You know what? 

I don't like this racket. Miss Manners, Dear Abby, Ask Amy. They've all got some bullshit agenda to push. I'm just not down for that, except I can't stop reading the trash. I guess that's why newspapers cost a buck nowadays.

The only syndicated advice columnist I'll give a pass to is Dan Savage, because if you're going to write to a stranger for advice, you ought to have a mayonnaise jar stuck up your butt.

I was happy to revisit this concept for day four of #IllustrationADay. I think I pulled this column from the same edition of the paper that I got that Miss Manners piece from and carried it around in my sketchbook for a few days. 

Working on the fundamentals...

I knew that I wanted to press on my own technical ability in the course of this challenge, so I decided to try to do something challenging with the eye line in this piece. I wanted to make the readers eye track over the image in a way that would reflect the cadence of the joke.

The illustration starts the reader out with Miss Manners, then it spits you out into a chaotic, imaginary world. Scan up through that and you arrive in the world of the narrator, who then re-cycles you back into the chaotic, imaginary world. The eye finally lands on an imp, which is always a fun way for an illustrator to wink at the reader.  Check it out in the carousel below. You can flip through to see the piece with and without the eye line. I also included the "Dear Abby..." piece to show off it's very traditional eye-line. 

I've got one more comic for you this week. It'll come through the blog on Friday. It's a smaller work but I dig it a lot and I think you will too.

Don't forget to follow @CTOBMagazine on Twitter so you can join the conversation about #IlustrationADay!