David Rees may refer to:
The things I'm grateful for are: I had the one thing that I feel really lucky about, which is that I made something, I made art, that truly - in a weird way - truly comforted me and comforted a lot of people. And I'm really grateful that I got to have that experience.
I liked sharpening pencils and I was like, "Oh, I wonder if I could get paid to do it. " And I figured it out and I did it.
I have very limited craftsmanship. And a lot of the stuff I make plays on that.
I have a really analytical approach to art. And the whole idea that you can't analyze what makes a joke funny. . . I do not agree with that at all.
Any working cartoonist will tell you this, anybody who's working in a creative field: at some point, it's a job. You have deadlines. I think, for over a year, I refused to make them for publications, because I only wanted to make them when I wanted to make them. But at some point, I was like, "This is crazy, you have an opportunity to be a professional cartoonist.
I don't think I would've ever dared dreaming of becoming a professional cartoonist. I wouldn't set myself up for that disappointment.
I just wanted a really simple, dramatic way so that fans, people who were reading my comic, would be like, "This is something different. " Just to flag it, almost.
The thing that was interesting to me about Relationshapes - as opposed to most of the other cartoons I've ever made - was I knew when one worked and when one didn't work, but I couldn't really explain it.
I feel like really thinking about art and really appreciating it and learning the language of it just makes you more of a connoisseur. I believe that.
Once you use a toothbrush to clean a pencil sharpener, you should no longer use it to clean your teeth.
I hardly ever use pencils. I'm left-handed and it's really messy if you're left-handed because of the graphite smudging. I use them more now than I used to because there's, like, 15,000 pencils all over my house.
Obviously, I never had to sketch anything out. To me, that was the appeal of working with clip art, working digitally. You make it and it's done.
People think, "Wow, people in America have so much money, they're sending hundreds of pencils to this guy. " I don't think those people realize that most people who are buying these pencils are buying them as art objects or conversation pieces.
I don't even drink Coke. It tastes like robot sweat.
Nobody could be a professional cartoonist, because you have to do something you don't like to do in order to be a responsible adult and pay the rent.
I'm interested in the structure of art and how it works. And the content is also interesting, but I don't want to keep the same structure and just plug in new content every week.
I talked to people in the pencil industry and I talked to people as I was sharpening their pencils about the frustrations they have with pencils, so I really did do my research and I do know more about pencils than most people.
I like to do things that are new, where I feel the sense of discovery.
I assumed that the pencil market was collapsing, but then it turns out that from 2010 to 2011 in the United States, pencil consumption went up by over six percent. I mean, those are all foreign-made pencils. Those are probably Chinese pencils, mostly, and Mexican pencils. I mean, it is an archaic communication technology, but it is still ubiquitous.
I had good relationships with stores. And I was like, "All right, I'll self-publish it. But I'm only going to do 1,000. "