We were lucky to catch up with Tyson Cole recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tyson, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Cartooning is one of those art forms that looks easy, but is actually deceptively difficult. It takes years of practice to make a drawing look effortless, fluid, and natural, yet still communicate effectively and pack a punch. Every line needs to be intentional and serve a purpose. The best can paradoxically make you feel like you could do it, but also like you could never do it. I’ve been learning for 12 years and still feel like it’s hit or miss.

I started just drawing on computer paper, but soon I was creating three cartoons a week for my University newspaper, drawn, scanned, then colored digitally. It wasn’t long before I transitioned to working entirely digitally on a little laptop I had that came with a stylus. This was still a pretty unique way of doing things at the time, and I did it mostly because I didn’t have a lot of space in my little apartment to do much else. Later, I upgraded to a Cintiq Companion, and then to the iPad Pro that I still use today.

For a long time, I colored every cartoon I made. It was a long, painstaking process for me, and it eventually got to the point where I was only doing about one cartoon per month. I was pretty demoralized, until I was gifted a couple books that really impacted me – a book of cartoons by Peter Arno, another one by Charles Addams, and the “Big Red” complete book of New Yorker cartoons. Flipping through them, my mind was blown and I was hooked. They had a loose, fluid style emphasized by beautiful gray ink washes, and I knew that that was the direction I wanted to go. I started experimenting with this new style, and it ended up shaving hours off of my process and produced something I was much more satisfied with. Never get so caught up in doing something a certain way that you stop trying new things. Experimentation is central to the act of creating art. In that vein, I’ve been working to learn the traditional cartooning techniques that inspired me, and trying new tools and approaches. There is something very fulfilling about creating something physical that you can hold (and sell!).

Tyson, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a cartoonist just drawing dumb silly stuff for my followers and whoever else is interested.

In 2011, I was sketching cartoons at my night job while going to college. My wife encouraged me to take them to the editor of the university paper, and soon I was doing three a week for them. In 2013, I won a national competition called “So You Wanna Be A Cartoonist?” by the Cartoonists Studio. It involved submitting a cartoon every week for 10 weeks, with people being eliminated every week. As part of the prize, I won a mentorship by one of my idols, Speed Bump cartoonist Dave Coverly. He gave me advice and helped me get into a humor magazine called Funny Times.

Since then, I’ve been in magazines such as Reader’s Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, the Wall Street Journal, Alta Journal, the American Bystander, Airmail, Luckbox, and more, and I’ve been nominated twice by the National Cartoonists Society for a Reuben award in gag cartooning.

I’ve worked for years as a graphic designer, so I have experience in all kinds of commercial art and illustration. I try to create work that’s clever, fun, and accessible, but can still give you a bit of a jolt once in a while.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

The best way to support artists, I feel, is to just give them the space to do their thing. This can come in the form or adequate compensation and support (patreon, commissions, social media engagement), or if you’re an art director or somebody working with an artist, make sure they have the time and resources to get crazy, get weird, make mistakes, try new things, and reign it in from there. AI is going to start to cast a bigger and bigger shadow, so we’ll need to let artists innovate in a way that AI can’t.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I think things start to happen when you exercise enough discipline to be consistent. One good piece may go viral and get you some attention, but consistent bite-sized nuggets of goodness are necessary to keep an audience. If it’s not finished pieces, it can be process videos, community engagement posts and challenges, behind the scenes stuff, etc etc. I’m still working on this, but I feel like people remember the names that they see frequently. It’s hard to not get lost in the noise of everything.      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tysoncoleart.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tysoncole.3000/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tysoncolecartoons