I wanted to get paid to sharpen pencils originally just because I thought it would be fun.

Any working cartoonist will tell you this, anybody who's working in a creative field: at some point, it's a job. You have deadlines. I think, for over a year, I refused to make them for publications, because I only wanted to make them when I wanted to make them. But at some point, I was like, "This is crazy, you have an opportunity to be a professional cartoonist.

I feel like really thinking about art and really appreciating it and learning the language of it just makes you more of a connoisseur. I believe that.

I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.

The thing I hear about a lot is when people over-sharpen their pencil with a single-blade pocket-sharpener and then when they put the pencil to the page, their tip breaks and pencil points always break irregularly. It always gets all jagged and you have to refresh the point. That's a common complaint.

I just wanted a really simple, dramatic way so that fans, people who were reading my comic, would be like, "This is something different." Just to flag it, almost.

I hardly ever use pencils. I'm left-handed and it's really messy if you're left-handed because of the graphite smudging. I use them more now than I used to because there's, like, 15,000 pencils all over my house.