Things I Did Recently

Author notes

16 - Tea Time

Inkmonkey

on July 2, 2008

I find something horribly redundant about adding author's notes to a comic that is already literally just me sitting and talking to the audience.


…


Which is exactly why I'll be taking this opportunity to talk about my decision to stop drawing myself in the bucket hat. The thing of it is, through basically all of junior high and up until my Junior year of High school, I was pretty much defined by my bucket hat. I had an extensive collection, and insisted on wearing them even at inappropriate times, just 'cuz. So, logically, whenever I drew myself, I drew myself in the hat, since that was just how I pictured myself.

But, come my Junior year I had made the somewhat arbitrary decision to grow my hair long. Well, that's not true. I made the decision that I didn't want to go to the barber anymore, and the long hair was basically just a side-effect of that. And that was all well and good for a year; I had goofy shaggy hair for a while, and the bucket hair went well with it. This is also when I started Elijah and Azuu, and being your average "ooh, I'm so cool" starting artist, I drew myself into the comic and did a lot of fourth wall humor. So, by then people started to recognize me through the bucket hat; it was my trademark online just like it was in real life.

Which didn't work out so well once my hair got long. There's a certain length that can be worn under a bucket hat and look kind of cute and scruffy, but it didn't really work on me. So, logically, I just stopped wearing the bucket hats. But that was basically my only recognizable trait when I drew myself online, so I just kept drawing myself with it, for years and years, long after it made any kind of sense.

So anyway, I recently finished not only college, but Elijah and Azuu as well. I had passed a major hurdle in my life… and I also wasn't getting nearly as much drawn. So I decided to start Things I Did Recently, inspired by other autobiographical comics such as the Devils Panties or Allan. And since I was planning to chronicle my real life, without extravagant exaggeration, I felt like the comic me should actually look like me. So, yes, I do wear the circular sunglasses and fedora as often as possible. Not as much as I do in the comic, but I seem to have developed an aversion to drawing my eyes or the top of my head.