2023: Art School Workout Plan — NathanJDiPerri.com

Here’s the scenario: you have one, maybe two hours a day. You can either workout, draw, or clean the house. Your physical, mental, and emotional health are counting on all three of these to happen every day but you can only choose one.

For better or for worse, most days, I chose drawing. I wanted to get my portfolio back in shape. For much of 2023, I had a good routine going of drawing or painting for 20-40 minutes in the morning. It was a great way to start the day but in recent months, I’ve been unable to do so consistently. It’s a practice I need to reinstate for my sanity and productivity. Also for my sanity and productivity, getting back to consistently working out 4-6 days per week is going to have to happen too.

In college, we were often told that our performance during summer or winter breaks would be a good indicator of whether or not we’d make it in the illustration field. In other words, if you can maintain consistency in work habits and continue producing images when you aren’t being required to do so for a grade, you’ll likely have the stamina and drive that will be required to work in a freelance-based field. From an institutional standpoint, I’m a long way away from art school but my study and practice continue. Through continued examination of art history and the history of design, I’m trying to homogenize my interests and ideas into new, cohesive, meaningful work.

I’m realizing that in 2023, I sent myself back to art school, wherein I was both facilitator and student. The art history old masters and the giants of 20th century illustration were my instructors. Art directors and editors graded assignments on a published/rejected system (instead of pass/fail), though it’s unfair to say that rejected works were failures. This study will continue and intensify in 2024.

Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of 2023 in illustration:

My wife and I made new cartoons that were either rejected or published in magazines.
We started writing about old cartoons and sent them to people every week.
Apparently our Christmas cards are a hit.
I rebuilt my illustration portfolio.

I produced five new color illustration in 2023 plus 20 spot illustrations. Nine of the spot images were for an illustrated piece I produced in February called Daycare Snow Day Workout Plan

In hindsight, I should have shopped it around to get it published. Maybe it would have been rejected everywhere but at least I would have tried. I regret putting it straight on Instagram because using Instagram only benefits the executives at Meta.

The image above is my favorite of those spot illustrations. These were done in ink washes with charcoal line and while they bare little resemblance to Curious George, the media selections were inspired by H.A. Rey, whose work I studied at length in the early portion of the year.

An additional eleven full-color spot illustrations were produced in support of a lengthy humor piece that my wife and I have been working on since 2021. It was rejected by The New Yorker in October but we did receive our first bit of personalized feedback from them on that one!

We’ve been getting boiler plate rejections from The New Yorker since 2017 so I can probably recite them from memory but to receive these six works in addition to the boiler plate… this was actually a big deal to us (not being sarcastic. It really was)! We’re still shopping that piece around.

In February, Buddy and Romeo, the stars of my last newspaper comic strip Mates and Dates, were resurrected via a weekly Substack newsletter. It was started on somewhat of a whim after re-reading some of the cartoons that had been buried on an external hard drive. My wife and I figured no one would subscribe and then that would be it. We were surprised when people not only signed up but some were generous enough to do so as paid subscribers. The support and interest shown in the characters has lead to our forthcoming book Buddy and Romeo: Alone for the Holidays, which will include the first new Buddy and Romeo comic strips since 2018. A handmade stuffed Buddy doll is even in the works!

Join us! Subscribe to the Buddy and Romeo Cartoon Substack for weekly cartoons and commentaries!

This year saw the creation of more Frega DiPerri single-panel cartoons and with them came a pile of rejection. Rejection is a steadfast part of working in that industry. For some publications, rejection is part of “paying your dues” but even once you’ve sold your first cartoon to that publication, you’ll still face a mountain of rejection. Rejection comes no matter how well established a cartoonist you are and it’s a game of odds. The more submissions you make, the more you increase your odds of publication. Amidst all of the rejection, there were several cartoon publications. In 2023, we made first-time sales to The American Bystander, The Funny Times, and Literary Review and continued contributing cartoons to magazines like Kappan and Weekly Humorist. Here are a few of my favorite cartoons that were published in 2023.

Frazzled published our first illustrated humor piece in May. It featured 10 Frega DiPerri cartoons on parenting and one of my favorite new illustrations, Hashtag Blessed (Ladonna and Her Sons in the Morning). The illustration was inspired by the Hellenistic Greek sculpture “Laocoon and His Sons” and modern graphic design (everything precisely positioned for flow and readability). With my new illustration work, I’m interested in pairing the old and the new (art history and geometric design) and producing work that is powerful (contrast, strong figures/poses), theatrical (positioning, expression, lighting, 1980s Colorforms), and playful (mixed media, contour drawings).

Tomorrow, January 1, 2024, Mickey Mouse and Tigger (original 1928 designs) will join other artistic creations in entering the public domain. This past July, I completed what is not only my favorite of the new illustrations but also the product of all of the techniques and experimentation from other new work. Escape from the Public Domain celebrates mostly forgotten public domain characters in newspaper comic strips. Prior to this, my process was pretty much draw, paint, scan, edit. This time, elements were drawn, painted, cut out and assembled manually with tape, lit, and photographed. All of the cast shadows you see are real because the depth created by the cutout elements is real. As the digital age moves into the AI age, I think it’s doubly important to emphasize the handmade quality of my illustrations.

You can buy a giclee print of Escape from the Public Domain!

Our Coffee Lovers’ Christmas greeting card/print/gift line had its best year since it was introduced in 2019. Each year has seen an increase in sales over the year prior but this year, oh my goodness. In 2023, we sold more cards than we did in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined.

For the first time, Coffee Lovers’ Christmas cards were sold in a coffee shop!

We continue to be amazed by the excitement, support, and interest that has been shown for the series and are humbled that each sales year has been bigger than the last. Four new illustrations were added to the “Second Crack” greeting card collection and two of the new designs (“City Date” and “Santa’s Nap”) became two of our overall best sellers. When Coffee Lovers’ Christmas returns for its sixth year in late 2024, we’ll have new designs , new products, and (hopefully) more stores carrying our cards!