Clever is easy, simple is hard …

… The Deceptive Simplicity of ‘Peanuts’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… I had recently become good friends with Chris Ware, who articulated quite eloquently the difference between drawing and drawing comics. I had an inkling of what he meant, but it wasn’t until I tried copying Schulz that I experienced comics as a special kind of calligraphy, formed and informed not only by an iconic mental map of the world but also by the intensity of life lived, the depth of feelings felt. Charlie Brown is simultaneously a beautifully proportioned, abstracted assemblage of marks; a conceptually pure and original character; a true expression of Schulz; and, through the act of reading Peanuts, a way also to understand myself. To communicate so much to so many, with so little, as Schulz was able to do with Peanuts, takes a lifetime of practice, persistence, determination, focus, stamina, and dare I say: obsession. Dilettantes and imposters easily betray themselves.