Hello!
I just wanted to let you know that I'm launching a new email newsletter! I really miss the community that I built around Zen Pencils and I regret letting it all kind of slip away. Looking back on it, I think I did just burn myself out with that website. Over 6+ years it consumed ALL of me – mind, body and soul – and I needed a break from all the blogging, site updates, comments, posting, social media etc. But I did have an awesome community of people rooting for me and I want to try and reconnect with you and 'find the others' again.
A lot has been happening with me – new books I've been busy working on, I bought a new house with an awesome studio that I will be fixing up over the next couple of months, I'm turning eep, 40 soon (I launched Zen Pencils back when I was about to turn 30) ... so yeah, a lot to share.
I'm over using social media to try and connect with fans of my work. I've quit Twitter and Facebook, only still posting (not very often) on Instagram, but I'm still at the mercy of Zuckerberg's algorithm, and most of my 100,000+ followers on IG don't even see what I post, especially when I'm trying to promote a new project. I'm not interested in using TikTok or starting a YouTube channel. So I think my best option to re-establishing the old Zen Pencils community is the trusty email newsletter. I know, I know, you already get too many emails. I get it. That's why this will just be a monthly thing. I'm not going to be spamming you every week. I'm going for quality over quantity. Plus, there's no way I could keep up a weekly schedule anyway!
Which leads me to introduce:
Gav's Scribbles will be a monthly email. Each edition will include:
An update from me
A classic Zen Pencils comic from my archives
What I think about the comic and quote now, almost 10 years later
Answering a reader question in-depth
What's on my drawing table at the moment and lot's of behind-the-scenes process stuff
And yes, I'll be honest, I do have some new books coming out I would love to tell you about (ahem, beg you to buy).
I'd love to get your input on what you would like to see included too. Like I said, it will only be monthly, and I will work hard to make the newsletter a fun and insightful read, something you won't instantly delete when you're checking your emails on the toilet. Some might come sooner, some later, but I will do my best to maintain a regular schedule.
Here's a sneak peak at the first edition (well, it's the only part I've written), but it will be stuff like this ...
FROM THE ZEN PENCILS ARCHIVES
FIND A JOB YOU LOVE – originally posted 3rd Feb 2012
What I originally wrote:
"My dream job is basically to sit in a room, draw all day and get paid to do it. I’m still working on making it a reality."
What I think now:
Ah yes, this was either the first or second Zen Pencils comic I did. It would have been at the end of 2011. I was still working at my soul crushing design job for Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp newspaper empire, but I had given my notice of resignation. Since I had been working there for a long time (8 years across various newspapers in Perth and Melbourne) I had to give 12 weeks notice, which is ridiculous. So my jerk of a boss did what jerk bosses do, he benched me and put me on the graveyard shift, which was always dead quiet. But that was fine with me, because it gave me time to work on the new website idea I had thought of which made me quit the job to begin with. I would turn inspirational quotes that were saturating social media into fun comics – huzzah! This is still the best idea I've ever had. You know how you hear about people having 'lightbulb' moments? Well, it's true, this was my lightbulb moment, I knew it was good. I just wasn't sure I could pull it off. So first, I needed to do some test comics to see if my idea would work. This FIND A JOB YOU LOVE comic was one of those test comics. I showed it to some friends and they all liked it and I spent those 12 weeks of downtime of work, designing the Zen Pencils website (banging my head against the keyboard teaching myself Wordpress and CSS), working on a stockpile of comics to have before launch, researching other webcomics and blog sites and hoping I had not made a terrible mistake in quitting my job.
Fast forward 10+ years and my dream has become a reality. Zen Pencils succeeded beyond my expectations and I have been working as a full-time cartoonist for over a decade. I truly have found a job I love. I get to support my family and feed my children by drawing comics - holy shit, sometimes I still have to remind myself this is my life. I'm so thankful. But is it true that I love it so much that I never have to work a day in my life? Was Confucius right? (As an aside, Confucius definitely didn't say that, the quote is misattributed. Back when I first started the site, I didn't research the quotes as well as I should have.) Well, as someone who truly loves their job I can emphatically say that this quote is absolutely pure BULLSHIT.
Want to know why I think so? Well, you'll have to subscribe to the first edition of Gav's Scribbles to find out! I'll delve deeper into what it's been like working for myself and working from home for the last decade. Which leads me to ...
CHECK OUT MY NEW STUDIO!
My wife and I have always dreamed that one day I might have a house with a seperate studio in the backyard that I could 'commute' to each day instead of working in various bedrooms across multiple houses for the past 15+ years. Well, that dream finally came true! I'll be moving and setting up this new space over the next couple of months. So if you'd like to see what I do with the place, subscribe below to find out!
The first newsletter will drop sometime in the next fortnight. Let me know some questions you would like me to answer as well. Hope to see you there!
– Gav