Update From Here, Two Interesting Things, Top Cartoons
August 30, 2020
In This Issue:
Updates From Here
Two Interesting Things
Return of Hedger Corp
Top Cartoons
Updates From Here
Back to School
My kids started online school this month. Kate, in 12th grade, attended from her bedroom. Claire, in 9th grade, sat with me at the kitchen table the first day…
The next day, she sat FAR away from me.
Our first week was full of fun moments like this:
There was a lot going on, and I ended up making this cartoon:
Things are getting better now, and I’ve been especially impressed with all the teachers. It can’t be easy for them, and they are handling everything with grace and patience.
If you’re involved in online school as a kid, parent, teacher or administrator, I’m sending you my best wishes. This is definitely a time for flexibility, empathy, patience and (where possible) humor.
On many days, you might feel like one or more of these characters, and just know you’re not alone:
I’ll do my best to keep bringing humor into your days, and hopefully that will help too. Hang in there, everyone!
Drink & Doodle Facebook Live
I was a guest on cartoonist Brian Gordon’s “Drink & Doodle” show on Facebook. Brian is the artist behind Fowl Language Comics. He’s great, and I had a lot of fun talking with him and fellow guest Alison Wong of New Mom Comics.
It’s an hour-long recording, during which we draw random things and talk about cartooning. Click here or below to watch!
Brian’s one rule is that we can’t reference anything. For example, if we’re drawing a horse, we can’t look up a picture of a horse, we just have to draw it from memory. This is especially hard for me because I’m ALWAYS looking things up.
Here, I’ll draw a train, a bike and a giraffe just from memory.
Sorry you had to see that.
OK, well if I go on his show again, I’ll give you a heads up on social media and my website so you can request things for us to draw!
Two Interesting Things
Get this: There’s an artist named Pete Rush who creates huge art pieces on Australian beaches. He works with natural materials, like driftwood, flax and seaweed. When you see his work, you might think he uses wire, string and a TON of glue sticks. Wrong. He ONLY uses natural material.
So while I'm doing this on a Saturday:
Pete's creating this:
His work is really interesting, and the photography is incredible. You can see more of it here in this article in the Guardian. I don’t think there’s a paywall up, so you should be able to access the article. You can also just Google him. Here are a couple more teaser pictures for you...
Amazing.
Meanwhile, up in Burlington, Vermont, an inventor named Matty Benedetto is also hard at work. Have you heard of this guy? He runs the “Unnecessary Inventions” website.
Basically, he creates solutions to problems that don’t exist, and I could NOT LOVE THIS MORE. As you probably know from my Hedger Corp saga, I do enjoy nonsense.
Here are two of his many inventions (images from his Instagram page).
I encourage you to check out his Instagram page or website for some laughs. For more, here’s an article about how he got into all of this.
Now excuse me while I go modify my jeans to create that giant pocket above. I bet I could even fit our dog in that pocket.
Return of Hedger Corp
Speaking of nonsense, Hedger Corp has started up again! I’ve posted three new “chapters” this month. Here are the links if you're interested:
You can also follow along on my Hedger Corp Instagram page.
My husband Jack walked in the other day when I was taking a picture of this scene:
I turned to him and said, "Oh, hey."
“What's going on?” he asked.
“There are some issues in the office,” I replied. Jack shook his head and walked out of the room.
My family needs to come to terms with the fact that I’m the CEO of a thriving business called Hedger Corp. I have a responsibility to deal with these employees!
Most Popular Cartoons
You can find my cartoons on Instagram, Facebook, and on my website. So follow along!
The following three cartoons were the most popular this month. First, one about little kids. The boy in blue is inspired by an adorable kid who lives on my street.
For this next one, I took an old cartoon about kids and updated it with panels about dogs. Sometimes I like going back and updating older cartoons like this. Fun fact: our dog woke me up exactly this way on the morning I posted this cartoon.
And finally, this cartoon celebrating cats. I always do cartoons about dogs, so I was excited to do one about cats. Sadly, I'm allergic to cats, so we don't have one. Also, our dog JJ would lose his mind if a cat sauntered into our house. At any rate, I relied on my cat-loving friends and readers to help me out with ideas for this one!
It really would be fun to have a cat AND a dog. Maybe someday my dream will come true.
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Supporting the Cartoons
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Lightbulb Update
For those of you who read last month's newsletter, I wanted to report that Claire has NOT created a PowerPoint presentation featuring every lightbulb and light switch in our house. That project stalled out when school began. Now I'm just hoping it dies completely. (Watch one of her teachers say, "OK kids, I want you each to do a presentation about something in your house...")