Although I may not have fully articulated it, I think this was the plan: Learn to draw, while continuing to update The Chalkboard Manifesto for a year. So far, I’ve failed on both counts. I haven’t been practicing drawing all that much. I have a lot of excuses, many of them legitimate, but I will not enumerate them here. I’ve also neglected to update my comic for about a month. There’s also a reason for that.

There are two mismatches going on. First, there’s a mismatch between the comics I want to make and the style of The Chalkboard Manifesto. I want to play with multiple panels and draw more expressive faces. I don’t want my comic to be merely a twitter account with stick figures. Or worse, to be like those shitty quotes people post all the time on facebook. I should be telling actual jokes, writing weird things, and conveying emotions. I have a bunch of post-its with jokes that I’ve written, but I don’t know if they accomplish what I want to accomplish. They don’t satisfy me. And I haven’t been able to fill more post-its. There’s a kind of writer’s block going on. I do have some jokes I like, but they are of the longer variety and don’t fit the style. Plus, there’s the second mismatch going on.

The second mismatch is between my skill in drawing and the types of comics I want to draw. So, I do want to draw better comics, but I don’t yet have the skill to make something I’d like to share on the web. My people look flat when I try to draw them. I’m not even sure I should try to make them chalkboard style.

I’m stuck between drawing comics with jokes I’m no longer satisfied with, or putting up comics with drawings I’m not satisfied with. I thought I’d be able to avoid this. I thought I’d still be satisfied with the old jokes, so I could still post comics. In the mean time, I’d be training so I could manage a transition to better comics. But this plan isn’t working. This means I need a new plan.

I guess there are two options. Both options involve getting over my embarrassment and posting my crappy drawings. I’ll let myself evolve in public instead of private. I am a child of the internet age, after all. The choice becomes the vehicle. Do I do this on The Chalkboard Manifesto? Or do I kill my comic and get a fresh start with a new tumblr?

Any opinions?