September 30th, 2014

Portable Profession!!

by John Rose

I really enjoy traveling and one of the many, many things I love about being a cartoonist is that the profession can be portable. By this, I mean that I can do my job and not miss a deadline from just about anywhere. Pretty cool, huh? Recently, my wife had an out of town convention for a few days and I happily tagged along. 

Before leaving, I just took a little time to pack up all my necessary tools to draw Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and I set up shop in the hotel room.  At least this room had a nice desk, so that made it pretty easy.  The photo below shows me working on a future Sunday strip on my portable light table.

Inking Snuffy in a hotel room.

In addition to the portable light table, on the desk you will see some colored magic markers and colored pencils, a large Ziploc bag filled with white artist’s tape, erasers and a variety of pens and pencils.  On the desktop, there are more pens, a whiteout pen and my glasses.  There is also a piece of paper and a pen, for jotting down cartoon ideas.  As I mentioned, I am working on a Sunday page, but to my right are a set of six dailies stacked on top of each other that I completed.  And, not shown in this photo, is another necessary tool of the trade for me, my iPad.   Since my work is portable and I got to take this trip–I was happy, my wife was happy and my editors were happy…because I could stay on deadline!   (: