There's never been a moment where I sat down at my drawing board and thought, 'I'm a pro!'
Most of my work - including everything from my own comics to the covers I've drawn for 'The New Yorker' - is the result of taking some personal experience or observation and then fictionalizing it to a degree.
Even though I'm usually not conscious of it, I think drawing has always served a sort of therapeutic purpose in my life. There's something about the process of translating the messy chaos of real life into a clean, simple drawing that's always been comforting to me.
'Drawn & Quarterly' has always given me complete editorial control over my books and comics, so any decision about what to include or exclude from the book was my own.
Most normal boys, as they're growing up, they - in order to become attractive, they might, you know, get good at sports or join a rock band or develop good social skills, and for some reason, I thought that drawing comic books might be my route.
I've been painting and drawing fish since I was very young. My mom found old pictures I did when I was around 6 or 7 of all these sharks and scuba diver looking back, a big ship, throwing a harpoon. There was already a message within what I saw.
The people I feel inspired around draw pictures, they make paintings.
Drawing and visual arts was kinda my first passion going all the way back to when I was a kid. I always felt like it was what I was supposed to do - but in reality I don't know that I ever had the skill to make it a profession.
I'm so lucky in my life, but I'm so unlucky in my abilities. I love art so much, but I'm unable to produce it. I can't even draw a dog that doesn't look like a horse.
If it's taught well, art really is important to kids early on. It helps children develop language and allows them to see themselves in a way that isn't right or wrong, because if they draw an animal with five legs instead of four, nobody's criticizing them for it.
