Muskrat Ramblings
Three-Minute Warm-Up Sketches…
posted by John

The idea for the morning warm-up sketches came from my pal, Stacy Curtis. He began posting his morning sketches on his Facebook page and I, frankly, had fallen out of the habit of sketching.

There’s little I emphasize more to kids who want to become cartoonists than “Sketch, sketch, SKETCH!” Well, that and learn to live on Ramen Noodles. Still, “Carry a sketchbook on you at all times” is what I’ll usually tell younglings. And yet, here I was, failing to follow my own very good, solid and sensible advice.

Warming up in the morning has also proven pretty important for the rest of the work I get done that day. It seems to shake the cobwebs out of the old noggin. Some sketches are more successful than others, and none of them are supposed to look GREAT (though I’m thankful when sometimes they look cool). I give myself three minutes to come up with anything: more sketching may follow, but that first one of the day needs to be done in less time than it takes to boil an egg. I doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it just has to be DONE.

Anyway, here’s this morning’s Three-Minute Warm-Up Sketch (which actually took two minutes – leaving me a full minute to, say, boil an egg): CAP’THULHU AMERICA!

There’s probably a line somewhere about him being “the first IA-venger,” but I’m not touching it.

If you click on the image, you SHOULD see a larger version of the drawing.

John