I don’t normally stand this way. But, when I do, it’s a funky feeling. It feels just like falling off a bike. It feels like rolling around in a puddle of slime… you think you’re going to fall, but you never fall.
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NOTE: Frank wanted me to mention this. Starting today, he will no longer be offering the SQUIRRELOSOPHY panels up for auction on eBay. Instead, he will be offering each daily panel for sale (unless otherwise specified) on this website. Just look for the button to buy underneath each image. If the button is there, it’s available. If not, well, you get the idea.
If there is an image before today that you may be interested in purchasing send frank an email to check its availability.
Getting something complicated (a philosophy, a direction, a sandwich order) completely across in nothing more than a phrase is an art. It’s also extremely hard…especially with the sandwiches I tend to eat. Phrases are what “drive” bumper stickers. Anything more than a few choice words and you’ll get rear ended. Nowadays, that might not be the case. After all, why bother reading the anti-someone sticker on the car in front of you when there are three text messages waiting, practically melting your phone…needing your immediate response… which invariably is “LOL”.
Don’t be fooled… text messages are bumper stickers. A text message is obviously more immediate, but it has the shelf life of an ice cream cone on a barbeque pit. Bumper stickers last longer… if you don’t believe me, put one on your car. Then, try and take it off.
I think I’ve made my point.
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NOTE: Frank wanted me to mention this. Starting today, he will no longer be offering the SQUIRRELOSOPHY panels up for auction on eBay. Instead, he will be offering each daily panel for sale (unless otherwise specified) on this website. Just look for the button to buy underneath each image. If the button is there, it’s available. If not, well, you get the idea.
If there is an image before today that you may be interested in purchasing send frank an email to check its availability.
I always heard: “You need to stand up straight. Fix that posture!”
Actually I didn’t. Most of the time I only heard: “Hey that squirrel is going through our garbage!” or “Hey, that squirrel is eating all the seed out of the bird feeder!” Maybe if I had the opportunity to worry about my posture, things could have been different.
Although, I’m pretty sure I still would have stolen that bird seed.
I talk and write about myself all the time. I am my favorite subject. All writing, be it fiction or non-fiction, in some way is autobiographical. To be honest, for the longest time I thought autobiographical writing meant writing about yourself in cars. I was a silly squirrel back in the day.
The danger with writing about yourself is drifting into self-censorship. You get to a point where there’s something that you just don’t want to touch, or you tweak it a little, or you flat out lie about it. If you can’t be honest about yourself, what makes you think that someone else can be completely honest with you? Lie enough to yourself and eventually you’ll completely forget who you are. For some that might be exactly the plan. If that’s not your plan then stop lying.
At this point, my whole existence is a matter of public record. I could lie… I could fib… I could even deny. But why bother?
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NOTE: Frank wanted me to mention this. Starting today, he will no longer be offering the SQUIRRELOSOPHY panels up for auction on eBay. Instead, he will be offering each daily panel for sale (unless otherwise specified) on this website. Just look for the button to buy underneath each image. If the button is there, it’s available. If not, well, you get the idea.
If there is an image before today that you may be interested in purchasing send frank an email to check its availability.
So what is the point of being different or being the same? What do you actually get out of trailblazing or just following the trail? I know that life is too short… I REALLY know that… it’s not like squirrels are like those giant turtles that live to be 150. Days go by without being influenced by me all the time. For a while there I didn’t like that. Everyday had to have some sort of mark on it by me. Now? If I mark it, I mark it…if not, well, then I’ll throw two marks up tomorrow.
NOTE: Frank wanted me to mention this. Starting today, he will no longer be offering the SQUIRRELOSOPHY panels up for auction on eBay. Instead, he will be offering each daily panel for sale (unless otherwise specified) on this website. Just look for the button to buy underneath each image. If the button is there, it’s available. If not, well, you get the idea.
If there is an image before today that you may be interested in purchasing send frank an email to check its availability.
Frank had something he needed to get off his chest… this is re-posted from bobthesquirrel.com
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It has taken me a long time to get to where I am… wherever ‘where’ is. I’ve gone through a few forests of paper and pencils, swimming pools full of ink and rejection after rejection after rejection to definitively know that… I do not know. On a normal week, I draw a minimum of 20-25 cartoons. That’s not including sketches, separate side projects or the ones I end up trashing… that’s 20 from pencil to ink to Photoshop. So give or take a few hundred, i draw about 1,040 cartoons per year. The economic law of supply vs. demand says that if the supply is high, the demand is low… meaning that the market value of the supply is low.
Does this mean that the value of my drawings is low? I am not suggesting that I turn out more material than anyone else… far from it. I know I don’t. If anyone out there knows me personally, you know I am not one to boast or brag. (Besides, who would really care other than another cartoonist about my output volume?) I’m sure there are cartoonists out there that routinely get 20-25 finished cartoons done in an afternoon.
This is what approximately one year of daily Bob the Squirrel strips (left) and about a year of Sunday Bob the Squirrel panels (right) look like in my well ventilated storage facility.This is what 15 months of SQUIRRELOSOPHY panels look like…keeping in mind that nearly 60 panels have been sold.
There was a time when I myself put little value into what I do. Like… two days ago. Once the drawing was done, scanned and sent, it was out of my mind and I stopped thinking about it. You really have to. If you stop to dwell on each piece (being a daily cartoonist) you will fall so far behind you might as well be standing still. That mindset lent itself to me not caring about the finished product. It wasn’t until recently I felt the need to re-examine this process… like… two days ago. And all it took was kinda sorta hearing my own words coming out of someone’s mouth for me to change.
I was asked for a copy of something I worked very hard on. No thought from the other party of any kind of compensation for me and my work. My ‘reward’ came in knowing that my work would be used on someone’s project. I should be honored that they thought my work was good enough to ask for. Really? Honored? I almost wish I wasn’t asked and they just stole it. That way, I wouldn’t have been so dumbstruck by the audacity asking me point blank if they could have it took.
I assume you know how this story ended. This person did not get what they were asking for. In their not getting what they wanted, I got something I didn’t think I needed. It was another lever of pride in what I do… that no matter what, there IS value in what I create. If the cartoonist/illustrator/artist can’t see the value inherent in his/her own work, why should anyone else think or see value in it?
I had this feeling once. I developed it while working on my MFA. As grad students, we were constantly poked and prodded by critiques to explain why we did this or why we did that. Why would you use that mark to express that feeling? Why that color? Why that choice? Why that choice? By the end of my graduate work, I was a bear defending its young. The day before graduation, the faculty gathered my class together for an exit strategy meeting. We went around the room and told each other the one thing that surprised us about the program and what it did for us as artists. I said, “I am surprised at how deeply, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ like I have fallen in love with my line…the mark I make on a piece of paper which defines me…I would do anything for that line, defend it with every ounce of blood in my body. Everything else can be taken from me but that line is mine all mine.”
Okay, I know… it’s a little corny… but after those two hard years of work, in a constant defensive stance on my work, that’s what I felt. It has been three years now since I made that little statement. Obviously, some of that passion was lost since… in the day-to-day struggle to get new work out there, new eyeballs on that work and seeking new eyeballs for the work you have done and the work you will do. It took that person asking me for something to get that passion back.
It has been said that something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
Considering all that I’ve paid in getting to this point, I’d say it’s worth a whole lot.
Yeah, yeah… I know. If I lost a roll of invisible tape why did I get so relentless in trying to find it? Yes, it would have been easier for me to tell Frank, “Hey, lost the invisible tape… and because I can’t see it, I can’t seem to find it. So, why don’t you take your Bob drawing carcass down to the dollar store and pick me up a case?”
I COULD have done that. Not too sure my order would have been carried out, but I would have made a point, right?
Nah.
I kept searching because it bothered me. I didn’t want to get the short end of a preventable situation. After a while, I didn’t even really need the tape. I ended up using a stapler. Of course, I ended up losing that too… thankfully, it wasn’t an invisible stapler.
The point of all of this is this: Jut remember where you put your tape. That is all.
I put my foot in my mouth an awful lot… both actually and figuratively. Toes aren’t usually at the top of a culinary delicacy list…especially when they’re your own. So, I figured since I’m always here, it’s easier to start a new habit than it is to break an old one. This way I’m fighting cavities and being a jerk at the same time!
This is Wednesday… otherwise known as hump day…because it’s basically the middle of the week and from today you head down (or up) towards the weekend. Yeah.
I’m not really giving up… well, I am but I’m not. I’m giving up, with a catch. You see, I’m out there everyday…scratching for attention…scratching for an itch or two and yet, the only thing I seem to be doing is scratching that itch. That in and of itself is fine… but, there are days that I don’t have an itch. If I don’t have an itch, I wouldn’t necessarily NEED to itch.
I’m busting my peanuts against the wall and all I get out of it is some exercise and some empty shells.
Have you ever felt that way? No, you probably go the easy way and get the nuts already shelled. Maybe I should do that. Maybe if my world were filled with easier peanuts, I’d be happier. I’d be able to stop using every itty-bitty single out of place thing as an excuse and just move ahead. Keep on moving forward. Without the shell. Without giving up or giving up with a catch.
Then again, why bother? Why go out of my way when I stand a better than average chance of losing my way along the way? I guess that’s where the shells come in handy. If I ate the shelled peanuts, all I’d have was the peanuts. But, by eating the unshelled peanuts, I get the peanuts AND a way of marking my trail… so as long as I have shells, I can find my way back… I can always remember where I came from.
Unless of course Frank or Lezley sweeps my trail up. We’ll leave that one for another rant. Let’s concentrate on one breakthough at a time.
