Jason Chatfield is a cartoonist and a comedian working in New York City and is originally from Perth in Western Australia. You can find his work in The New Yorker and MAD magazine. Jason happens to be the vice president of the National Cartoonist Society, which is the world’s biggest cartooning organization, founded in the 1940s and it covers the full spectrum of cartooning.
It is safe to say that Jason is definitely one of the artists we love, so we went to see him in New York and asked him some questions that you all can hopefully learn something new from.
Enjoy this three part series.
Part 1 – Living in New York
New York can seem like a microcosm of the entire world. Every culture in the world is here. New York is an incredible city. It is incredibly conducive to being creative. There’s always… no matter where you look, there’s something that will inspire you.
Part 2 – Stand up comedy and cartooning
Being a cartoonist, you don´t really receive any laughs when you put your comics out there. So when Jason started doing stand up comedy, he found out that it is incredibly rewarding to get feedback on a joke immediately. Then he combined stand up comedy with cartooning, which became his magic formula.
“I’ve never once hit a creative block that New York didn’t un-block for me.” Jason Chatfield
Part 3 – Creating Comic Strip Ginger Meg’s
Ten years ago, Jason became the writer and artist for Australia’s most iconic comic strip Ginger Meg’s. The comic is about a red-headed kid who is basically Australia’s version of Dennis the Menace.
Jason does not have one workflow or a rhythm that he is in at all times. It changes dramatically depending on the thing that he is doing and the job. Sometimes it can be an uninteresting laborious job, but then he makes sure he takes his work somewhere with interesting surroundings. Jason also constantly experiments with new materials, brushes in Photoshop, physical tools, and technology. Because he believes that as a freelance illustrator, you need to be able to adapt and do a job correctly.
“You always seek to improve and you never stop learning.” – Jason Chatfield
Thank you for watching.
If you want to keep up with Australia’s most widely syndicated cartoonist, follow Jason on social media:
Website – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter
Jason Chatfield Self Cartoon
