A Holiday Drive!
Driving across the country with 1 boyfriend, 2 dogs and 3 podcasts + a holiday sale!
Greetings from so many different states! I just finished a drive across the country (well MOST of the country), something I have never done! I was very nervous about the whole being cramped in a car sickness situation but turns out… it’s a lot of fun to drive through the small towns while listening to horrifying true crime podcasts. I don’t have a computer with me so this week Im just gonna drop in a bunch of my sketches from the road.
Starting with actually, a painting I did on my iPad of a scene I felt like I saw over and over and over again between Ohio and Kansas. My boyfriend commented that it was beautiful but also sad. I said, so am I!
Beautiful and sad is how I would describe Christmas in general. I’d go more into that but it’s also the topic of my
submission this coming Sunday. If you don’t already subscribe to the I highly recommend! It’s a collection of weekly rejected cartoons from The New Yorker from cartoonists like myself, Ellis Rosen, , , Amy Kurzweil, Jason Katzenstein, Navied Mahdavian, Kendra Allenby, and many more!This painting originally started out as a sketch, then I realized I really really wanted to paint all the clouds I was seeing.
There’s a lot of opportunity along the road for jokes from signage, but sometimes the signs themselves were already hilarious. Like this sign for a Prom Exhibit outside Cincinatti. I wondered, would it just be exhibits of who lost their virginity?
As I said earlier, we made it through three different true crime podcasts, Season 3 of Counter Clock, the premiere season of Ghost Story and Season 1 of Cold. Counter Clock and Cold are really horrifying stories, but if you’re squeamish, Ghost Story was riveting as far as family history, inherited trauma, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and how that can be unraveled when you look closer. Highly highly recommend!
We drove for four days stopping in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kansas, and finally Colorado. I think I’m probably going to draw a diary comic about the whole thing so I won’t go into too much detail, but I will tell you the Caesar’s Palace in Southern Indiana is a delight and I won $150!!!
The state signs we passed by became so fun to draw, but it felt like low-key everyone was bragging about their ties to Lincoln??
I think the rest of these sketches can speak for themselves!!
PS!!! Looking for a last minute holiday gift? I’m running a holiday sale, 40% off a yearly subscription to Cartoons by Hilary!! Give the gift of TOONS this season!
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From the archives: Your Dog’s Favorite Holiday Songs
Just Watched: Meet Me in St. Louis (duh!!)
On Repeat: Happy Boy by The Beat Farmers
Looking for: Nashville Recommendations!!! Send em’ my way!
Most of the cartoons in this newsletter are available on Etsy!
Love your tunes but have to disagree with you, they are not always self-explanatory...hahaha....what was going on there with Snoopy and the dog? Haha. Merry Christmas Hilary. Thanks for sharing your light and your drawings.
do you have a favorite kind of machine or table game when you're gambling? or is it whatever calls our your name at the time?