Summer in Hell’s Kitchen is in FULL SWING! (So is the smell of hot dogs and shawarma.)
Hey again, friend.
Welcome to Issue #439 of New York Cartoons. As I’m writing this, Morris is sitting right behind my laptop, glaring at me with his big, googly eyes… He’s already eaten breakfast and gone for his morning walk, pooped twice, and yet he has decided that the ottoman is the place he will now sit and make sexy eye contact with me until I hit ‘Publish’. To that end, I’m going to just get on with it before he starts doing a Miles Davis impersonation from his butt…
Someone was asking me when I got the idea for the “Draw Me Anything”live stream segment I do here, and I had to scratch my head and confess I didn’t know. So I went back through my notes to find when I had drunkenly tapped the idea down in the Notes app on my phone…
…It was 11 years ago! If ever there were a record for “Time between having an idea and executing it.” I’d be the World Champ. Thanks, ADHD! You’re the gift that keeps on giving.
With that said, I’m giddy to draw and talk to someone whose work I’ve been reading for years, and whose books changed my whole attitude to creative work:
Today @ 1pm with Austin Kleon: ‘A Writer Who Draws.’
is the New York Times bestselling author of a trilogy of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going. You can find more ridiculously impressive stuff about him here.
I’m a fan. The man has turned creativity into a sustainable career, and I can’t wait to talk to him later today!
For a very special episode of Draw Me Anything, I’ll get to talk to my good friend and one of my all-time favourite cartoonists, Ann Telnaes, this Friday at 11am. Ann’s had quite a year already, leaving the Washington Post in January before taking the leap to publishing solely on Substack and traveling the world to talk about press freedom.
You can find out more about Ann in my “Someone You Might Like” post about her from a couple of years ago:
This week’s Sketchbookisa combination of dog sketches— from the rough draft of the book cover to some recent sketches I’ve drawn of people’s dogs in the new book. If you have a friend who would like a copy with their dog sketched inside the cover, let me know!
I’m excited to attend the Animal Care Centers of NYC’s 30th birthday gala in TriBeCa this week! The ACC is the city’s only open-admissions animal sheltering organization, dedicated to ending animal homelessness across all five boroughs. Find out more about their epic work at nycacc.org
posted a throwback to a photoshoot we did back when I still lived in Melbourne. Alan is one of the best comedian photographers around (yes, that’s a thing). It was nice to revisit this one. You can read more in his post below.
I wanted to work out a way of including Jason and Ginger in the same picture. When I arrived at Jason’s place, I thought we could write on some glass. The problem was we were 3 stories up and I couldn’t get outside the windows. THEN I saw the bathroom, and the light was good, so the shower screen was our new canvas.
It worked out okay, but the low light meant I couldn’t get both in focus. Ginger in focus worked well, as did the other image, which is at the top, backlighting both Jason and Ginger using the triangle window to centralise the composition. The exposure was based on the sky. I wanted that to still hold detail, and the light to give some pops of colour.
If you’re new here, or you haven’t had a moment to wander back through the archives of profound genius I’ve shared up to this point, take a peek at the following scribblings:
i giggled at the DMA note. totally something i would do.