Humor with a touch of “ black humor” in Joseph Novak's witty cartoons

Joseph Nowak is a Canadian illustrator who draws absurd one-panel comics about everything in the world. And in them absolutely unimaginable things are possible, because Nowak's imagination is fine, and his sense of humor is as paradoxical and unconventional as his comics.

Source: @nowakdraws

But he doesn't try to put any overly deep thoughts or social messages in most of them, and admits that his main goal is just to make the audience laugh. However, “if I can make the audience look at some phenomena in a new way or think a little bit about the meaning of the drawing, I will be happy,” Nowak says.

Source: @nowakdraws

He literally fountains ideas, but sifts most of them out as he works. “Eighty percent of my ideas were never realized, and frankly, thank God, otherwise there would be 80% more failed cartoons in the world.” However, Nowak is a very prolific writer, and even with this percentage of unsuccessful ideas being eliminated, he has a lot of good work.

Source: @nowakdraws

Many of them are very concise, without clouds with inscriptions and present a single drawing that is hard to confuse with anyone else's. These works are the most favorite for the artist. Nowak, like any self-respecting cartoonist, has managed to form his own style of drawing, which suits his absurd humor with a touch of surrealism.

Nowak started drawing in early childhood, imitating his older brother. Even then he showed good abilities, and teachers from the art school helped him to develop them. But he got a higher education in another sphere, in no way related to creativity. He got a job, but at some point he became desperately bored sitting in the office, and he started drawing single-panel comics in his spare time.

Source: @nowakdraws

It helped me to keep myself energized and became a kind of “warm-up for the mind”. “I used to start my working day by drawing another comic, if it turned out to be successful and funny, then the day should go well. It was motivating to look for better ideas so that the level of my comics was consistently high. Usually I wrote them down in notebooks, and to be honest, I have a lot of such notes, I don't know how to deal with this waste paper, it's a pity to throw it away, in case there is that pearl from the dung heap among them”.

Source: @nowakdraws

“I've been working on my drawing style, and it has evolved in recent years. But one thing is constant: my drawings are mostly based on absurdity. Sometimes I hyperbolize already absurd situations, and sometimes it's enough just to change the characters to fictional ones, and leave the situation as in ordinary life.

Source: @nowakdraws

I am not a stranger to black humor, it allows you to look at some things in a new way, but I try to avoid excessive pictorial details, after all, I work in the genre of single-panel comics, not horror. I believe that there should be no forbidden topics for an artist, but I can't do without some internal censorship.

Source: @nowakdraws

Nowak admitted that he sometimes envies ordinary people who are free from the constant search for ideas. He has too many of them, and visualization in the form of comics helped him clear his mind and focus on his main job, which remains his main source of income. However, he complains that it's easy to gain popularity online by drawing comics, but it's hard to monetize it. Everyone prefers to watch and share them for free. Of course, there are specialized sites that pay cartoonists, but the size of this payment is not too large.

Source: @nowakdraws

However, earnings for him are not an end in itself, the artist admitted that he just likes to make the audience laugh: “I want people to laugh, because there is already too much gloomy in our world”.

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