A little bit of History

I thought we could do with a tiny break from the regular strip and walk a little backwards. I've been feeling very nostalgic this week.
I don't have too many of my earliest doodles so I'll just jump about randomly, as always.
This tiger one is from 1993, I think. A friend of my dad had drawn it for a greeting card and I recreated it on a larger sheet of paper. I still like it enough not to notice any imperfections or errors. I figured I'd put it up since there are a lot of "Save the Tiger" messages going around. The Tiger is definitely in my top ten list of animals. And this was when I had the patience to ink out my drawings.

I went through this Disney mania phase when I drew everything Disney. I have an entire folder filled with scenes from almost every Disney movie ever made.You'll notice that I actually spent time shading the picture. I could have scanned more of my favourite ones but since my scanner's decided to behave badly, I decided to stick with as few as possible.

In school, I drew a lot of characters that I liked or came across. I even have one of that Cheetos character. I drew the Ninja Turtles a lot. A whole lot. I can't believe I even titled them all.

As most moody teenagers, I had my celebrity smitten phase. I was in love with Jim Carrey. And we couldn't even get posters of him in this Country. So I had to make my own. This was on my wall for a while and I suppose that's why it's turned brownish. No, let's call it sepia.

This was an attempt at Prince William (no comments, please). I think I gave up doing real people after these.

In fact, the moody teenage years left me so sullen and emo that I gave up sketching completely. Then I went to college and hated life more. That's when the gifts God gives you come back to smack you back to your senses and help pull you together. I'd been out of touch for a while so I didn't know what to draw. So I drew myself drawing.

Then I went on to draw more animals. Realistic ones. Here are my favourite subjects (I'll put up the horses next time). You'll notice a shark silently swim into my life. I drew this out of a Reader's digest book of Sharks that we have and I read almost everyday while growing up.

These inspired me to doodle during classes and in-between when I felt alone or confused. There were all these random characters, of God knows what species, that kept me company when I didn't want any.

The anthropomorphic shark looks so horribly primitive and undeveloped. When he wouldn't go away and I kept doodling him and thought I should maybe do a strip, the other character was originally a boy. You know, like Calvin, Charlie Brown, Christopher Robin, Rob Wilco... Exactly. Too many boys.

 

  

(Someone dropped my sketchbook into a bucket of water so the quality of these are not entirely because of the scanner.)

Anyway, you know the rest - shark character shows up on my regular blog everytime I don't have the words to write. It becomes more popular than me. Goes on to get its own blog. I decide to piggy-back for the fame. The end.  

ps - Yes, I do hold the pencil that way or in a way that the pencil is perpendicular to the paper. I get asked that a lot.