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The artist told Bored Panda that before she started drawing, she worked in a cinema as a projectionist, which meant "sitting in a dark room eating popcorn and lollies and making sure the movies ran on time, lol it was great." Before that, the artist worked in a bead shop where she got to play with beads all day, which was "equally as great."
"I’ve always loved being creative but I found drawing to be really frustrating before I started drawing comics. My hand would never do what I pictured in my head so I didn’t do it often. But now that I’ve drawn almost every day over the past 10 years (gawd, now I say that I think I should be better than I am lol) and I love drawing, digital especially because it’s so much more forgiving."
Jess previously revealed that she started making comics because she was getting bored from the text-heavy Facebook feed. "So I downloaded a kids' drawing app and thought I’d start drawing the things that happened in my daily life instead."
"I’ve only ever been 'okay' at drawing and so my focus in the early days was just on the jokes and not how good it looked. Actually, I don’t even know if I focused on the jokes that much either, if something funny happened I just wrote it out how it happened without even thinking about it really. It took me a really long time to be brave enough to change simple things like having a colored background or using shadowing on my characters."
To our question whether the artist has noticed some sort of change in her drawing style, Jess answered that the quality of her works has improved since she started. "When I began, I was just using my finger to draw on my phone but my brother called the local paper for me and asked them to consider putting my comics in the paper, to which they said yes so I upgraded to an iPad and Apple Pencil which made a big change to the quality of my work for obvious reasons. I also moved on from Doodle Buddy to Clip Studio where I could draw with vector lines and have layers (which was a game-changer!)"
Jess admitted that she was self-conscious of putting herself out there when she first started to draw comics. "I thought people would think I was weird and laugh but instead people tag their friends and say stuff like 'this is me' and 'omg are you looking in my windows for comic ideas?' It’s been so fun to find out that there are so many other weirdos out there. A lot of fans have sent me DMs and I have quite a few new friends I’ve made all over the world now who I chat to almost daily (shout out to you guys, you know who you are!) It’s like my comics have been a beacon to all the other weirdos who are just like me, haha."
These days the artist is pretty busy drawing, she has been getting a lot of illustrative work for logos, websites and magazines. "I’ve most recently drawn a podcast tile for the ABC (here in Australia), which was awesome. But I tend to split my time between that and sewing. A few years ago when we were planning our wedding I was looking at wedding dresses and all the nice ones were over $1000 so I decided to buy a sewing machine and teach myself to sew so I could make my dress, which I did and it was great! I now sew all my summer clothes and the occasional winter coat. I’ll be doing a fashion design course this year starting in July so time will tell if I go further down that path or keep the balance between drawing and sewing."
Jess' motivation to draw has changed over the years. "I’m not too proud to say that a big motivator for me at one stage was the likes and shares, I loved the validation and I was addicted to it. But a couple of years ago the Instagram algorithm changed and many comic artists (including myself) had a massive crash in numbers and we were shattered. I went from having 5000 likes per post as an average down to 500 and because I’d told myself that the numbers dictated the quality of my work, I just hated everything I did from then on and I got a massive block. This happened just before Covid, too, which was a pretty bloody depressing time to come up with funny jokes, it just seemed so pointless.
But now, I don’t care about the numbers anymore and I draw a lot more organically. If I think of something funny and I feel like drawing it, I will. I don’t think about whether or not it's broad enough for everyone to like it or if people might think it’s stupid. I guess in that way I’ve gone back to where I first began."
