I read a great article by cartoonist John P. Weiss called “This is the Secret to Your Creative Success” where he talks about different cartoon styles – sketchy and clean – Krazy Kat vs Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.

He vacillates between the two. I try to do that but sort of fall in between. I want to be sketchy with my cartoons, but I end up being clean, with a bit of sketchyness in them.

The reason it hit home with me is that I’ve been thinking of doing a new style of comic – a single panel but possibly black and white and sort of rough. I still have plans for my comic strip, but this comic panel would be a once-in-a-while thing.

I sort of did something like that here with Morning Joe. It’s not my usual style. It was almost drawing with my eyes closed. Even the words are sort of sketchy. This HQ Trivia cartoon is rough, too.

This Cross Fit comic is so much cleaner. And this is my style that I usually go with. I want to go with even a rougher style than the Morning Joe one but I can’t find any samples because I don’t allow myself to do that.

Here is the article by John, think it’s a great read. I don’t think anyone has ever talked about this before.