You could write a comic about this

[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error]

Karl Ove Knausgaard has written a crazy long autobiographical novel – 3,600 pages long, in six volumes. I’ve only read the first two so far. I sometimes get into trouble writing comics about conversations I’ve had, and making judgements that perhaps haven’t been wise, but you wonder what kind of trouble Knausgaard got into for the intense scrutiny he placed on his family and friends.

Sometimes I think I should swap to made-up comics – you have quite a lot more leeway, and you don’t get into nearly as much trouble when you overstep the mark . Of course, friends and family are still a bit nervous, imagining a character might be based on them. But there’s something fascinating about real life, and the little things that happen around you. Knausgaard somehow makes going supermarket shopping and chopping vegetables enthralling.

As you can probably tell, I am going through an exploratory drawing stage. The more I draw, the worse I feel at drawing, but perhaps, as my sister points out, I am just being more ambitious and trying to do more with my drawing. After finishing Mansfield and Me, I was completely sick of my thick, brushed outlines, but I also didn’t like the pigment liner drawings of my early comics, especially since the ink ran out of my pens so quickly. Right now I am still trying to master the dip pen, but there are an awful lot of splatters and somehow, yesterday, I managed to spill two small bottles of ink, one of them over my sneakers. Anyway, I am hoping that by the time I start on my new project – maybe February – I will find my voice again!