This week has been all about bathtub comics, since I drew a picture of William Howard Taft in a bathtub for the podcast My Favorite Murder (#murderinoart guys) and it has really taught me about economies of scale on the internet, by being the first remotely viral thing I’ve ever been a part of. All of which is to say, if you found your way here because of that drawing, hello! And maybe consider buying my book, which is incidentally about murder?

Also, obviously, I was charmed enough by the bathtub theme to continue drawing creatures in bathtubs; why do something once when you can do it twice and at least amuse yourself?

I used to have strict rules for these comics, and one of them was that I never had the animals recognize they were animals, or say they were people, but over time both those ideas came to feel too restrictive. Now they are guidelines, more than hard and fast laws. I do think artistic rules can be extremely useful, though: I draw differently, for instance, within the framework of a four-panel strip than I would across an entire page. It’s interesting how you can trick your mind into having new ideas just by restricting the shape in which it works.

Mother nature continues to contort my thinking in new ways as well by increasing the number of overnight freezes threatening my garden seedlings, and integrating rain/sleet showers to go with them. There’s more snow on the mountains, which feels peculiar; for Tucson, late February is basically supposed to be April. So fingers crossed that the summer is moderate to make up for the cold winter.