Draw, Draw, Draw
As we near the weekend, it comes as no surprise to me how anxious I am for the weekly New Yorker art department submission process to begin anew (the department’s been closed for the holidays. Two weeks have gone by without submitting work). The “process” has been the common thread throughout my life since I was a teenager, when I first set my sights on getting into the magazine. My work shed bad habits (and continues to shed bad habits) because of the weekly submissions (which includes weekly rejection). It’s important to remember that, for regular contributors,* there are no requirements. Whether you submit weekly is, in itself, entirely up to the artist. Also up to the artist: what to submit, and how many drawings to submit.** All that The New Yorker asks is that you have the work in by noon on Tuesdays. Fair enough!
Somewhere along the way, in my earliest New Yorker years, the weight of the weekly “deadline” was replaced by the anticipation of putting something down on a blank sheet of paper every morning. And so, during holiday breaks (or other kinds of breaks), the drawing here continues on (a sample of holiday break drawing is shown above. None of that will turn into a drawing submitted to The New Yorker).
To be clear, I believe the weekly submission to be one of the magazine’s great strengths — it continues the lively forward motion of humor, but it’s what might happen, out-of-the-blue, cartoon-wise, on paper each day that really amps things up.
*There are different submission requirements for unsolicited contributions.
** The ten drawings a week myth seems to have finally evaporated. Yay!