Onomatopoeia Day!

Dog Eat Doug http://www.gocomics.com/dogeatdoug/ (it’s in the papers!…which his online strip is behind a few days for)

Drunken Fools http://www.thedrunkenfools.com

Xandford   http://www.xandford.com [Tuesday, April 7th]

1977 the Comic http://www.1977thecomic.com

Life’s a Witch! http://www.witchytech.com/lifesawitch/

Papa PWNS Noobs http://www.papapwnsnoobs.com

Dungeon Legacy http://www.dungeonlegacy.com

A side note for Dog Eat Doug: AWESOME! Onomatopoeia Day will have people reading in the newspapers Brian Anderson’s comic and scratching their heads saying What?….but they are witnessing history….YES!

Last month Brian Anderson of Dog Eat Doug and I were discussing using the word onomatopoeia as an actual sound effect in a cartoon. One thing led to another and I suggested we do that on a specific day and try to get as many webcomickers to follow suit. Well, that day is fast approaching! In fact, it is this Monday, April 6th! I hope many of you in the webcomic community will join in the fun and include this word as a sound effect in your comic strip that day. I would also like to reserve the first Monday of every April from here on out to be Onomatopoeia Day and see how we can all come up with unique and funny ways of using this word as a sound effect. Who knows, maybe some day in the distant future, we can all get together and look back with a smile when it all began back in 2009!

When was the last time you drew something? You’re probably saying to yourself, “but I don’t know how to draw.” Hogwash! The last time you drew something was when you were a kid. You would grab any piece of paper and your crayons and just draw something. Your parents may have put it on the refrigerator and you had your own private art gallery. Then one day, someone said to you, “oh that doesn’t look like a horse,” or “the sun isn’t purple.” And that is when you stopped, hung up your crayons and said to yourself, “yeah, I can’t draw.”

Well, let me tell you something, everyone can draw! Society has so many preconceived notions of what people can and can’t do. They say you can only be an artist if your finished product looks real or is what they judge as good. This stops a lot of people from doing what they enjoy doing, simply because they are told they can’t do it how it is “supposed to be done.” As someone considered to be an artist, I say again, hogwash! By simply putting pencil or whatever drawing inpliment to paper or whatever medium you prefer and making shapes that please you, you are drawing!

Drawing can be a way of relieving stress or simply expressing yourself. It doesn’t have to be a Rembrant masterpiece to be considered art. Art in itself is self-expression, it comes from within the person creating it. You will find that the more you release your inner stress and express yourself through drawing, your blood pressure will come down and you will be a happier person. Don’t let anyone tell you what color things are supposed to be, if you want the sky to be yellow and the sun green, go for it. If you want your people to not be proportioned and your animals have six legs, go for it. Purple eyes and green hair? Fantastic!

There were whole movements in art that didn’t look like anything living, breathing, floating in the sky or out in space. There are artists who can’t draw a straight line without the aid of a tool to save their lives, but are they ever told they can’t draw? No way! So pick up a pencil, a crayon, a brush, whatever. Put it to paper or canvas or even the walls of your house. Simply start drawing again, like before those other people told you you couldn’t do it right. Draw, relax and capture the joy you had as a child. Hang it on your refrigerator and open your private art gallery again! If we all did this, think of how much happier this world would be!