It’s Epic Friday! I have an epic cramp in my left arm! That’s because I drew today’s comic with my left hand!

I was inspired by this webcomic by Drew Mokris that I found on reddit today.  It brought me way back to my high school days when our art teacher Mr. Delach instructed us to draw stuff with our non-dominant hand when he ran out of lesson plans.  If you’ve never tried it, it’s pretty crazy.  It’s great stimulation for your brain, kind of like folding your laundry with your toes if you’ve ever tried that, but it gives me a temporary cognitive smackdown.

To wit, today while I was finishing the comic, I put last night’s dinner on the stove to re-heat.  Two minutes later I started to freak out that someone was making noise in my kitchen because I didn’t remember that I had put food on the stove.  This effect wears off pretty fast, but if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s cheaper and safer than huffing glue.  I’m not sure exactly what happens in the brain, but I imagine it’s like that part in Smokey and The Bandit II when they have to shake Burt Reynolds awake from under a pile of beer cans and try to revive him to drive his Trans Am once more on an epic quest.

As for the comic itself, this is one of my all time favorite quotes.  It’s from a pre-kinder – so, a four-year-old – and it’s so sweet and thoughtful.  I’ve dreaded drawing this comic because I knew it would take a long frickin’ time to draw it the way I envisioned it in my mind.  So the left-handed thing gave me an excuse to be much more expressive and sloppy with it and stop procrastinating on getting it done.

Can you guess where I teach from my photorealistic depiction of the city skyline?