Why do I draw the Geeks? Why do I (still occasionally) make music?
Vaste question.
I’m not going to philosophise on the intrinsic merits of art (hi or lo-brow) or anything like that. Not today. I’m going to stay much closer to the ground.
It ain’t easy to think up and draw one episode a week. If I did this for a living, and had to publish on a daily basis for instance, I would have to considerably widen the scope and especially the cast of the Geeks.
As it stands, the Geeks sometimes
- help me document events in my life
- recount an amusing real-life anecdote
- make fun of some geeky proclivity
I’m glad when on occasion, I get any of the above across in a way that satisfies me.
And that satisfaction usually happens, in my own eyes, when I’m pleased with the formal aspect of an episode: the narrative structure of a strip, the invisible stuff that is implied between two drawings, settling on some visual code (like the computers merging with the boxes), or the occasional quality of a drawing itself.
Like the last drawing in today’s episode.
The three dimensionality suggested by the perspective of the arms of the glasses, the prominence of the nose, overhanging the iPhone, and the very slight curvature of the eye on the left, that suggests the three-dimensionality of the eyeball. Some of it is intended, some of it is sheer luck (hopefully guided by instinct).
That’s what keeps me going.