About a decade ago, Will McPhail was just an ordinary zoology student. He now draws regularly for the world-famous magazine The New Yorker. How can one make such a change in his life? Well, McPhail admitted to “scribbling the teachers” when he was supposed to be learning. And although he graduated, it was enough to pursue a career as a cartoonist.
So instead of continuing to study the animal kingdom, he decided to immerse himself in the wildlife of Edinburgh’s cafes and libraries. There, he analyzed people’s social behavior, turning his findings into witty and funny comics.
McPhail is now expected to come up with 8-10 ideas per week for cartoons from The New Yorker, a popular American magazine created 94 years ago. “The best I can do is find an area where I want to make a cartoon drawing and accept the setting, then I hope my sense of humor will go through the moon in that setting,” the artist told the BBC.
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In fact, I studied zoology in college. Because when you ask a seventeen-year-old boy what he wants to do with his life, he always makes the right decision. Thirty thousand and four years of my life is a small price to pay for the three facts of the armadillo that I now know. However, I have had creative ideas and made drawings all my life. Or at least since I learned about pencils. “
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The artist mainly draws individual panels because he usually draws cartoons for The New Yorker, which are classically a single panel deal. “The weekly submission of cartoons to the magazine is really the only structure that I have in my life and every professional opportunity that has been given me has been direct because my work has been seen in The New Yorker. So I owe them almost everything Armadillos always give birth to four identical quadruplets, ”he explained.
Despite having a career that allows him to live and work anywhere in the world, Will decided to stay in Scotland even after his great drawings exploded onto the international scene.
Scotland attracts me in a way, “he explained. There is something about Scotland that attracts creative people and I have definitely felt it.
One of the reasons for this choice is the abundance of inspiration that he finds in the country. “It’s my job to capture all the different walks of life, the idiosyncrasies of life, and Edinburgh and Scotland have a plethora of different classes and niches of people.”
There are all kinds of fascinating social avenues that you can go to and meet people of all backgrounds. It is very inspiring when it comes to brainstorming ideas for drawing.
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