NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/625084
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2016 • NEBRASKAland 61 Time to Draw Drawing is a luxury I enjoy – when I have time. By Tim Reigert S ince I was a child, I've loved comics and cartoons. All shapes and sizes: Newspapers – daily, Sunday morning; Comic books; MAD Magazine; Peanuts; and later, Eerie, Creepy and even underground comics like ZAP and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers– you name it. I once cut out a bunch of Marmaduke single gag panels from the daily newspaper and glued them into a homemade book for my grandfather. He liked them and Dennis the Menace. He said to me "Tim, wouldn't it be the best job in the world to draw a newspaper comic strip?" He'd see me drawing whenever we visited while growing up. Grandpa was always thinking, and he came up with some pretty good ideas over the years. So while in school, and college, and at jobs I would continue to draw cartoons. A few years ago my daughter Jamie wanted a subscription to The New Yorker. She and I would always look at the cartoons and laugh together. You see, she also grew up on cartoons: Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, and more recently MAD Magazine. In the back of The New Yorker, each week they have a "Cartoon Caption Contest" in which they run a cartoon without a caption. The readers are invited to write captions in which three finalists are chosen – then the fellow readers vote on the one they like best – which is then published in the next issue. Here at NEBRASKAland, I was toying with the idea of starting a cartoon contest as well. You see, the NEBRASKAland Visitor contest has been going on now for some time in which we hide a bug and ask the readers to identify it. We draw from the submissions and the winner receives a NEBRASKAland mug. I thought it might be nice to vary the mug contest with cartoons each issue – write the caption for the readers sort- of-thing. The editor and I discussed that we probably would need a year's worth before committing to this sort of thing so I started thinking and sketching ideas at home on my own time. Ahhhh Time. Time was when I was able to devote more of my work time to illustration for the magazine. Every now and then we would need a new map which I would render by hand (as most of my illustrations). And, occasionally, we would get a story that would benefit from artwork rather than photography – or that could not be shown with photography – something diagrammatic or a narrative that was meditative, for example. But I fear those days are waning. More to do with less people – that sort of thing. Other projects come down the pike and all are important. On the bright side, I still enjoy what I do – being creative for a living is the best I can imagine – whether it's designing a story in the magazine, a book, or illustrating with artwork. As the American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker – Jim Rohn said... "The worst days of those who enjoy what they do are better than the best days of those who don't." Well, I still have hope that we may run out of bugs someday and we will run a cartoon caption contest. So I will try to find time – somewhere. ■ Tim grew up in Lincoln the son of a taxidermist and a musician. He has been NEBRASKAland's Art Director for the past 20 years. A quick sketch idea for a cartoon. Some possible captions I was thinking of: "So that's what happened to Larry's leg!" or... "Maybe his uncle still hunts?" or... "Look at the size of that leg – he must have been a big man!"