Sketchbook: Moji, as a Monk

Pencil on paper

One of the blessings of being an artist is that you can stay fairly anonymous if you want to. Some comic artists have relished that privacy. Others have used the internet to connect intimately and personally with their readers, almost becoming characters themselves.

I don't think that's the right approach for CW. I won't have my characters break the fourth wall, or use a cartoon of myself announcing a delayed comic when I'm sick. I don't base my characters on people I know. Even my pet rats, whose antics have given me lots of material for CW's three rat characters, don't appear in the comic directly. The story needs to stand on its own, unobscured by details of my life.

And yet...life has a way of breaking in.

This is Moji. He always had a lot of loose skin that draped around him like a robe, and he tended to loop his tail over himself when sleeping. Surgery gave him a lopsided ear and a funny expression, and he sort of shuffled everywhere, dragging bits of aspen shavings from his cage. He was sweet and lazy and a good friend, and we had to euthanize him this morning, after a brief, brutal battle with cancer. I sketched this trying to remember those little quirks that made him special.

Maybe this character would mean more to my readers if they knew he was based on a real pet. But whether or not they know, readers connect with your art because something meaningful in your life has made it onto the page to echo something in theirs.

Art is an act of gratitude...that we are alive, that we feel.

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