The Cream of the Crap...

To me, cartoonist Matt Diffee has a splendiferous sense of humor and keeps a regular tab on things happening in the outside world. This chap has spent a greater part of his youth in Texas, before moving to the busy life at Manhattan.

Moving to New York after winning the famed famed New Yorker's cartoon contest eight years ago, today he is one of the most popular cartoonists for this magazine (New Yorker) as well as the e-zine.
Any creative end product requires oodles of enthusiasm, imagination and talent; there is no doubt about that. Cartooning falls in that bracket, but is the road that easy as it seems. I mean it's as challenging an occupation like any other, with greater probabilities for rejection and failure. You can trade the word, 'occupation' for 'passion', sounds lot better that way.

A bit of digression here. To make it clear the difference between 'occupation' and 'passion' in real life. Frankly speaking the former churns out a pay cheque at the end of the month. While the later keeps the flame of one's passion burning, this may or may not bring any monetary benefit. I bet lucky is one who gets a drink that has the perfect combination of 'occupation' and 'passion'.

Most people are unable to earn money from their passion. Most people are unable to devote time to their passion. Come to think of it, a majority of people don't even know what they are good at. They work because they have to, not because they want to.

An insightful post on this by Deepti, at Desicritics here.

Now back on track again. Keep you ears open for criticism too , of course of all flavors. Diffee feels that that nearly 90% of any cartoonist's work is rejected. But for this gifted individual, even disapprovals were a blessing in disguise. He happily collated all his ignored works to publish a book, The Rejection Collection: The Cream of the Crap.

"Now proudly out in its second volume, It was an idea I had after gathering a pile of my rejected cartoons that I sort of still liked. New Yorker cartoons are famous, but hardly anyone knows the cartoonists. So a big part of the book, for me, is to share these personalities and the way they think and the way they work."

Now this reminds me of a very important lesson that I learnt during a photography course by renowned photographer, Anand Saran. He told me, never ever delete or discard any of the photographs, even though it doesn’t touch or appeal to others when someone sees it the first time. Preserve those and may be one day, those snaps would win admirations and appreciations from a different section of viewers. That's again goes on to say, to each it's own.

Visit Diffee's collection of cartoons here . Also an interesting interview in which he speaks his heart candidly.

Keep reading and remain connected.

Don't get confused with the title of the post, it's the book by Diffee and he owns the rights for it.