Once again, given the chance, Bored Panda reached out to Dieter Bevers, a Belgian cartoonist with a knack for blending the ordinary with the absurd in his delightful drawings.
When asked about his distinctive style, Bevers candidly admitted, "When I look at my drawings critically, I think that they look a bit as if they're meant for kids. This is not the case because a lot of my cartoons have 'adult' themes. So when I said that my style might be 'too simple,' I meant that I find my drawings to be too "cartoony", too traditional. Sometimes, I try a more rough, 'loose' style. In that case, I try to make the linework less 'clean': instead of finetuning all the lines neatly until they are nice and smooth, I aim to achieve a more sketchy, more 'underground' style. That's what I attempt with my 'Magnificat' series where I don't use colors, only black ink. I would like my drawings to be a bit more 'off the beaten path': more punk, vulgar, rebellious."
"However, I think it would be wrong to try to copy someone else's style. Because then it wouldn't be MY style anymore, I would merely be a copycat, and I certainly wouldn't want that to happen. I will just have to keep trying to evolve towards a style that I'm happy with. But it has to be my own voice. Speaking of voices: maybe I'm listening too much to the inner voice inside me that judges (and disapproves) of everything that I do. I have a lot of self-criticism. Maybe I shouldn't think about it too much: just keep drawing and see where it leads."
When it came to discussing the challenges of balancing his passion for drawing with financial stability, the artist shared, "Ah, this balance is not so good right now. I used to work as a freelance graphic designer but I was getting less and less work from my clients. My income plummeted (and the money wasn't so great to begin with) so I had to take action to try to save my financial situation. That's why I got an extra job as a warehouse worker. So now I have two jobs instead of one which means that I produce fewer cartoons these days.
That is unfortunate but my second job is in a comic strip distribution center so there is still a connection with my passion for comics. For the moment, the ratio between my creative work and the jobs that actually bring in money is not evenly divided. I now have less time to draw which makes me a bit sad but what can you do? I don't let it depress me: the drive is still there, I just make time for my art. I draw in the evenings, on the weekends. It is what it is, there's no use complaining about it."
Dieter also shared his efforts to diversify his income streams, "Well, I took a few steps back by taking that extra job as a warehouse worker so my dream of earning my living by pen and pencil is now a little further away. I tried selling T-shirts with my cartoons on teepublic.com but that is not going well. I also contacted some publishers but they were only interested in comic strips, not in my single-page cartoons. I'm now thinking about sending my work to some greeting card businesses like Hallmark. I think cartoons are ideal for that sort of thing. I also plan to write to some children's books publishing companies. If I could be included in their portfolio directories, maybe they will hire me to draw the illustrations for a children's book. That's not exactly cartooning but my "childish" drawing style may be an advantage there!"
Finally, Bevers touched on the importance of audience feedback in refining his content, stating, "The cartoons that generate a lot of feedback are, of course, those about themes that generate much discussion, like war, vegetarians, climate change, etc. However, I think the LACK of feedback can also be a very helpful indication. For instance, I once posted a cartoon about the Instagram algorithm. It was a pun where I used the term 'Al Gore Rhythm' instead of 'algorithm,' featuring a dancing Al Gore. This post received very few likes, so from this, I learned to go easy with the wordplay jokes. I tend to overdo them. I also once started a comic about Paul, a hairless cat, but the reactions were not so enthusiastic, so I stopped making these Paul comics. Now I know that jokes about hair loss are not funny. I learned a lot from my Instagram posts, ha ha."
