Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

While taking a break from playing ultimate frisbee, I pulled out my water bottle, took a drink, and immediately started coughing as I sort of mis-timed swallowing it. One of the other players there looked at me and then said something like, "Dear Diary, Day 9123, still can't breathe water." But encouraged me to keep trying. The thought amused me and conjured the image of a Far Side style cartoon.

So I drew a quick doodle of it in photoshop and then did some line work in Illustrator. At first I was thinking the person writing the diary would be there, but it's hard to show someone having had choked (past perfect tense) on water. The only clues would be the mess. And then I found a script font I liked. But it's small. And if I had to shrink the image much, it becomes very unreadable (instead of the mostly-unreadable it is now). So I decided to go with the minimalist approach. There was a feather quill pen in the draft, but then I cropped it closer, because it didn't really add anything to it. I did a little searching around on techniques to simulate ink spills and wet ink, and found a bunch of brushes with patterns that would work. So I played around a little and thus it is complete.

For those who can't read the diary entry, it says: Dear Diary, Day 9123, Still cannot breathe water. Will try yet another variation tomorrow: warm water. I know someday soon I shall succeed!