I will begin by saying I totally copped out on the whole one-drawing-per-hour-of-consciousness thing. But just a little totally! I mean, I definitely drew some things, and they even coincided with what I was doing around that specific hour, but I only produced six out of a possible 18-20. I don't think that's too bad though, considering a lot of them were quick-doodled at work (slow day). Yes, I did touch them up or re-do them later on. Is that okay? Did I break the law? Of course not; there are no laws, silly.

But, point is, I kind of like them! I mean, I clearly suck, but I'm improving! There's some emotion, even! Sure, sure, I make an instant fool out of myself once I venture below the neckline (and, well, probably when I stay above it, too...), and poses and things are very stiff and all that, but I do not mind. I liked drawing when I was young, dammit, and I'm enjoying it now. Don't expect I'll actually get to be any good at it, but it'll be fun to bust out a halfway decent doodle every now and again.

For example, say I were to become a teacher one day (I won't, but we can use our imaginations), and in my class was this kid who had a "good heart" but was also sort of an idiot. I could draw a little caricature of myself in the upper-left corner explaining what this kid did wrong. I would look wise, but also approachable (due largely to being a cartoon). I would be wearing a cartoon tweed jacket, and would possibly have a full cartoon beard.

Now then:

6:14am. If you replace the last frame's caption with "THOROUGH BEWILDERMENT " and give me a matching expression, it's 100% accurate.

10:00am. As a recovering nail-biter, I have my good and my bad days. Today, at roughly 10am, I was experiencing a "bad day." The rest is just me ragging on myself for having deplorable hand-drawing skillz.

12:00pm. I realized at this point that I was kind of digging the doodles. It's not funny at all.

1:00pm. It's very cold in the office around 1pm, and that means my bodily functions begin to slow. It's mighty hard for me to stay awake when I get cold.

2:00pm. What I'm admitting to here is that there's not much to draw about at work. I sit at a desk and push buttons while my eyesight is slowly whittled away.

3:00pm. Cop-out ensues. I did return from the meeting, but there was nothing left to draw about (also, I got real busy).

And what did I learn from all this? My hand is not steady.

Ah, I've still got "it." (Joke.)

No, I am clearly hell of out of practice. I haven't seriously tried to draw something since early high school, and I've never had good drawing "habits" of the sort I could fall back on in the first place (like reducing things to basic shapes and all that sort of nonsense... I'm a lousy drawer of action, baby).

Okay, so, as my first violently-shuddering baby steps back into the terrifying world of drawing, I've decided to try to do a little cartoon self-portrait of myself (just in case "self-portrait" didn't convey the subject). Now, I do understand that this could be interpreted as a rather self-aggrandizing move, but hear me out: I know what my face looks like, so I can actually focus on cartoonifying it rather than suffer the constant derailment I'd be subjected to by every little crag and jagged protrusion an unfamiliar face would present. So, my face it was.

That said, I found out I actually have no idea what I look like. Like, none. See, at best, I'm used to what I look like backwards, thanks to those lying bastard mirrors. Fixing this pretty much just involved flipping the hair and usually-cocked eyebrow, but a surprise it was nonetheless. And no sooner did I run headlong into clear that hurdle than I went about giving myself a Mexi-stache, a button nose, game-show-host hair, and a chin far too assertive to be realistic. Good thing I only use pen! (har) Finally, once I thought I got one at least halfway passable and decided to compare it to a photo, I couldn't tell if they were even remotely similar. It's like I'm blind (except that I can see).

So consider yourself warned: I may well have just drawn Jay Leno with a soul patch a hundred times and I would not know it.

Hopefully I'll be able to do a full cartoony body at some point, but that water's still well beyond my clearance level. For the time being, I'll stick to misrepresenting just my head.