23 Comics I Made To Illustrate The Funny Reality Of Being A Dog Owner (New Pics)

I've been asked whether or not I have any upcoming series besides "Dogs Love Bacon." Unfortunately, not at the moment. My full-time job keeps me busy enough to where I have to focus most of my free time on Dogs Love Bacon (as well as the care/love of the dogs that inspire the comic!). I am just working on growing DLB and doing the best that I can with it!

When it comes to my favorite comic...I still really like #65: We Request an Audience. A silly amount of extra work and research went into trying to make the period clothing somewhat historically accurate, as well as creating character designs for the three dogs...all in the name of a toilet joke based on a common dog owner situation.

When reading my comics, I just want people to smile, or feel some familiarity if they also have or had dogs. Dogs are fantastic, amazing creatures that bring joy into the world and make our lives more meaningful and bright, and I wanted to share that in comic form. It would also be nice if I could create a discussion of some dog-related topics that will help all of us do better with our own pets. When I realized that Tribble had lost most of her hearing, several readers offered advice on how to better handle her situation, which I have always appreciated.

The best comment that I have gotten since I started Dogs Love Bacon is when I got brave and posted my first group of comics on Bored Panda, hoping to get feedback for improvement. I live far away from my parents, and did not tell them that I had started another comic project, so one morning my mom blew up my phone because my dad was browsing Bored Panda, found the comics, and realized that the dogs and human in question were a bit too familiar to be a coincidence. (Bonus points to them since I started DLB with a new comic style, so it did not resemble any of my previous comic works).

I would like to have an excuse to draw a strip or two in a more feminine Korean manhwa style with super clean and flowing lineart. I also want to do another comic strip in Hirohiko Araki's Jojo's Bizarre Adventure style. It is just fun to draw the comic in a completely different style while trying to do justice to what is being parodied. Shoujo Princess Tazibel is probably also due for another appearance.

With all of that being said, I like to call myself so well-rounded that I am pointless. Obviously, drawing is my most time-consuming hobby at the moment. However, I love sculpting and working with casting resins. I cook, read history books, care for an ever-growing group of plants, exercise, and hike. I also enjoy traveling, and want to try my hand at urban sketching, video editing, and animation...adding to my list of time-consuming hobbies that keep me reaching for cartoonish amounts of caffeine.

I've also been asked if I have any advice for those of you who might want to start making comics as well. I say, just jump in and do it! Getting your work out there will be a crash course on improvement because you will quickly start to see what works and what does not work. For example, the very first DLB strips were black and white, then I decided that color would pop better, which led to my style changing rapidly to better suit the direction that I wanted the comic to go in. I spent the better part of 2020 developing the black and white designs, which were pretty slow-moving, but once I started posting the strips online and I started taking a harder look at my own work, the aesthetics improved relatively quickly. Of course, the constant schedule also helps, since it pushes one to draw more consistently to make updates, which also aids improvement.