WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Drawn Here, Part 6

Drawn Here, Part 6

Burlington, Vermont - May 16, 2007

What makes artists artists is their ability to see things the rest of us just don't. Take James Kochalka. When we visited him and his three-and-a-half year old son Eli, we learned the cartoonist gets ideas from the weirdest of sources.

Our interview was interrupted when Eli's fingers kept inching towards his nose. Dad grabbed Eli's hand, pleading, "Don't pick your nose! Don't pick your nose on TV!"

It turns out that would be artistic inspiration for James. For almost ten years, he's been drawing a daily comic strip about whatever happens to him. From the mundane, like nose-picking, to the major, like the birth of his child.

James Kochalka says, "I've done strips about very private personal things in our family, which are hard to draw knowing so many people are going to read it."

American Elf is not really about making his audience laugh, though that certainly happens. It is Kochalka's personal diary. He's building a record of his life one pencil stroke and line of ink at a time.

Kochalka laughs, "My mom says I started drawing comics before I knew how to write. And that I would just draw the word balloons and put little scratchy scribbles in the word balloons."

The Springfield native studied art at UVM and at a school in Maryland. He worked a handful of odd jobs before becoming a full-time cartoonist. He says, "I was dedicated to it."

His diary appears on his personal website, getting about 3,000 hits a day. That hit count is fueled in part by the popularity of blogs. Some surfers pay a few bucks to access the archives but his paycheck comes from book deals and moonlighting as a musician.

Kochalka's work also appears in Seven Days. The artist is already considering how he may change his public diary down the road to protect privacy. He says about Eli, "I worry about the teenage years... Him not wanting to be in the strip."

But for now, no complaints from Eli. The child says, "Well, I just like it!"

As he and his bad habits continue to be "Drawn Here."

Kochalka's website won a Harvey Award in 2006 for excellence in online comics. That award is the Oscar of the cartooning world. To visit the artist's site, follow the link above.

Jack Thurston - WCAX News