Where Do The Cartoons Come From?

         n the little Robson Valley community where I live, I am usually introduced as “the guy that draws the cartoons in the paper.”  That seems to be my claim to fame.  One of the most common questions I am always asked is, “How do you come up with all those ideas?”

        It is a complicated question to answer, because there is no single answer to the question.  The ideas come from everywhere.  Things I see, things I hear, sometimes, things just pop into my head, and I have even gotten ideas in my dreams.   Most commonly, the ideas result from something that happens to me in my life.

        In the cartoon above, you might be able to figure out where the idea for the cartoon came from.  Basically, what happened was that our cat Lucifer was so eager to get into her fresh litter box, that she jumped into it when I laid it down to take my boots off after cleaning it.  She did not even give me a chance to put it in its spot.  Usually, I just take a humorous situation like that, and make it more extreme.  That is what I did in this cartoon.

        I used to do a cartoon every week for the local paper, in 2013 a second local paper asked me if I would do cartoons for them also, so I was doing two cartoons every week.  The second paper disappeared, and last year the local weekly paper went down to just publishing every two weeks, so there is a lot less pressure to come up with a cartoon for me. 

        If I can’t come up with a cartoon, I can always redo one of the many old cartoons I have drawn.  I have discovered that after three years, people don’t remember the cartoons anyway.

You can take a look at my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca