got to meet Sarah Fay (PhD, MA, MFA) who is re-launching her book this year. I’d just seen her that week at a reading event,with where she read from her incredible novel Pathological. She invited me onto her Substack live show to discuss book publishing, which you can watch below, if you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of the book business.

New York Cartoons

430. Draw Me Anything, A Substack Live About the New Book & The End of the Political Cartoonist?

…Coming to you from the sun and pee-drenched sidewalks of Hell’s Kitchen, welcome to Issue #430 of New York Cartoons…

Listen now

a year ago · 28 likes · 3 comments · Jason Chatfield, Sarah Fay (PhD, MA, MFA), and Mikala Jamison

As the night wound down, we each peeled off into the cool New York air, pencil portraits tucked into pockets, reeling from the buzz of being around other people who do the insane thing we all do; flinging words into the world, and hoping for the best.

And yes, I did have to draw my own portrait for my place setting. It now lives face-down in my flat files with the rest of my terrifying self-portraits.

RELATED READING:

The great Kyle T Webster wrote eloquently about working with pencils on his Substack . I highly recommend you read it and subscribe to his newsletter.

The Accidental Expert

This is a Pencil.

This is a pencil…

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a year ago · 172 likes · 23 comments · Kyle T Webster

I also enjoyed Siobhan Twomey’s post about drawing as part of her study series of Kimon Nicolaides’ “The Natural Way to Draw.” Give it a read. The video is also very helpful.

Drawing Life

Draw the Feeling

Our Book Study Club continues, we are working through Kimon Nicolaides’ “The Natural Way to Draw” and if you’d like to work through the chapters with me, including drawing critiques and feedback on the exercises, then sign up below: Drawing Life’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. Subscribe monthly or annually to access the Book Study Club, Ar…

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2 years ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Siobhan Twomey

Thank you to Alex Hallatt, , , , and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app at 3pm on Thursdays.

Every morning, I take the dog out for a walk for an hour or so. No earbuds, phone off, just a book under my arm, a pencil in my pocket and a poop-bag in my hand.

Some of the best creative ideas I’ve ever had have come to me in these first hours after waking, often while sitting and reading, or watching my Frenchie coerce a golden retriever thrice his size to wrestle. (he always loses.) After letting my mind run wild, I walk home with marginalia scribbled in the book, along with the flyleaf covered in other ideas that might be good for ‘when I get time.’

The critical problem with this is, if I do the calculation on how much time I actually have to attempt all of these ‘brilliant’ ideas, I really only have time for 20% of them- and that’s if I’m really disciplined. (I’m not.)1

For that reason, it’s important not to be precious about ideas that seem great but don’t really serve your big-picture goals as a creator. (You have to work those out on your own.) To that end, you need to give up being precious about those ideas and be able to simply let them go —or better yet— share them with a friend or collaborator for whom you think it would be a better fit.2

3We’re all here for a fleeting blip of time; You’ll never read all the books, blog posts or loyally commit to all the ideas you have in your lifetime. You may as well share good ideas with interesting, talented people instead of letting them slip back into the ether to land on someone else’s ever-growing To-Do list.

Capturing ideas you have is important. Curating them is essential.

Pruning your ideas to dedicate your time wisely is a skill that takes years to develop but pays off in spades once you get good at it. I’m not sure anyone ever quite ‘masters’ it, but cultivating the ability to say ‘no’ to good ideas that don’t serve your wider purpose is one of the most invaluable skills you’ll ever possess.

Happy pruning!

‘til next time!
Your pal,

Click to read article

Join my 30-day annual “NO-Vember” challenger below, to cultivate the ability to say NO to shit. 👇

NO-vember

"All You Need to No." Tips to help you get better at saying NO.

By Jason Chatfield

There's a particular sweet spot in the art of cartooning…

That perfect moment when your reader's eyes widen, and they let out an involuntary snort. I once saw it happen in real time while sitting on the Subway, watching an old man next to me reading a cartoon in the New Yorker. That private little moment is why I still drag myself to my drawing board each morning, surrounded by empty coffee cups and half-finished sketches about talking dogs and dinner party guests: I want to find the elusive ‘perfect joke’ that elicits a very specific kind of response. I want to make my readers feel like they ‘figured out the puzzle themselves.’

When I was still living in Australia, I devoured every book on cartooning I could find. There was no SVA, No SCAD, or CAL Arts— we didn’t have Peter Kuper or Bill Griffith teaching comics or illustration in Perth: we just had “Amazon Books”1 and a library card. I'd sit on the floor of my studio apartment for hours, flipping through dusty tomes on the floor, searing for the perfect gag. But nothing—absolutely nothing—has been as valuable as the whispered wisdom from working cartoonists in New York (usually in dimly lit bars) after rejection-heavy days. I discovered that you learn more from other working cartoonists than from any book you’ll ever read.

The most consistent advice I've received? "Let the reader arrive at the punchline themselves."

It seems simple, but it's maddeningly difficult to execute. Don't hand-hold. Don't overexplain. Don't condescend. If they get it, fantastic. If they don't, well, sometimes that's on you (rewrite, redraw, rethink), and sometimes, it's just not their particular brand of humour—like how my Australian references about ‘Tim Tams’ fall completely flat at New York comedy shows. (IYKYK)

I've spent countless sleepless nights trying to locate that magic balance between "too obscure" and "too obvious."

The advice above came from the inimitable and prolific Sam Gross— the most consistent ‘captionless’ gag cartoonist I’ve ever met. He proved that the format of a great gag cartoon is an art form all in itself.

Related Reading:

New York Cartoons

#27: Sam Gross: The most absurdly funny gag cartoonist to ever wield a pen.

I really hate that this post comes days after a post about losing the great Al Jaffee, and moments after the passing of the great George Booth, and Ed Koren but here we are…

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3 years ago · 36 likes · 4 comments

My writing partner Scott coined a term for cartoons that beat you over the head with their messaging—where everything is labelled like a Ben Garrison political cartoon. You know the type: a massive ship labelled "S.S. ECONOMY" headed for an iceberg called "RECESSION," sometimes with a captain wearing a "PRIME MINISTER" sash.

When our ideas drift into this territory, one of us will grimace and mutter, "That's a bit S.S.," and we invariably toss it. If you have to put a politician’s name on their briefcase, you need to go back to the drawing board.2

(In fairness to editorial cartoonists, sometimes labels are necessary when your work is syndicated globally or translated. Sometimes, you need that newspaper blowing through the scene with the relevant headline just in case the paper running your cartoon hasn't covered that story. This could be avoided if papers hired local cartoonists to draw about local issues, but those days have gone the way of three-martini lunches.)

The incredible Ed Steed did a Daily Shout parodying this practice in the New Yorker 7 years ago. You can read that here.

Finding this balance is something I still struggle with daily.

Just last week, I spent three hours redrawing a cartoon about New York real estate because I worried it was too obvious. I'd drawn a Manhattan broker showing a literal closet to a prospective tenant while saying, "It's technically a junior one-bedroom." My original draft had way too much set-up, and by the time I drew it up, it felt clunky, so it ended up in the wastepaper bin. It may find a new life as something else. (You never know when an idea might bubble back up and make an unrelated idea better. We’ll cover that in the coming weeks.)

The key to finding the balance lies in leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for the reader to connect the image to the caption (if there is one) and land the plane on their own— they need to arrive at the punchline without you necessarily handing it to them on a platter. Surprise is an essential comedic tool, and there are several (some say seven) comedy formats to play with on the joke-writing plane, but the biggest thing to remember is: don’t treat your reader like an idiot. Let them get there themselves.

The human brain is designed to recognize patterns— trust that if you draw the cartoon correctly, their brain will do the thing it’s meant to do and solve the puzzle you’ve set. You could be a complete obsessive and even use the Golden Ratio if you really want to lead their eye around an image to have it land where you want it to, when you want it to, but not everyone can be as much of a geek as me. (I should really get a hobby. I hear pickleball’s fun.)

Writing an excellent gag cartoon is a practice that takes a lot of trial and error and a ton of rejection if you’re willing to fling your ideas at an editor each week.

If you're interested in hearing more of these cartoon/joke-writing obsessions, check out the weekly podcast I co-host with Scott called "Is There Something In This?"—available wherever you tolerate your podcasts. This past episode, Scott and I went through our top 4 favourite cartoons of all time in honour of the New Yorker’s 100th birthday.

Is There Something In This?

#61: Special New Yorker 100th Anniversary Episode: Our Top 4 Favourite Cartoons of All Time & Our New Book!

Listen now

a year ago · 1 like · 1 comment · Is There Something In This? and Jason Chatfield

This term was actually coined by a New Yorker cartoonist— Peter Arno.
On the topic of throwing out a gag because it’s too “S.S.”, Ed Steed once did an excellent piece in the New Yorker parodying this phenomenon in editorial cartooning. You should read it here.

Seven years ago, I wrote a version of this post for Medium, and it went a bit insane. ‘Viral’ doesn’t really cover it. Many similar articles have popped up in its place in the years since, but here is one of my most-requested tips from people asking, “How do you fit it all in and still find time to draw for yourself?”

The reason I’m sharing it with you today is that the most essential part of being an artist truly is finding time to draw for yourself. It’s so easy to shove it off to the side ‘until conditions are perfect’, but the truth is: If you’re ever going to get around to making the art YOU want to make (and reading these posts!), you’re going to have to have a disciplined system, and stick to it.

Preface:

Being a freelance cartoonist sounds like a fun job. But I’ve learned over the past 20 years that if you want to pay the rent and create art for yourself, it means you’re going to need a system. Paying the rent with your art also means taking on a lot of work that often has a deadline, which you need to balance with your personal art-making time— and if, like me, you have inattentive ADHD with chronic time blindness, you’re going to need two things:

1. A clock somewhere in your eyeline from your workspace.

2. A calendar.

The clock can be your phone in ‘nightstand’ mode, or a physical clock on the wall, or a tablet— but it needs to be clearly visible. The calendar can be a physical calendar or a digital one, but it, too needs to be visible. Keep it on your screen as much as you can.

Tip: If you use a Mac, then you’re working, use an app called “MeetingBar” which shows ou the thing you should be working on right now in your taskbar along the top of the screen.

So, how does the system work?

On a given week, I do a daily cartoon, regular New Yorker cartoons, I do stand-up comedy shows all over the city, write two Substacks, draw caricature commissions, illustrations for the Waking Up app, do live drawing at events around the city, take care of my Frenchie, and somehow find time somewhere in there to exercise, sleep, and attempt a date. If it sounds like a lot of work, it is.

The short answer is: Realistic attention management.

The longer answer is: I have a system that works around my brain and subverts any tendencies to procrastinate — especially during periods of extreme willpower depletion.

One of the biggest productivity revelations I had in the last 20 years while working freelance and trying to juggle a million different projects was to work directly from a calendar, not a To-Do list.

To-Do Lists VS. Calendars

I worked from a To-Do list for a long time, using a page each day to cross items off. It felt good to run a line through things as I got them done, but sadly, I never really got as many done in a day as I should — or could have.

Some tasks take longer than others, but all tasks look the same in a list. Seeing them in a calendar gives you a more realistic idea of how long tasks will take to get done.

I’m not anti-list.1 If you need to write down all of the things you need to do in a list to get them out of your head (especially before sleep on a Sunday night), then, by all means, do so. But once they’re down on that list, start plugging them into your calendar to give you an actual idea of how much time you have to do them.

Knowing you have assigned these tasks a time and date to be completed, you will be freed from the anxiety those unfinished tasks create in your mind. This nagging anxiety is known as The Zeigarnik Effect.

The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological phenomenon describing a tendency to remember interrupted or incomplete tasks or events more easily than tasks that have been completed.

If you’re anything like me, you probably fall into the ‘dreamer’ category of time psychology. The dreamers are the ones who have a poor ability to predict how long something will actually take, show up late to things, miss deadlines and generally end up having all their work snowball into Friday afternoon. (See: Parkinson’s Law.)

I’ve had an ongoing, futile feud with the inexorability of time since I was very young, and it continues to this day. The following measures go some way to subverting my perception problems.

This is a basic look at my template day, which is variable but a starting point to help me plan:

Trick #1: Copy & Paste.

To remedy my old dreamer tendencies, I now make a habit of ensuring that on completion of a task, I adjust the calendar event to reflect the ‘actual’ time it took. ie. I may have allowed 30 minutes, but it took an hour. I may have thought it would take an hour, but it took 45 minutes.

I then copy and paste those similar or identical tasks that I’ve completed before when I’m scheduling for the week ahead. I usually do this on Sunday night. It gives me a realistic idea of how much time I actually have to get everything done versus looking at a blank calendar. (Note: I’ve tried working from the freedom of a blank calendar… don’t do it. It’s not pretty.)

If you have repeating tasks each week, as I do, you’ll be able to copy and paste the entire series of repeating tasks that accurately reflect the time it takes to do them. For instance, I used to have to write comic strips, ink and colour them, I had to sit and draw up my batch for the New Yorker each week, Record an episode of the ITSIT podcast, and, lastly, I knew I would always have to go into the New Yorker from 11am — 12:30pm every Tuesday to pitch my batch. These things are repeating items on my calendar, and I blocked out the exact time it took each time (including travel time if needed).

IMPORTANT:

1. For tasks you’re doing for the first time (or larger tasks broken into smaller tasks), allow for Parkinson’s Law: ie. figure out how long you think it will take, then double it. It’s much better to have slack than to try and borrow time from other tasks.

2. If you have a task that takes place away from your office/studio/home, create a block called “Travel” and put it on either side of the event:

   

   Why not just add the travel time to the event block itself, you ask? Sometimes, it helps to know when an event ‘actually’ starts, so if it’s at 7pm and your time block says 6pm because you planned for an hour of travel, you lose the information on when it actually kicks off. So, it should look something like this:

   

   

   Trick #2: Colour code your calendar.

   To give you a clearer idea of the kind of work you will be doing in a day, it can help to colour code the kind of work that needs doing. You get a clear, concise 10,000ft zoom-out view of exactly what kind of work you’ll be expecting to get done.

   

   For instance, some work I do needs me to be on my laptop, some need me to be in my studio with my drawing equipment, and some things don’t work and need their own calendar, like going to the gym, stretching or a medical appointment.

Trick #3: Know how long to block distractions.

I use the Focusme app on my phone to block websites I know I habitually go to when I’m procrastinating, and SelfControl.app for the Mac to similarly block websites and social media on my laptop until the job at hand is completed. These are timer-based apps, and I know from the calendar how long to set each one.

Trick #4: Bundle similar jobs or ‘mindsets’.

If you know you’ve got a bunch of admin (emails, invoicing, QuickBooks, blog posts etc.) and you know it’ll be basically the same mindset and toolset for all of them, block those tasks together. If they don’t require the same amount of energy as, say, the really big project you have to start, leave them for later in the day when your energy is a bit lower.

If you need to move to a different desk for drawing than you use for writing emails, then bundle your drawing desk activities together, and bundle your emails desk activities together. I even have different colour-coded calendars for the two kinds of tasks, to make it easier.

Tip: If they’re high-priority tasks, shift them to earlier in the day so you give them your full attention. Your energy and willpower wain throughout the day, so be sure to get your M.I.T. done first thing before anything else.

Also, be aware of your own individual habits and energy patterns. If you’re more focused and creative in the morning, schedule your creative tasks for then. If you’re more productive in the afternoon or the late evening, switch to then. Obviously, deadlines sometimes rob you of the luxury of scheduling things for your optimum times, but do this when you have the opportunity to.

If there are certain days of the week that you know you’ll be more available to get certain kinds of things done, schedule all your admin tasks for that day or all your creative things for that day.

For example: I do all my Admin on Mondays when I’m most focused and I’ve just had a relaxing Sunday. I do my best creative work on Tuesdays, so I block that out for drawing and other creative work. On Wednesdays, I return to the desk and do invoicing, bookkeeping, answering snoozed emails, etc.

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Drawing is Thinking.

Today, I want to get back to basics— As you can see in the video above, today we’re going to look at the joy of pencils. It is one of the oldest tools in the drawing toolkit but easily one of the most dynamic and customizable.

Dave Gray, Founder of XPLANE and co-author of Gamestorming, describes sketching as “a conversation with yourself.” I always liked that idea— that when you’re actively letting an idea take shape in front of you, you’re no longer just noodling with amorphous shapes and ideas; you’re making decisions and negotiating with the page. It’s very much a conversation.

The pencil is a magnificent tool, capable of bringing any idea to life. Yes, I do know the story that “NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil” — it is, alas, a myth, albeit a pretty fun one. I like it because it makes the simplicity of the tool the hero. It does one thing, and it does it well.

You can learn a lot by watching other artists sketch or studying their pencil roughs.

I remember seeing Peter DeSève sketching out a character from Ice Age in pencil and just watching the fluidity of his elbow and wrist and how he built these things out of nothing by finding relationships between shapes— adding and removing volume, finding balance in the composition in real-time. it was like watching a magic trick. At the exhibition of his work at the Philippe Labaune Gallery in New York, they showed some of the pencils of his New Yorker covers and character designs, all of which were utterly mesmerizing. I spent half a day in there poring over these explorations on paper and vellum. I much prefer seeing peoples’ pencils than their finished art. (See below).

Page before Pixels?

One thing I’ve always stressed to beginner artists is the skill of working things out on a page in pencil before you jump to digital. Yes, digital pencils are useful when you’re working out compositions, shifting layers and working with an Art Director or client in iterating an idea, but the initial stage of getting the page from your mind into the world is best done at the drawing board— a skill only developed by doing repeatedly, using whichever version of a pencil you’re comfortable with.

Mechanical, Traditional, and everything in between.

I use different kinds of pencils for different kinds of projects. I have different leads for roughing out compositions that I might be inking over (ie. using non-photo blue) or for when I’m building an idea up in stages and levels, so I can differentiate the different areas of the composition. For this, I use a mechanical pencil (you can see the specific kinds of mechanical pencils I use here.)

Am I against doing digital pencils?

Absolutely not. In fact, sometimes, it’s one of the best ways to work out an idea. I’ve included my digital pencils for both Photoshop and Procreate in your premium subscriber bundle folder. Let me know what you think of them. (or upgrade to access the folder.)

I sometimes layer differently-coloured pencil layers in Photoshop or Procreate to figure things out on the screen the same way I do on the page. It depends entirely on the project, the workflow, the rounds of feedback and the amount of people involved in the Process.

Above is a rough digital pencil composition for a page from my upcoming book about dogs. I switched out the tennis player a few times, as well as the dog— I had different kinds of breeds of dog to see which would be the funniest for this gag. (We landed on Jack Russell in the end.)

However, the other thing about working things out on paper as opposed to a digital screen, is the tactile sense of putting your hand and mind to work in sync. There’s a very distinct feeling you get when working with tangible tools as opposed to a stylus on a screen— they’re not ‘better or worse’ they’re just different.

My preference is to work it out using real-world tools whenever I can. Sometimes, I even produce the finished art in pencil if the assignment allows. I love the work of Harry Bliss in the New Yorker, which really reproduces that pencil texture nicely in print.

Flight of the Blackwing

I’ve been drawing with these for two weeks, and I think I’m in love. The leads are the perfect softness, the balance of the pencil is just right, and the eraser is more precise than anything else I’ve got lying around. I have no idea how long this affair will last, but at the moment, things are going well, and I’m hoping this box of their new Matte Greens lasts me for the rest of the year.

(Full Disclosure: They haven’t paid me to plug their products. However, they recently gifted me this box at an event in NYC. Even so, I would have bought these eventually.)

There’s also something about exploring the design of other artists and how they use pencils that can be a really helpful way to expand your visual vocabulary. They may use the tools in a way you wouldn’t have thought of, or created an effect by holding the pencil a certain way. Above, I was playing with some ideas on getting the expressive motion of dogs through the —admittedly inimitable— George Booth’s book “About Dogs”. I think he might have been the best artist to capture dogs using any tool, let alone pencils. (Related: Read Roz Chast’s recent post for the New Yorker on Booth’s cartoons here.)

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I do end up scanning pencils in* to bring them to photoshop to ink when I’m looking to produce something replicable and consistent— for a book or a comic strip that needs to have consistent line-weights. *Sometimes I just take a photo with my phone which is usually enough.

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The above cartoon for Air Mail appeared out of thick air while I was stalking the then-vacant streets of the Flatiron District. Here’s my process for the cartoon from conception ( ooer ) to completion. ( oo-er! )

August 7, 2020
New York, NY

Phase 3: Eat outside.

When outdoor dining was allowed as part of the Phase 3 pandemic reopening of New York, some neighbourhoods were filled with empty chairs being glared at by waiters slumped in their doorway, tapping an anxious pencil against their order pad. Many were still fearful that dining out was just too big a risk.

Others, like the recent Gen-Z accumulation in my neighbourhood, lept gleefully from their walk-ups and filled the sidewalks. Occasionally, they were a little too comfortable returning to the sidewalks and were given a stern talking-to by Governor Cuomo. (I’m looking at you, St Marks Place).

The neighbourhoods like Flatiron, Kipps Bay, Gramercy, Murray Hill and similar were a little more timid. But eventually, people were lured to the curbside tables and chairs with the notion that they were helping financially-stricken small businesses stay afloat, if just for the summer.

I had become friends with several of our local small business owners who own restaurants in the area like Plado, Book Club Bar, Post, Cornerstone Café1 and Root & Bone.2 One of the drawbacks of this new normal was dining alongside a phenomenon that New Yorkers just tolerate as a part of life on a daily basis:

Mountains of hot trash, thrice weekly.

Where I was raised in suburban Western Australia, we had ‘Bin Day’ once a week. It was my job to wheel the bins out to the end of the driveway and have the garbage trucks come by with their hilarious metal arm and do their thing. You could often find me sprinting down the driveway barefoot with two wheelie bins in tow, screaming “WaaAAAAAaait!” because I’d forgotten to put them out the night before.

In New York, “Bin Day” is every second day. The sheer volume of waste that is accumulated on a daily basis in Manhattan alone is astonishing, but you don’t even notice the bags on the sidewalk after a while…unless it’s Summer.

Then the term ‘hot Chinatown garbage’ rings a pungent bell with anyone who’s had the privilege of stepping through puddles of stinky bin water in July. This unmistakable fish waft can interrupt the best of dining experiences; hence the spark of an idea that struck me as I passed these restaurants.

My older sister is a wine expert, and despite her best efforts, has yet to teach me good etiquette.

She visited New York right before the pandemic, dining in various restaurants around the five boroughs and was probably one of the only people I’d trust with that little ritual the waiter plays when opening a $14 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. The other 99.9% of people—myself included— are really just playing a small pantomime of “I definitely know what I’m doing.” to impress whomever they’re sharing a table with.

It always strikes me as such a funny, bullshit ritual. I think I’ve seen a grand total of one bottle sent back to the kitchen in my whole life, and that was because the wine was ‘corked’. (Which is ironically only discoverable once it is uncorked.)

I wanted to draw this little ritual in that restaurant setting above.

The setting is a lone couple on a date, the waiter playing out the little wine ritual, and the guy really getting into the ‘impress my dining partner’ performance, with a gigantic pile of wet, hot, fly-ridden summer trash behind him.

I’ve been drawing up little New York scenes for myself lately and figured I’d give this one the same treatment with a bit less detail. I jumped on the Wacom tablet with a number of photo references and sketched out the scene in three or four thumbnails.

One of the iterations was with the woman in the foreground with her back to us, on the left of frame, the man smelling the wine in focus in the centre, with the waiter to his left, and the stack of garbage to his right in the background.

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"The end of a melody is not its goal."

~ Philosopher & writer Friedrich Nietzsche on enjoying the process.1

A lot of you wrote to me after reading my essay on using AI in your creative process— then again after I lamented the lazy use of AI Art Generators for a major brand campaign that has littered the New York Subway. It’s a topic that animates the creative community in a lot of different directions, and it’s only getting more animated with new models popping up every week.

One thing that struck me was that throughout all of it, there is a thread that keeps returning again and again, and it is the reason I started this newsletter:
The thing that brings people back to the value of something is the work that went into it—the friction between conception and completion— not the quality of the output. The reason you’ll pay $4000 for a hand-crafted piece of bespoke wooden furniture over a $200 mass-produced robotic pre-fab IKEA table is because it’s unique. It’s something that took artisanship and skill to make.

Am I saying mass-produced furniture lacks value? No. But when creation becomes automated, the human intentionality - the care and attention in crafting each unique piece - gets stripped from the process. Even if the automated version achieves technical perfection, it misses the inherent value of human craftsmanship.

Bill Ahrens, one of the only people on the planet who can hand-pinstripe a car, is a great example of why you might pay more for a car he’s decorated over something that was done using a machine. Does it make sense? Probably not. But it’s the difference between humans creating unique things in the world and robots mass-producing things in a factory.

The ever-intrepid wrote today about the use of DeepSeek, China’s market-rattling new LLM, which seems to be as good, if not better, than the US LLM offerings including ChatGPT and Claude. By the end of the deep dive (which I highly recommend you read), she arrives here:

After hearing the hype, I decided to test DeepSeek myself, dumping in notes for a post I’m writing on chatbots and oral culture. My expectations were low: LLM outputs tend to carry an unmistakable robotic sheen. But for the first time ever, I watched an AI generate readable—even rhythmic and engaging—prose from my pile of fragments.

I was stunned.
For a few hours, I wondered if I should put my own sweat into the essay at all. Then, as if a sign from the gods, Rayne fisher-quann’s latest essay hit my inbox. AI might feel magical in its frictionlessness, but (human) writing—like walking—is valuable because of the friction:

Sometimes it’s tiring or slow, sometimes it’s boring or pointless [...] When you choose to walk, you choose not to pursue immediate gratification or even comfort but simply to expand the number of things that might happen to you. Walking invests in the potentiality of your experience with almost no promise of tangible reward at all, which is something like being alive.

The scenic route! The love of the game! Of course, I remembered, recalling one of my own old posts:

That’s the human difference—not the final output, but the spark of creation. The fact that you start bad and get good later, the work of figuring out where you’re going while still on the way there.

I know I may sound like a broken record when I write here, but it’s because in a world that is adopting these ever-more intelligent AI tools, we can’t forget the reason we do the things we do in the first place.

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Happy Friday!

If you’ve been banking up things to read for the weekend, have I got some links for you! The following are some insights from both myself and the very helpful from her guest post for Substack today. She has a great newsletter at sherryning.com which you can subscribe to below.

Sherry Ning

I write about experiences you've felt but don’t know how to describe. Serious half the time.

Finding resonance can be more passive than you might think.

Inspired by Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, Rosie Peacock reframes creativity as a process of listening rather than forcing: “Creative inspiration is something already present in the world—like a signal waiting to be received. The creator’s role isn’t to strain for ideas but to attune themselves to this frequency and let it flow through them.”

Inspiration isn’t fully in your control, which is why it happens when you’re not trying too hard. When you’re distracted, dreaming, or just taking it slow—that’s when the lightbulb ideas happen.

…but also make time for solitude (and boredom)

When we talk about creativity, it’s often about art—that primitive process of turning individual perception into expression. And your creative self also needs silence to be heard.

Inspired by Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, Elif Batuman encourages her students—and herself—to go on artist dates: “a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.”

That’s what Jean Iversen did before starting her three-year MFA program in creative nonfiction. She stayed at a secluded resort in New Mexico, where she found the magic of silence and nothingness. The desert is “a place I know I’ll return to when I need to be still. When I need to feel the spaces, in between the echoes.”

Another way to be more in tune with your creative intuition is to do… nothing. This is what Erik Torenberg calls perfect rest: “Want new ideas? Spend one full day alone doing nothing. Want to be more in touch with yourself? Spend one full day alone doing nothing.” Not even meditating—just sitting there. “100% not judging the process.”

And if doing nothing makes you bored, that might be a good thing. Suleika Jaouad talks about the expansiveness of that feeling of nothingness: “The times when I’ve been forced to lie fallow have spurred me toward the most fertile creative periods of my life.”

Here's my radical suggestion for you:

- Taking a walk? Unplug your airpods. Let your thoughts be the podcast.

- Taking a bath? Make it a #ThoughtBath instead of a scrolling session.

- Taking a baby? Don't take babies.
(Seriously, return any babies you've “borrowed”.)

I've started deliberately scheduling blocks of nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It feels weird and uncomfortable at first, like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet. But the results? Mind-blowing. Those empty spaces have produced more creative ideas than any "productive" time I could have scheduled.

To all my fellow creatives out there: try it. Embrace the void. Let your brain be bored. You might be surprised at what emerges when you stop filling every moment with noise. Trust me, your brain will thank you for the vacation from being everyone else's podcast player.

Keep reading here:

Process Junkie

Creativity Requires Quiet.

Bathe Yourself In Boredom…

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2 years ago · 47 likes · 1 comment · Jason Chatfield

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For the past 9 years, I’ve run the NO-vember challenge every year. Basically, I teach you how to say NO to one thing every day of November with tips and tools up the wazoo. You can sign up for free below:

NO-vember

"All You Need to No." Tips to help you get better at saying NO.

By Jason Chatfield

It’s the only time I do it, thank Christ. The style depends on whether I’m at the drawing board or sitting at the Cintiq that morning. I’m usually hungover, tired, hungry, or a spicy cross-section of this ugly triumvirate of self-loathing. I don't meditate much on these; I just plonk myself down, start drawing, and see what emerges. It’s usually a reflection of my feelings about the year that just passed and what I might expect for the year ahead.

After the relentless firehose of grief these past couple of years, including the two D’s: Death and Downsizing, I figure this expression captures the vibe of the year and the creative process of drawing this year’s self-portrait. I can barely manage more than a smile that invokes something between ‘help’ and ‘Because of course this happened now. What else y’got?’

Although speaking of the Creative Process, I should shout out Huma for bringing the great Hayao Miyazaki’s creative process to my attention.

Feeling very seen…

You do you:

Today, I’m challenging you to do your very own self-portrait after the year of 2024, and what 2025 portends — How did it feel? What expression would best capture it? Is it great? Is it terrible? Try it and share it with me on Notes, In the comments below, or if you don’t want anyone else to see it, email it to me privately in reply to this email. I'd love to see what you come up with.

Here are some of my previous years’ efforts:

2023:
After much grunting and grousing, this fell out of the pencil this year… I chose to channel the very specific, life-changing moment this year when I first laid my eyes on a Bloomin’ Onion at Outback Mistakehouse. I’m so upset at what happened next.

2022:
A frantic mess of book deadlines, comic strip problems, endless texts, DMs, email threads… a frazzled mess of a year.

2021:
Trepidatiously opening my eyes to see if another pandemic year is over.

2020:
Pretty obviously the end of a harrowing ordeal of a year: Becoming overly familiar with masks, gloves, and social distancing. Coming out the other side of a battle for my lungs.

2019:
Groggily working on deadlines right up until Christmas morning. Again.

2018:
Fulfilling a lifelong dream (nightmare) of becoming one of the Usual Gang of Idiots at MAD Magazine.

2017:
The year of the animated GIF.

2016:
An homage to the great Stan Chow, a brilliant caricaturist and illustrator.

2015:
Me and my pal, Ginger.

2014:
A flat line drawing while waiting for my Green Card to be processed.

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One windy weekend in 2022, I was wandering around the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in Columbus with fellow cartoonist Maria Scrivan. We were fresh off the behind-the-scenes tour of the archives, shamelessly drooling over the original artwork on display by Charles Schulz. The wide-ranging exhibition celebrated what would have been “Sparky”’s 100th birthday. A photo of his pristine, minimalist studio caught my eye, and I noted to Maria how clean it looked. “Oof. He makes my studio look like something out of an episode of Hoarders.”

My creative process looks less like a workflow and more like a crime scene.

I barricade myself in the studio, turn off my phone, and my studio transforms from "moderately organized workspace" to "what if a tornado hit an art supply store?" I disappear into the work like a monk with ADHD and access to too many pens. Only when I've wrestled the thing into submission and the project is complete do I restore order. I emerge, blinking into the sunlight like a cave dweller, because the line between "creative genius" and "actual madness" is apparently just basic housekeeping.

This is what my studio looked like while I was working on a recent piece for the New Yorker…

Immediately after I emailed the Cartoon Editor with the finished artwork, I packed up my studio, and it once again looked like this. Bordering on Dexter-level forensic cleaning.

As I hunched over and continued to gawk at Sparky’s studio in awe, Maria said,

“My studio is a total mess while I’m working: It looks like a bomb hit it. But whenever I finish a project, I absolutely have to pack everything away as a sort of ritual, to exorcise the work from my brain.”

I stopped in my tracks…

This is the third time in a month I have independently heard the exact same thing from other professional cartoonists: Tom Richmond, the brilliant illustrator and caricaturist behind many of the movie parodies in MAD, had just told me the exact same thing when we were at that year’s National Cartoonists Society Reuben Awards in Kansas City.

It was almost identical:
He sits down to work on a project and allows himself to kind of explode pens, brushes, ink, paper, and scraps of reference images all over his space, and it looks like a disaster zone after a hurricane.

By the way, this is a man for whom I have an all-consuming case of studio envy. He is the most organized cartoonist I know, so it surprised me to learn that he allowed himself to create a mess to bury himself in the zone.

Then, when he sends off the final art to the Editor/Art Director, he takes his time in a personal ritual he’s had for years, where he goes around the studio and packs everything away, puts trash in the bin, stores his pens, ink, brushes — whatever he used in the process of creation — in their places. Then — and ONLY then — can he move on to the next thing in his day.

The other cartoonist I had a conversation with was Garry Trudeau, the cartoonist behind Doonesbury for the past 55 years. He’d shared a photo of his studio, post-clean-up. I said I was so envious of his pristine setup because my studio at the time looked like the entire room sneezed.

He said,

“I’ve long had this odd, celebratory habit — right after I make a deadline, I pick up my studio, ready it for the next one.”

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This week, many cartoonists have stood in solidarity with

Ann Telnaes

after her resignation in protest after the Washington Post refused to run a cartoon depicting the slew of tech and business billionaires genuflecting to Trump, having all donated millions to his inauguration fund. The lie given for killing the cartoon was woeful. As put it, “No one has crafted a less-effective excuse for not running a cartoon, ever, one time.”

In the ensuing days, many have done their own versions of the cartoon (some even used the theme as a jumping-off point for a different execution of the idea.) Either way, it’s something I hope we continue paying attention to despite the ever-increasing list of distractions —taking Greenland by force, setting Cybertrucks on fire, etc.

Steve Brodner has collected some of the tribute cartoons here, and Ann has posted some more on her own Substack here. Please subscribe to Ann’s substack here, and support independent cartoonists. For what it’s worth, here is my contribution below. (Scroll down further to see the process.)

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It wouldn’t be Proces Junkie without me diving into the process of making the cartoon: so here’s the ‘behind the scenes’ of this idea.

On Friday, Ann quit WaPo in protest, and posted the rough of the spiked cartoon on her Substack. I texted her to see if she was OK, and to tell her I was finally cancelling my WaPo subscription. I have zero reason to read it anymore. Ann is a friend. She’s been a great help to me as a cartoonist since I was a teenager, with no idea how to get started in this game, so I felt pretty animated about this one.

The other editorial cartoonists rallied behind her (there aren’t too many left, but there’s enough to make some noise!) as the story became a national news headline in every major outlet—not to mention going viral on Substack.

Steve Brodner

started rallying the troops to do their own version of her cartoon to signal-boost it, and some of the most incendiary renditions spewed forth into the world. It gave the original idea far more oxygen than it would ordinarily have garnered, to begin with. A textbook case of The Streisand Effect.

Sidenote: Some ignorant trolls have been belching comments like “Ann should grow a thicker skin! One cartoon rejected after decades of working at the paper? Grow up!” etc.

No take has ever landed further from the mark: Ann’s skin is so thick from a career being a Reuben & Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and past President of the AAEC) she’s practically a fucking armadillo. She’s had countless cartoons rejected over her career for countless reasons; It’s a part of the job. I can’t think of any other profession that requires building a callus to rejection more than an editorial cartoonist; and yes, I’m including tech entrepreneurs, scientific researchers and telemarketers. (Ok, maybe New Yorker cartoonists have it worse, but at least we get to work in our underwear.)1

The fact that this happened around the 10th anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo murders was particularly chilling, so I feel like a lot of cartoonists were already loaded for bear. I felt pretty passionate about it, so strung a few words together over on New York Cartoons.

New York Cartoons

Silencing the Court Jesters.

I know, I know. I’m meant to be funny on here— It’s a humorous newsletter and I’m supposed to distract you from the boundless horrors of the world. But if you’ll indulge me for one day, I want to talk about something close to my heart. I promise I’ll return to drawing silly cartoons about New York tomorrow…

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a year ago · 80 likes · 4 comments · Jason Chatfield

I was noodling with a few ideas for a cartoon that played on a variation of Ann’s cartoon, but ultimately her original concept was so solid I didn’t need to monkey with it. I was leaning towards more of a ‘Yes, and…’ than anything.

I jumped around from a tortured Lord of the Rings metaphor while I was in the shower (best ideas, always) abd I bounced around the concept of “The Fellowship of (kissing) The Ring”. It’s a bit of a mixed metaphor, which isn’t great for an editorial cartoon. You either do the Godfather/Pope ‘kissing the ring’ concept, or you do The Fellowship Of The Rings. I think what I landed on was a bit of a mess, perhaps.

I had an idea of drawing the cartoon with each of the tech billionaires as LOTR characters, lining up behind Trump’s Frodo; ie. “You have my Sword, And my Bow, And my Axe!” but it would be “You have my cash, and my Algo/Newspaper, and my App!” etc, but it all got a bit clunky and hack. (Sometimes you’ve got to get them out of your brain onto the page to see how bad the ideas are.)

While these ideas were swirling, Morris farted so loudly it shook the building, so I took him out for a walk to clear my head (and his belly). Walking usually helps me clarify ideas I’m stuck on— as it has countless other people who come up with things out of thin air for a living.

While I was walking I played with the idea of everyone now calling this point in time the ‘Post-Truth Era’, then fuddled with the idea of “The Washington Post-Truth” but, again, it’s a hat on a hat, and a bit hacky. I’m not sure. Usually, I’d bounce stuff like this off Scott, but he’s in Australia with his ridiculously cute baby, enjoying Sydney's summer sun. Hard to argue with that.

I started sketching up some pencils at the drawing board, building on Ann’s idea of the tech and media broligarchs all bowing, prostrate before the giant Trump on a plinth; “genuflecting to his highness.” It seems like they’re all just clambering to be his favourite. It’s worth noting that Elon Musk was not in Ann’s cartoon, nor was Tim Cook, but they’re both just as guilty as the rest of these spineless flunkies who flung giant sacks of cash into the kitty to curry favour with the Mad King.

We all know why they’re doing it— playing to Trump’s fickle ego and hoping to stay off his Shit List, but it’s staggering how rapidly they all jettisoned their dignity after only recently saying things to the effect of, ‘He’s an abhorrent assclown with the attention-span of a baby chimp.’

Because I sometimes squeeze too hard on my pencil (a dreadful habit; you’re meant to do the exact opposite), my mechanical blue pencil is wrapped in gauze and masking tape. I got the tip from Tom Richmond, who wraps his live caricaturing clutch in gauze and elastic bands to stave off RSI/Carpel Tunnel. I do the same with my Stylus for my Wacom Cintiq. I’m a fucking monster, I know.

Before inking, I did some warm-up sketches and noodled around with a few extra details in the composition, moving postures and proportions before laying it under my lightbox for a loose guide for inks.

I wanted to at least nail one of the caricatures of each of the offending goblins, so I pulled a bunch of reference photos up on Google Images to see what features I could exaggerate. I wanted the expression on Bezos’ face to be so clear that it was unmistakeably him, and not just another rich white bald tech billionaire, so I took a couple of practice passes at how his face might contort to show maximum submissiveness, mid-smooch.

Zuckerberg has changed his hair lately; he grew it out so it’s all curly and wears a chain, but more people remember/recognise him from the haircut he’s had for over a decade in the public eye, so I opted for that. I spent an inordinate amount of time getting his tongue right.

It felt nice to be back drawing again after having taken a break over the holidays to move into my new place. I was digging sketchbooks and drawing tools out of boxes all weekend, but I’m slowly getting back to full capacity. My desk faces the city, so I have to pull the blinds down to stop gazing out the window and daydreaming.

Process Note: You’ll notice I do pencils and composition on an angle, and inks on a flat surface. I just find it to be a better way to work for me; I know it’s not the ‘correct’ way to do anything, but when have I ever followed a rule? I have a little reminder on my drawing board because my brain is a small dog that still needs to be trained.

Once the inks were done I took them from the natural plane in which we all exist and thrive, and scanned it into the digital realm, where NFTs and bitcoin float around like pollen. I tidied up the rough edges and, truth be told, took another swing at my Zuckerberg caricature (I didn’t get the neck shape quite right that first time.) You can see my first pass below.

The good think about inking by hand is that you can get through the art without the tyranny of uncertainty that you could draw a line better. The tyranny of the UNDO function— believe me, I know it’s helpful sometimes when you’re trying to get a finished peice of art ‘just right’, but if you want to get something finished, you can circumvent the endless possibilities by just drawing the thing by hand, then fixing any lines you want to re-draw later, after you’ve scanned them in. A hybrid workflow is what I use, and I enjoy using both digital and analogue tools; they each have their value.

Rather than do watercolours/wash by hand this time, I decided to do that part in Photoshop. I had the luxury of not having a deadline on this piece, but I didn’t want to spend all day on it— hence bringing it into photoshop for final touches and wash. Do I prefer to do washes by hand? Yes. Does it take way longer and involve more risk? Also yes. But sometimes you just make the call according to how long you want to spend on the job. My turnaround time between approval and finished art for the New Yorker is anywhere between 2-3 hours for Dailies.

I feel that the career editorial cartoonists who have to do a cartoon every single day of the week, often under extremeley tight deadlines due to the ever-shringking news cycles, are superheroes. I started out doing a weekly cartoon when I was 19, which eventually blew out to a daily, and learning that skill was both exhilarating and terrifying; You have to make fast calls about style, execution and sometimes just ship something you might’ve liked to take a second pass at— but when the deadline creeps up, you’ve got to turn something in.

As a premium subscriber, you already have access to the digital watercolour brushes I used for this peice in your Premium Toolkit Folder (check the header of this email). If you’re ever having trouble locating or installing them, please let me know. If you’re a free subscribert and want access to them, you know what to do. 😊

I think Procreate and Photoshop are just about on par for watercolour brushes these days— the brilliant Kyle T Website is the reason for that. I’m glad he’s over at Procreate these days, and he’s doing crazy things with their latest brush release.

After adding some finishing touches, and building out a 600dpi print version, as well as a 144dpi 2000px wide version for screen, I posted it to all of the things and let the reactions start flooding in. I’ve written before about the fact that ‘the reaction doesn’t belong to you’ once you put your art out into the world. That’s something I’ve had to learn over many years of having my work interpreted in a vast array of ways that I did and didn’t intend, but thems the breaks.

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If you liked this peek behind the curtain, feel free to share it with a friend or colleague who might like to learn something. If you have any questions, pop them in the comments below.

‘Til next time,
Your pal

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I hate to start the New Year off with a gripe, but I really do have to draw attention —pun very much regrettable— to the scumbags who are in charge of the campaign art for the sneaker company Skechers. A company that, in 2022, reported annual revenue exceeding $7 billion. Billion. With a B.

They’ve decided to decorate our commute with AI-generated advertisements that look like they were excreted by a sentient Roomba having a stroke.

Now, companies and agencies are free to do whatever the hell they want. Nobody is under any obligation to hire real artists if there are cheaper alternatives available. The free market is what it is— if there are cost savings to be made, bean counters will find them. But not even waiting until the technology is good enough to produce a decent image that would otherwise have paid the rent of a working illustrator for 3 months is just gross. Not only does it repel people who would otherwise consider buying your product (just look at the comments in my post below), but it undermines the reputation of your brand.

You want people to associate you with low-quality, half-assed imagery that A.) Looks like shit, and B.) Doesn’t even depict the shoes you’re trying to sell? Are you high? (Don’t answer that.) It’s terrible PR and sloppy marketing using a lazy advertising agency.

The process of making something good usually involves more than just one person prompting an AI generator and making minimal tweaks before shipping it to be printed on hundreds of billboards around the New York subway.

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If it were an attempt to ‘get folks talking on social’ or ‘be controversial’, it doesn’t really work... It’s received a profoundly negative reaction, and it makes the brand look like they don’t even care about the product, let alone the potential customer.

Again, the process of a professional making something by hand, be it with analogue or digital tools, (or a hybrid of both) yields something humans can feel. Even someone walking past this image with no experience in illustration can tell something is artificial and ‘off’ with this art. (And yes, it is art, whether you like it or not.)

Lastly, I don’t really know what the message is…?

It’s two oddly proportioned women walking in opposite directions in what looks like a vaguely Parisian street, wearing anything but the product that is being advertised. There are hallucinated flags for imaginary countries and ghoulish onlookers with no particular expressions. And is that meant to be a pile of laundry or a small child standing nearby? I guess we’ll never know.

It all just feels like a giant troll. But to what end? If we’re going to just start churning out AI slop for major ad campaigns to save a bit of cash, there’s no telling where the basement is on using this hot garbage.

Ok, I don’t want to be a total Doomer…

The fine folks over at Creative Boom just released their 2025 illustration trends, and wouldn't you know it - actual human artistry is making a comeback.

// 3. To see the 'hand of the artist.'

In response to lifeless AI-generated work and CGI, illustration agents are more attuned than ever to pieces that aren't just hand drawn or handmade but that demonstrate the hand of the artist in the sense that the voice or visual language discussed in point one is integral to the work. Sarah Beetson represents the global agency IllustrationX and its artists in Australia and is the company's talent scout. For her, it's not about ditching digital processes but bringing them together with physical world creativity.

"I always look for work that has elements done by hand, especially as style trends can run so obviously along digital lines," says Sarah. "For example, for a few years, there has been a very obvious trend with Procreate-made work using similar colour palettes, brushes and techniques. Something sketched or coloured using real materials by the artist in part of the process can certainly have a uniqueness about it and often outlasts trends."

Evidence of the artist's hand will bring viewers closer to the work emotionally. "Analogue techniques and styles that nod to craft always captivate and invite the viewer to linger; pairing this with glimpses of behind-the-scenes material will really capture commissioners' attention and place real value on the work created, the thrill of which you do not get from AI," adds Sam at Brilliant Artists.

For what it’s worth, I’ve had some anecdotal evidence of people recoiling from the uncanny valley feeling from art that looks like an AI generator made it and reaching out to commission a human who ‘can still make things by hand with pen and ink.’

This is in no way a reliable indicator of a larger trend. It is, however, alleviating the panic attack my accountant had when looking at the income I made before and after AI Art Generators became so prevalent. (It’s …stark.)

Even if the art is created digitally on a tablet, at the very least, the client/Art Directors I’ve worked with have enjoyed dealing with a human instead of incessantly altering prompts to try and get the exact result they want. (They have relayed such frustrations transparently. I tried not to grit my teeth.)

My advice? Next time, hire real sketchers.

Want your brand to look like it wasn't conceived by a malfunctioning toaster? Hire human artists. We still exist, and bonus: we can actually draw hands that don't look like props from a horror movie.

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When I launched Process Junkie, I had one goal: to figure out why creative people do what they do and share my own insights and advice on the creative process.

The existential spiral started with How do you decide who you're going to be when you get up in the morning? — a question that hits different when you've just spent three hours scrolling through sketchbooks on Pinterest instead of drawing. After laying down The 3 Tenets of Process Junkie (+ Downloads and Swag!), which is really just me trying to justify my creative neuroses with a manifesto, we got practical. It has been very rewarding to hear from those of you who are finding this helpful.

What's in Your Road Kit? tackled the tools I carry when I’m out of the studio, which has already changed several times since publication. (Because of course.) This was followed by Stick Your Neck Out! (but not too far.), a guide to calculated physical risk-taking that I probably should have absorbed before starting this newsletter. [Click! pop! Crack!]

The first Process Junkie Book Club: The Work of Art by Adam Moss proved that at least some of you actually read books instead of just arranging them artfully for Instagram. I’m still re-reading this one and getting a lot out of every page. Speaking of books, The one drawing book I read every year without fail revealed my own creative security blanket; I’m happy to share the warm corner of it with you. Just don’t put your cold feet on me.

Then we went deeper.

Thoughts on creative partnerships explored what happens when you let other people into your creative bubble. Creativity Requires Quiet and On Turning Down the Volume to Hear Your Own Voice both tackled the art of shutting up long enough to hear yourself think — a lesson that led naturally into A Skeptic's Path to Creative Enlightenment: What I Learned from 10 Years of Daily Meditation Practice. Not all creative advice is about pen choices and ink recommendations.

Learning to say NO might be the most important thing I wrote all year, if only because it meant saying no to writing even more articles about saying no. And AI Tools in Creative Work: Maintaining Humanity in the Process reminded us that while robots might be coming for our jobs, they still can't capture the pure chaos of human creativity.

We rounded out the year with some advice you’ve all been asking for since day 1: My Process for Submitting Cartoons to the New Yorker. I hope this gets some of you over the line from ‘wondering how hard it is’ to ‘knowing exactly how insanely hard it is.’

Looking back, it's been a year of examining why we do what we do, how we do it, and whether we should be doing something else entirely. Thanks for coming along on this strange journey of creative self-discovery.

Here's to another year of making things, questioning everything, and occasionally remembering to actually do the work instead of just writing about it.

If you just prefer this year’s posts in a big ole’ list, here they are:

• 👉 Start here: Welcome to Process Junkie!

• How do you decide who you’re going to be when you get up in the morning?

• The 3 Tenets of Process Junkie + Downloads & Swag!

• What’s in Your Road Kit?

• Stick Your Neck Out! (but not too far.)

• The one drawing book I read every year without fail…

• Process Junkie Book Club: ‘The Work of Art’ by Adam Moss

• Thoughts on creative partnerships.

• Creativity Requires Quiet.

• A Skeptic’s Path to Creative Enlightenment: What I Learned from 10 Years of Daily Meditation Practice

• Learning to say NO.

• AI Tools in Creative Work: Maintaining Humanity in the Process

• On Turning Down the Volume to Hear Your Own Voice

• My Process for Submitting Cartoons to the New Yorker

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I often get asked about the process of submitting cartoons to the New Yorker. So, I thought I might write it out for you to enjoy here.

There’s a very slim chance you may have already read my 3-part account of my first time submitting cartoons to the New Yorker, eventually resulting in my first sale in 2017. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) Part of this process is in there, but the part I’ll cover today is the very beginning of the process right through to the very end.

When I first wrote this process out below, it was 2020, and the New Yorker was still admitting people into the building to meet with the Cartoon Editor every Tuesday. I would go in person to sit with the editor and get real-time feedback. These days, there is no longer any in-person review of batches, and cartoonists don’t go to the magazine in person, but the bones of my process are largely unchanged. I’ll write more about this in the footnotes.

With that out of the way, here is my very specific 10-step process for submitting cartoons to the New Yorker, originally published in January 2020:

1. The ideas stage.

This is arguably the most important stage of the entire process. (Apart from the part where you get to pay your rent on time.) The ideas stage is an elusive, bizarre process whereby you somehow generate a number of ideas that might make a good cartoon, seemingly out of thin air.

The truth is, much like finding your soulmate, they don’t appear when you’re looking for them. They pop up in the moment between swiping your Metcard and getting to the bottom of the stairs as the F-train is arriving. (And you’d better have a notepad ready when it falls outta your head.) More often, they pop into your head somewhere between the moment you’re washing your hair and rinsing out the conditioner. So, you’d better have some Aquanotes ready when that joke about a praying mantis at a singles bar bubbles up.

I write tags/captions, concepts, draw compositions, facial expressions— whatever the idea needs to get it going and scribble it down with wrinkly fingers. My shower wall often looks like this in the morning.

2. The idea-development stage.

This stage varies wildly from cartoonist to cartoonist. I personally like to work on my ideas throughout the week alone, and then if there’s anything I can’t figure out on my own, I bring it to my writing partner, Scott, for a writers’ meeting. He always has great ideas, too, so we mull them over and try and punch them up before pitching them.

We used to just meet at a pub and do this on a Monday night, but one day, Scott had the bright idea of turning the meeting into a podcast. I told him it was a terrible idea. “Nobody wants to listen to the ins and outs of two idiots dissecting the frog for an hour every week. It’s a visual medium!”

I was wrong. Very, very wrong, in fact. The podcast now has thousands of listeners. Needless to say, we walk out of the podcast with a batch of ideas to pitch to the editor and agonise over for the ensuing week.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE

Once I have the ideas in sort of ‘pitchable’ form, I go back and agonise over the wording, the punctuation, the execution and, of course, the drawing.

3. The ‘agonising and crying into your drink’ stage

Once I’ve essentially muddled through a few different executions, I sit at my desk with pencil and coffee scotch, and try to draw up the batch of ideas. It can be excruciating when something isn’t flying off the page, jiving, hitting the mark , working.

4. The pencils stage.

The pencils are done using a regular old pacer-style click pencil that you can pick up at your local CVS (or steal from a co-worker). I’ll often erase a facial expression to get it just right, or sketch out a few poses on a separate sheet of paper to try and get the right position.

Sidenote: Someone whose work I really admire for pose is Will McPhail. He McSucceeds to nail every single pose in his cartoons to illustrate the expressions perfectly.

This particular idea is one Scott pitched on the podcast — in fact if I recall, it was Scott’s OSPOTW* for that week. (*Outback Steakhouse Pick-of-the-week®, in which, if the idea gets sold and runs, I have to take Scott to Outback Steakhouse for a steak and martini dinner, to my chagrin. (I fucking hate Outback Steakhouse.)

Process Junkie is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

5. The inking stage.

Once the pencils have left me with only a patch of hair on the left side of my scalp, I move on to the ‘inking’ stage.

There are two kinds of inking stages in the life of a cartoon— one is for the ‘rough’ that is pitched to the magazine. And the other is for the ‘final’ or ‘finishes’. The rough is the basic idea of the cartoon, drawn to the execution level that makes it clear what the cartoon would look like. Once in a while, it’s worth just submitting a finish to give as clear an idea as possible. This isn’t always practical, but most cartoons I’ve sold to the New Yorker were from submitting finished gags.

For the inks on this one, I used a Uniball vision fine, along with a Japanese Kuretake Fude Brush Pen in Retail Package, Fudegokochi, Fine Point (LS4-10S). For the chess pieces, I used a super-fine brush pen I found in an art shop in Paris (ooer) called Magasin Sennelier. I have no idea what it’s called.

Depending on the cartoon, I may use a lightbox (pictured above) for the inking stage. For this one I did a combination of re-penciling from a lightbox of the first pencils (oof) and inking over the lightbox the regular way. This mini LED USB-powered lightbox was from the devil Amazon.

6. The erasing pencils, scanning & clean-up stage

Once the inks are pretty much done, I let them dry properly before erasing pencil lines and adding any final details. For this particular one, I wanted to mimic a chess game my friend Ethan and I had just played in Madison Square Park that afternoon, where he whipped the pants off me in under 10 minutes. I changed just a few of the pieces just to screw with him when he sees it in print.

I scan the piece using one of two methods, depending on the level of detail in the cartoon. If it’s pretty basic, I use “Adobe Scan” on my smartphone. If it’s a bit more detailed like this one, I use my glass flatbed scanner unit on my printer and upload it to Photoshop for…

7: Wash and Finishes stage

Depending on the cartoon (and the amount of time I have to turn it in) I will either use a hand-made watercolour wash (below) or a digital wash in Photoshop, using a Wacom tablet. I have pretty much replicated my ‘by hand’ tools in my Photoshop brush presets, which helps keep things looking consistent. (Note: Premium subscribers have access to these brushes when they upgrade to paid)

Stage 7 Addendum: Digital Finishes

For this one, I used the Cintiq Pro 16” (my review here) to do the final washes and touch-ups on the cartoon at 600dpi, while watching Seinfeld in the corner to calm my shaky nerves. Also pictured: Me wearing a glove that stops me sweating all over the screen.

Here are the various stages the cartoon goes through once scanned in:

I add the caption last, which saves me from agonizing over it too much while I’m drawing. I already agonised in Stage 3. Stage 6 is too late for that malarkey.

Then it’s time to print it out, email a PDF of the batch to the cartoon editor, call an Uber and crawl down the FDR to pitch the cartoon in person.

Some days if I’m organised, I take the subway down to the World Trade Center stop and walk through the Oculus to calm my nerves… then I come to remember it’s a shopping mall and my anxiety returns.

The New Yorker moved from 4 Times Square downtown to the new World Trade Center in 2015, along with Vogue, Vanity Fair, Wired, and a slew of other Condé Nast mastheads. It’s certainly more pointy.

8. The Pitching to the Cartoon Editor stage

I check in with security at the desk, then get a pass to zip through 38 floors in record time whilst trying to pretend to be comfortable that the numbers are on the outside of the elevator.

This is also the only other time we get to bump into other New Yorker cartoonists and trade anxieties and air our kvechables. We don’t have permanent passes, so we often have to wait at the glass doors for someone to walk past and let us in before we can get to the sign-in list. Sometimes it can take a while. Sometimes smart people like Sofia Warren (above) call someone’s extension which I should totally learn how to do.

We then round the corner to the cartoon department and put our names on the sign-up list. This one is from the last day of the previous cartoon editor. It’s a veritable who’s who of who’s here.

The Cartoon Editor sees cartoonists in the order of the list.

While we wait our turn, the cartoonists sit in the makeshift Cartoon Lounge (whatever board room is free) and talk shop, or avoid eye contact. I make a habit of going and getting coffee to see what books might be available in the kitchen… also, to wake me up before I have to speak to humans.

I always dip into the side office and pick up that week’s issue, flip to the contents page and see if anything of mine ran in that issue (yes, that is how we find out - at the same time as you do) and, if not, enjoy what else made it into those elusive 16 slots for cartoons.

One morning I flipped open to see my name in print, pitching a terrible joke to Gus Van Sant (name drop complete) and making a general tit of myself. Nothing unusual, really.

While I wait, I like to re-order my batch in the vain hope that it’ll make some kind of difference whether I’ll sell something this week. I try to make it like a W-shape, like a comedy set: open strong, dip a bit, hit them in the middle with something big, then dip right before the big closer. I have absolutely no evidence that this does anything at all, but I insist on doing it every week.

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In writing about an article by Arthur C. Brooks about Beethoven’s deafness, Cal Newport expounded on the vital importance of blocking out the noise of the crowds in order to hear your own voice.

The TL;DR of the article is that once Beethoven had gone completely deaf, his work became more original and innovative. It is thought this was due to his inability to be influenced by prevailing compositional fashions—this ability to work in a creative silo culminated in his most outstanding work: his famous Ninth Symphony.

There is something to be said for immersing yourself in the marketplace of ideas and being exposed to what your contemporaries are doing and saying, but there is a very real danger that you become the kind of creative individual who does more on-looking than creating.

This is a concept I’ve returned to again and again after various bouts of dipping my toe into the soggy morass of social media. I’ve never quite felt at ease using any free products wherein, due to their free-ness, I become the product and give away a little piece of my soul in the process. I wrote many years ago about the damaging effects of FOMO, and my rigorous journey towards extricating myself from the dangers therein but never really dug into the artistic benefits of doing so.

As Newport succinctly puts it:

“…we’re constantly connected to a humming online hive mind of takes and urgency and quantified influence. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told I was missing out because of my absence from this scrum. I needed to “build my brand,” or be exposed to more interesting people and important ideas, or plugged into the tick tock of the big events of the day.”

The ability to yank yourself out of the endless slip-stream of ‘content’ and quietly explore your own ideas is one that should be cultivated above all else for an artist. That is unless you like the idea of mimicking everyone around you by osmosis and wondering why nobody is noticing your work.

As Jaron Lanier explores in his long, seething 2014 essay on the modern music industry being devoid of imagination, courage, faith, or vitality, the result of everyone echoing each other in the creative marketplace is a dearth of memorable, generation-defining art. In its place lies the scattered miasma of sonic copycats that become indistinguishable from one another. The dreaded “prevailing compositional fashions” loom to stifle innovation.

Also See: Writing Netflix series, hit singles, and superhero films to an algorithm to ensure investor satisfaction.

(Sidenote: Perhaps the discussion on ‘true innovators in music’ should be taken up with Mr. Lanier on this, as I won’t purport to be an authority on contemporary music production.)

But his larger points holds:

Artists only languish when their primary drive is to merely strive to keep up with what their peers are doing. If they are only exposed to the contemporary trends of their art form, their ideas will reflect that limitation.

Some of the most satisfying deep work I’ve managed to accomplish as an artist has been during times of great isolation — picking up from the city and driving off to a tiny cabin on the side of a mountain with a laptop, a french press and a bottle of scotch.
(Ok, and my dog.)

It’s like wearing noise-cancelling headphones 24/7 without the batteries running out.

If you have the ability to do so, I would highly recommend the practice of taking yourself as far from the aforementioned slipstream as you can: Delete all social media from your phone, disable all notifications, and bring only what is necessary to do your work. Nothing else.

By maintaining routine blocks of protected solitude, some of the world’s greatest artists have produced the most innovative creative work, pushing their medium forward into previously unexplored terrain. There’s absolutely no good reason for you not to do the same.

Footnote: This advice may contradict my “Read before you write, Look at art before you draw” exercise. I should make clear that exercise is more for people who are struggling to ‘get their head in the game’ than those who are trying to disconnect and explore their art in untainted solitude.

Related:

Process Junkie

Creativity Requires Quiet.

Bathe Yourself In Boredom…

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2 years ago · 44 likes · 1 comment · Jason Chatfield

Richard Bach once said, “We teach best what we most need to learn.”

That’s why every November for the past 6 years, I’ve run the “NO-vember Challenge”. It’s basically 30 posts over 30 days of learning to say NO to things. I’m bad at it, and every year, I need to re-up my skills and be reminded about the damage it can do to your day-to-day well-being to overcommit to way too many things.

Sign up free here

Today, I want to share a few highlights from the first three weeks in case any of them are useful to you and help you develop your process for carving out time to create the things you really want to make. You know, those things you’ve been putting off until all the conditions are perfect?

Anyway. Take a peek and let me know in the comments if any of these are helpful.

~ Jason

NO-vember

Day #4: Say NO To People-Pleasing

You kicked day #3 in the butt, right…

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2 years ago · 3 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #5: The 3 Why's

Welcome to Day #5…

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2 years ago · 3 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #6: What is Your Time Worth?

You knocked Day #5 our of the park, right…

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2 years ago · 2 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #9: Less But Better.

“The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Proficiency and results come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, or combining relaxation with activity…

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2 years ago · 5 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #10: The Zeigarnik Effect & Working from a Calendar Instead of a To-Do List

"At some point, you will have to learn to let go…

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2 years ago · 5 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #12: Overcoming the addiction to busyness: The Art of Not having to fill every moment of your attention.

The person who focuses on fewer things goes further than the person distracted by many…

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2 years ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #14: The Road to "No Thanks"

The person who focuses on fewer things goes further than the person distracted by many…

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2 years ago · 5 likes · 2 comments · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #15: Burnout & The Urge to Do.

Fight the urge to say Yes…

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2 years ago · 6 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #18: Download and Use These Phone Wallpapers to Remind You To Say NO!

Happy Monday…

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2 years ago · 4 likes · Jason Chatfield

NO-vember

Day #19: Learning How To Say NO.

“If someone looked at how you spent your time over the last year, would what they see as your priorities match what you see as your priorities…

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2 years ago · 3 likes · Jason Chatfield

If you want to learn more, you can sign up here.

November 9, 2013
Reservoir, Victoria (Australia)

Every creative journey has its origin story. Mine began late in 2013, with a giggling man in white robes doing an uncanny Yoda impression1. He’d insert a painfully long pause every few words: “Whatever we put our attention on…will grow stronger…in our life.”

I’m watching his warped image on an old television, the VHS tape so well-worn that the audio crackles and distorts his thick Indian accent. But the message cuts through: the mind is an infinite canvas, and turning your attention inward is like learning to use a new set of creative tools.

The man, I later learned, was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. His photo hangs on the classroom wall next to a child’s crayon drawing of what appears to be a dog sitting in a small puddle of shit.

The classroom is tucked away in The Maharishi School in Reservoir, Victoria. Sophie and I took the 40-minute train from Melbourne, seeking something more substantial than YouTube tutorials or meditation apps. In 2013, finding actual meditation teachers in Melbourne was like finding a quiet place to take a call in Manhattan—theoretically possible but wildly difficult.

We were each given a secret Sanskrit mantra, told about the ways to practice meditation, and sent on our way. We returned a few times for check-ins, but by the third session, we had the idea. We never returned to that school on Dundee Street. (And no, not all streets in Australia are named after crocodile-hunting celebrities. But most are.)

Year 0:

July 4, 2014
Honolulu, HI

They don’t tell you about the ‘mental purge’ phase: old memories, new insights, scary ones that wake you at 4 a.m. They all bubble up as the practice flushes your mind-colon. Tonight, I woke from a nightmare featuring that grinning dog in shit. It could be jetlag or the airline food, but I definitely meditated before bed—a mistake, as it turns out.

The lesson here: meditate in the morning or early afternoon. Like coffee, it’s best avoided at night unless you want your subconscious to stage a high school play of “The Shining.”

Year 1:

November 9, 2015
Inwood, NY

Settling into New York has left little time for a daily practice. The only free block is my 20 minutes between 59th Street and 125th on the A train, where I can close my eyes and meditate (or, more often, drool) without attracting much attention.

I’m using my clarity after meditation as the protected time to complete any creative work I have for the day. Mornings are better. Sleep is good. I’m getting slightly less reflexively pissed off at the irksome gut prods of day-to-day life in New York City.

It’s around this time I notice I can’t meditate in an Uber, which is still pretty new to NYC.

Year 2:

November 16, 2016
East Village, NY

I’m reading about “Greater Orderliness of Brain Functioning” and EEG coherence. Charts from the 70s show that for a 2-week meditator, coherence increases during meditation, while a 2-year meditator maintains coherence even after meditation ends.

This is all very… scientific. I’m still uneasy with the ‘religious’ side of the practice, looking for something more cerebral, less granola-scented.

And I still can’t meditate in an Uber.

Year 3:

November 9, 2017
Woodstock, NY

I take a car to a cabin in the woods on top of a remote mountain in the dead of winter (ooer.) I finally have time to sit and read Sam Harris’ “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion,” a book I’d purchased and left untouched on my nightstand for two years. It was like someone hacked into my brain and addressed every question I had. This book became my Sword of Gryffindor in key form, unlocking doors I’d been kicking at for years.

With it, I finally let go of Transcendental Meditation and shifted to Vipassana and Dzogchen—a shift I’d been on the brink of for months. My creative output booms for about four months while it’s cold out. For some reason, it subsides when the sun comes back.

Year 4:

June 4, 2018
Hudson, NY

My creative output is insane. I’m churning out New Yorker cartoons, illustrations for MAD, and caricature commissions— I think I’ve become more creatively productive than any year of my life. I’ve developed the ability to recognize thoughts as a modification of my condition; the unstructured and luminous clarity of awareness, where I can drop all my efforts to try and control my thoughts, and just observe them passing by. I don’t identify with any thoughts I don’t want to. The space left allows great ideas to bubble up in their place.

My mindfulness practice has cured my worst FOMO addiction. I even flirt with the idea of deleting all my social media accounts but settle for removing the apps from my phone.
(Editors note: I did end up doing this in 2021)

Year 5:

June 5, 2019
East Village, NY

Mindfulness has become the favorite buzzword of every tea and yoga brand. Yet, there’s a depth beyond the commercialized veneer. Study upon study on mindfulness show it modulates pain, mitigates anxiety and depression, and improves cognitive function, even changing gray matter density in regions linked to memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.

My mind is clearer, my thoughts more organized—almost like a brain defrag

Year 6:

September 20, 2019
East Village, NY

Sam Harris released an app called Waking Up last year. I’d already tried Headspace, Insight Timer, and Calm, but Sam’s app, especially the ‘Theory’ section, sparked a new level of understanding for me. I dove in mind-first.

I still can’t meditate in a fucking Uber. Or a Lyft.

Year 7:

March 20, 2020
East Village, NY

Let’s not talk about this year, shall we?

Year 8:

March 21, 2021
Chelsea, NY

I publish a piece for the New Yorker with my pal Ginny Hogan called “Wrong Ways to Meditate“. It goes viral. I begin to dig deeper into how to use my art to share meditation insights.

I’m designing the podcast artwork for Ricky Gervais and Sam Harris’ show “Absolutely Mental.” Then, in July, I become the official illustrator for the Conversations section of the Waking Up app. There are moments when I feel as if my work is directly intertwined with my journey into meditation. Kind of surreal to be working for Sam. I’m back to meditating every day after a… er… difficult year.

I delete all of my social media accounts.2

Read about the process of creating the portraits here.

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Bathe Yourself In Boredom

I have a confession to make: Something I realised I was doing wrong this year (aside from misusing the word brat) was filling every moment of time with doing something.

Until recently, I was that person at the gym who couldn't bear the sound of their own footsteps. You know the type— perpetually connected to a podcast feed like it's an IV drip of derpamine, frantically tapping through Angry Birds on the subway as if their life depended on toppling those precarious pig fortresses.

The crown jewel of my constant-stimulation addiction? My trusty AirPods, which had practically fused to my ear canals. I'd developed an almost Pavlovian response to silence, reaching for them with the desperation of a caffeine addict at 6 AM. My brain had become a 24/7 drive-through for other people's thoughts, with my own ideas reduced to sleeping in the parking lot.

The thing about mainlining content is that your brain never gets a moment to digest it all. Think about it: when was the last time you just... sat there? No Netflix background noise while coloring your art, no podcast during your shower (where your phone teeters precariously on the sink), no music drowning out the mundane symphony of everyday life.

Cal Newport dropped a nugget in The New York Times that hit uncomfortably close to home. He talks about "embracing boredom" in his book Digital Minimalism, suggesting that our brains are essentially turning into stimulation junkies. Every time we whip out our phones at the first hint of boredom, we're training our minds to be as focused as a puppy in a tennis ball factory.

The math was brutal: 90% of my waking hours were spent with something streaming into my ears, and the remaining 10% was my poor brain gasping for air, trying to make sense of it all. Sleep wasn't even a refuge— my dreams were probably podcasts at that point.

Here's where the plot twist comes in: I started meditating again. Not because I suddenly became enlightened but because I needed to prove to myself that I could sit still without reaching for my phone like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic.

Boredom isn't the enemy we think it is. It’s essential.

It's more like that slightly awkward friend who always ends up having the best stories. When you're not constantly drowning out your thoughts with Tim Ferriss's latest life hack or whatever Netflix show everyone's bingeing, your mind starts making these wild connections. It's like your brain finally gets to speak up at the dinner table after being shushed for months.

Take it from someone who learned the hard way: creativity needs silence, like a plant needs space to grow. Do you know why your best ideas come in the shower? It's not the magical properties of your shampoo— it's because it's one of the few moments when you're not force-feeding your brain someone else's content and your conscious mind is doing something repetitive; it allows your subconscious to sing.

So here's my radical suggestion for you:

- Taking a walk? Let your thoughts be the podcast.

- Taking a bath? Make it a #ThoughtBath instead of a scrolling session.

- Taking a baby? Don't take babies.
(Seriously, return any babies you've “borrowed”.)

I've started deliberately scheduling blocks of nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It feels weird and uncomfortable at first, like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet. But the results? Mind-blowing. Those empty spaces have produced more creative ideas than any "productive" time I could have scheduled.

To all my fellow creatives out there: try it. Embrace the void. Let your brain be bored. You might be surprised at what emerges when you stop filling every moment with noise. Trust me, your brain will thank you for the vacation from being everyone else's podcast player.

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Related:

For the past 9 years, I’ve run the NO-vember challenge every year. Basically, I teach you how to say NO to one thing every day of November with tips and tools up the wazoo. You can sign up for free below:

NO-vember

"All You Need to No." Tips to help you get better at saying NO.

By Jason Chatfield

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The first time I was published in the New Yorker was the most amazing thrill. A career highlight. Nothing will beat that feeling of seeing my drawing and idea printed in the pages of a magazine I’d been reading since I stole copies from my Dentist’s office in Perth. (Sorry, Dr Farrugia).

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But there is an aspect to our trade with which every cartoonist or stand-up comic is intimately familiar, and that is the solitude of being a ‘one-man band’. For the highest of highs (rare) and the lowest of lows (frequent), there is nobody to share it with outside of an on-looking spouse or a flatulent dog at your feet.

The Jan 26, 2021, issue of the New Yorker (below) prompted me to write this post about teaming up with a fellow comedy writer to write cartoons since it may well be the record for the most publicly acknowledged* cartoonist duos in an issue of the New Yorker.
*(Gag writers never used to be credited. I’ll explain**.)

In 2018, after 15 years of freelancing as a cartoonist and having been published many times flying solo, I started collaborating with my friend and fellow comic, Scott Dooley, to share the frequent anxiety (and sporadic joy) of submitting New Yorker cartoons.

I hadn’t done this before and immediately found it so enlightening. Watching one of my own ideas go through the filter of somebody else’s comedy brain-wiring and come out the other end with a lateral tag or alt. punch I’d never have considered myself was addictive, and it suddenly clicked as to why there were such things as ‘writers rooms’. (I’m slow on the uptake.)

For years I had bumped into Scott in New York doing gigs around the city, and every time we saw each other we said we ought to grab a drink and talk shop. Inevitably, life, the road, work and everything else just got in the way, and we never hung out. That was until one day when he flicked me an idea for a joke on Facebook.

I thought it was very funny.

This was at the height of people seemingly Instagramming their every meal. The cartoon was of a guy on death row being read his last rites by a priest, Instagramming his final meal: A captionless cartoon (my favourite kind). I drew it up and sent it to him, then forgot all about it.

Years later, I was cleaning out my studio and unearthed the drawing. I mailed him the original with a thank you note for the laugh, and it sparked an idea from Scott: What if we caught up for a beer to throw some jokes around?

We caught up at a local bar and talked comedy for most of the time, but once in a while, one of us would have an idea for a stand-up bit, a MAD joke, or a New Yorker cartoon that we sort of threw around and punched-up until it had some legs.

This became something of a routine— meeting up on a Monday night at a bar in the East Village and throwing jokes around while we pored through that week’s edition of the New Yorker. We would inevitably utter the question, “Is there something in…”

The bartender was a fan of the New Yorker and could be heard chortling to himself as he eavesdropped on our morbid japery. That gave Scott the idea that this process might make a good podcast.

The process of having a live writers’ meeting —sitting down with loose scraps of cardboard, cocktail napkins and torn-off sheets of yellow legal pad and turning them into pitch-worthy cartoons— was as elusive as it was messy and funny. Nobody’s process is exactly the same, which I think is why it’s always the first question in any cartoonist interview (ie. “How do you come up with your ideas?")

Scott and I have a similar enough sense of humour that we developed a quick shorthand, but we also have different enough sensibilities and areas of specialty that we’re able to enhance each other’s ideas. Overall, we just agree on what’s funny. (—and probably more importantly; what isn’t.)

Is There Something In This?

#58: God's Arrest Warrant

Subscribe, rate, and please leave us a funny ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review wherever you listen to podcasts…

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2 years ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Is There Something In This?

Before long, Scott and I had sold a handful of cartoons to the magazine’s print and online editions, and we were recording live episodes in front of paid audiences with special celebrity guests, including Roy Wood Jr, Ronny Chieng and Bob Mankoff (Former long-time Cartoon Editor of the New Yorker).

Trying to keep up a weekly podcast in the midst of other work, travel, (ie. trying to record episodes between work commitments, travel between New York and Australia, Scott having a child etc.) is a tricky thing, so for a while, we put the podcast on hiatus. Note: We still write cartoons together all the time and put out episodes here.

Years after collaborating with Scott, I came to the realisation that almost all of my favourite movies, comic books, TV shows, albums, podcasts and comedy writing were almost entirely by creative partnerships…

• Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld (Seinfeld)

• Stephen Merchant & Ricky Gervais (The Office, Extras etc.)

• Key & Peele

• Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer (Broad City)

• French & Saunders (Ab Fab)

• Tom Gammill & Max Pross (Simpsons, Seinfeld, Letterman, Curb)

• Hale & Pace

• Harry Bliss and Steve Martin

• Mitchell & Webb

• Martin & Molloy

• Ben Folds & Nick Hornby (Lonely Avenue)

• D.B. Weiss and David Benioff (Game of Thrones …until season 8)

• Stan Lee & Steve Ditko (Spider-man)

• Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks

• George Burns & Gracie Allen

• Jack Burns & George Carlin

I could keep going…

To be clear, I’m not putting Scott and me in the same league as these lowly amateurs, but there really was something unique about the work from these partnerships that really resonated with me. They were able to create things so unique that either writer couldn’t have produced it in solitude.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about having collaborators lately.

Cartoonists having writers isn’t a new thing. Sure, you have gag-writers for comic strips, and the regular comic strip duos like Parker & Hart (B.C. & The Wizard of Id), Scott & Borgman(Zits), Wayno & Pirraro (Bizarro, post-2009), Kirkman & Scott (Baby Blues), Hoest & Reiner (The Lockhorns, etc.) Parker & Kelly (Dustin) and dozens more, but over at the New Yorker cartoonists having gag writers used to be de rigueur. From the early days, New Yorker cartoonists used to be sent gags to draw rather than write their own.

When I asked New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin for clarification on this recently, he shared the following:

”Buying ideas goes back to the very beginning of the magazine. I believe the earliest payment was $15.00 per idea then. By the time the New Yorker bought a couple of ideas from me: the first in the late 1970s (drawn by Whitney Darrow, Jr.) and another in the early 1980s (drawn by Charles Addams) I was paid $150.00 per idea (so I think we can safely assume the payments for ideas slowly slid upward through the decades (is that a real thing? sliding upwards?).

Here is the cartoon idea I submitted:

And here is the published version by Darrow.

“There were also several writers contracted by the magazine (Herb Valen was one). Their payment must surely have been somewhat higher than the ideas lifted out of the slush pile.

From the ‘30s and ‘40s, many of the artists/cartoonists did do some of their own jokes, but they were more like the team you have, where you have someone like Peter Arno of very high skill (or the art editor at that time, Jim Gerity) who was a radio gag-writer, who supplied all of (Peter) Arno's jokes. All of George Price's jokes were supplied so you could get this incredibly high artistic talent matched with high gag talent.

In the '60s the ethos became more singer-songwriter; the person has to do the whole thing.”

I still have a lot of my own solo cartoons published all over the place, but whenever a cartoon that is co-created by Scott is shown anywhere (social media, published in print or online) I insist his name appear in the credit. This isn’t the tradition, but I don’t want to have the ideas published unless we get to enjoy the success together.

Sometimes a cartoonist will put the collaborator’s signature on the cartoon above/beside their own which I’ve seen lately with some fun collaborations between New Yorker cartoonists like Ellis J. Rosen, Joe Dator, Liam Walsh, Bob Eckstein and many more. (Editor’s Note: These days I just add Scott’s name to the signature.)

One of the more recent and famous New Yorker collaborations is that of comedy legend Steve Martin and the prolific Harry Bliss. In a recent article in the magazine (and a slew of other interviews promoting their book), Martin & Bliss talked about their process of collaboration... in cartoon form.

(Further reading via Maslin’s Ink Spills blog:)

**“Throughout The New Yorker’s history, no ideaman’s/collaborator’s name appeared on the work alongside the artist’s name. When the magazine opened up its Table Of Contents in the issue of March 22, 1969, listing its writers & artists, readers did not see ideamen co-credited with the artists. Mischa Richter, for instance, continued to work closely with his long-time ideaman, Harald Bakken***, but only Richter’s name appeared in the magazine’s Table Of Contents. Although a small handful of cartoonists continued collaborating, collaborations weren’t noted on The Table of Contents until 1994, when Liza Donnelly and this cartoonist collaborated for a color strip about a visit to “Beatlefest” in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Another married cartoonist couple, Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky Crumb received co-credit the following year for the first of a handful of pieces (color spreads) they contributed.“

Keep reading about more cartoonist collaborations here.

All in all, I always encourage creative artists to collaborate and explore with like-minded friends and colleagues. Cartooning is a unique field in that despite us all technically being in competition, we’re all friendly and encouraging with each other.

If you’re considering getting a project done but part of it seems beyond your own skill set, don’t be afraid to share the load! You get to enjoy the process together, which is the most important part — and if it ends in great success, it’s a bonus.

I love hearing from people about their influences. Post your favourite duos in the comments!

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Back in May, I heard Adam Moss on Pivot discussing his new book “The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing”. It was the epitome of everything I’ve been exploring here on

Process Junkie

. I snapped it up and read it with great interest over the ensuing months…

Buy it Now

Open/Closed States of Creation

The “open state” of the creative process, allowing mistakes and iterations to unfold, is discussed at length, as well as the crucial second part of that process: the “closed, definitive” state, where you know when to end the iterations and ‘ship’. That second part is almost certainly more challenging than the first— one could iterate and play for years without ever landing on anything final (and many do). The only reason we’ve ever seen the greatest works of art in history is that the artist knew when to let it go out into the world.

Seeing the ugly back end of creation is beautiful.

I haven’t seen a book that truly delves into the minutiae of the creative germs, which eventually become incredible pieces of art. I love seeing the doodles and rough sketches, scrawlings and scribblings of the brain-dump stage of creation before something develops. It’s something one has to be brave to share, so I’m grateful Moss was able to coax these gems from the annals of the studios and office drawers of the incredible minds he interviewed.

Roz Chast

An obvious favourite chapter for me was the inimitable Roz Chast, fellow New Yorker cartoonist and world champion kvetcher. I loved her box of ‘Idea Germs’. I have the exact same thing in my studio and dip into it when it comes time to work on ideas each week’s batch of cartoons (or podcast).