Ask Dan

I got a few questions from yesterday's post about my drawing process, so I thought I'd answer them here:

Do you take notes during the day when ideas occur to you?
No. Ideas never occur to me unless I'm sitting down to write cartoons, which I only do first thing in the morning. 99% of all my cartoons have been written in the first hour of the day. After that, the voices in my head begin and I can't hear myself think.

What do you do when your hand slips and you make a mistake?
I've been doing this daily since I was a child, so my hands don't slip any more. On the rare occasion when I do make a mistake or want to change something, I just do it on my computer. If the original art sells or gets donated to a charity auction, I fix the art with a little touch of opaque white ink. The last time I made a mistake bad enough that I had to start over was in 1995 when my first wife unexpectedly announced she was leaving me for a woman and both of them were joining the Israeli Army.

You've shown cartoons that have been rejected for Bizarro, can you show one that was rejected, then accepted after revision?
No. I never rewrite and resubmit a cartoon, in my mind it either works as is or it doesn't. The only exception I can think of was once when the syndicate rejected a cartoon for political reasons. I really liked the cartoon and had no other market for it, so I resubmitted it a week later without changing it at all except to dust it with baby powder. Sometimes the smell of baby powder makes people happy. They still rejected the cartoon, though.

I was hoping you would link the words "oil painting" to Bob Ross.
The next time you have a brilliant idea like this, tell me BEFORE I publish the post.

Why don't you just use the Cintiq screen for the entire image?
That's a good question and one I asked myself when I first got the screen. I have done that on occasions where I was living away from home for an extended amount of time, like when my wife and I spent a couple months in a jungle cottage in Costa Rica. Instead of bringing tons of art supplies, a scanner, my computer and my screen, I just brought my Cintiq screen and a laptop. I did all the art on the screen, start to finish, then uploaded it via Internet. (Which was the only electronic convenience the cottage had, oddly enough.)
Problem was, there was no physical art to sell to collectors, donate for auctions, etc. So I went back to drawing them on paper, which I prefer anyway.

Where do babies come from?
You wouldn't believe me if I told you and the story would probably make you a little queasy. Let's just say, the less you know, the better.