Fledgling

fledg·ling/ˈflejliNG/Noun

1. A young bird that has just fledged.
2. An immature or inexperienced person.
3. One that is new.

Let me introduce myself: My name is Beth, and I am a total noob at cartooning. I hold a BFA in painting. I have not taken a drawing class in 3 years. But somehow cartooning has captured my heart.

About 5 years ago my brother, Ben (my partner in crime here at Fledge) introduced me to the web comic, Sheldon. I spent many a freshman survey class reading through the archives. We met the artist, Dave Kellett, multiple times at Emerald City ComiCon here in Seattle (he is one nice dude). And then a few years back I stumbled upon the Web Comics Weekly podcast including Dave and the other guys at Half Pixel. Not only is listening to those 4 guys (Kellett, Straub, Kurtz and Guigar) just utterly high-larious, but they have really great insights into the business of making a living in web comics. They wrote a book together (How to Make Web Comics) that is less how to draw your comic and how to do the business side of things. It is excellent - I highly suggest it if you’re a youngin’ like me (or a seasoned professional. Who am I to judge?).

So all this brings us to just over a year ago when Ben came to me with an idea for a comic. I was about to head into my final year of college which was basically building a massive amount of work towards a solo show. I told him, “Awesome idea! But I can’t think about this right now. I’ve got real art to make.” (Ok, that last sentence was not said out loud. But I thought it. This was before the magic Wacom tablet came into my life.) I said, “Ben, once I graduate, then we can talk.”

It didn’t take that long for me to keep bugging him about his idea, however. Over the next months I started doing little doodles in my free time. There were emails sent back and forth about characters and plot lines. Over Christmas I found an artist (Ben Templesmith) who combines more “real” art methods with drawing that caught my attention. I started to see that it could be a possibility to not throw away my love of painting, but dip my toes into cartooning as well.

And then June came and I graduated. I was free from deadlines. I was terrified.

Starting to seriously consider cartooning, I was getting really frustrated with how to make the vision in my head get onto my macbook. And then Ben gave me his very slightly used Wacom tablet as an early birthday present. My life will never be the same again. I adore drawing with this thing. Our web comic idea has been put on the back burner for a bit in order for me to make a super-secret project for my boyfriend -- of which, hopefully by January, I’ll put some pages up, but I can’t even really talk about it specifically because I know Thomas will read this and it’s a secret -- however, once that beastly project is done, I’m diving into this web comic with full force.

The wisdom of Brad Guigar: “It is impossible to get worse at something you do every day.” This is part of the reason why I’ve started this blog:

1. As a place for me to gather my thoughts as I learn this trade.
2. A place for me to procrastinate when I’m having a block.
3. So I can look back and not only see my growth in my art, but remember in writing the journey I took.
4. For accountability to keep going. It’s going to be really easy to quit as I’m gone from home about 11 hours a day, attempting to move to Bellingham and maintaining a long distance relationship. (I know: wha wha wha...)

So here it is folks: Fledgling Comics will hopefully, and very optimistically, someday bring you a real live web comic. And maybe even some random illustration work.\

But for now you get my journey. Mondays and Thursdays. Brace yourself.

EDIT: Updating Tuesdays/Fridays. I tend to post the blog late M/Th evening, so I might as well just make it the next day.