Bumper Sticker Vandalism

and other creative pursuits

I’ve been reflecting on my foray into comics and cartooning, and how it came together kind of suddenly but organically over the past year. When I first started to make comics for Daydronk, it was just the natural step of taking what I was learning in a poetry comics class at the time and seeing how I could use it in the personal, for-fun work I was doing with my newsletter. I quickly took to it as a medium for getting across those pesky ideas that are harder to say.

Here’s an example that started in my sketchbook. A few months ago, I saw this bumper sticker on a car after leaving a yoga class, and it pretty much cancelled out any zen I had gotten from the class. The whole drive home I’d contemplated how perverse I found the bumper sticker to be – that people could want civil rights for an unborn fetus, and in the same breath, want to revoke those rights should that fetus grow up to be a trans person.

No actual cars or bumper stickers were harmed in the making of this comic.

I live in Iowa, one of many American states in which trans rights are being attacked regularly. When I saw the bumper sticker, there had just recently been more news about anti-trans laws in Iowa, so it was fresh on my mind. I am not one to deface property (see this previous post about being raised not to upset people). But I found a bit of relief in re-working the bumper sticker in my sketchbook.

Here is the original sketch:

Despite this being a polarizing topic (whatever), I thought it’d be interesting to include this week, because I love seeing other artists’ processes.

I am still dabbling with different styles and discovering new ways of comic-making that I enjoy. I am very much in the learning phase (and I learn by doing).

For this week’s comic, the “final” image ended up being a good bit different from the initial sketch. But for last week’s, it actually didn’t stray much at all. You can check out that post here, and compare with the sketch below.

Not many changes at all - just some stray lines cleaned up.

I’ll leave you with some other fun(ky) sketchbook pages from this week.

Til’ next week!