The book that I am proudest of is a half comics/half prose book written with my sister, The Ride Together: A Memoir of Autism in the Family, about growing up with our eldest brother. It’s my most personal work and, perhaps, the most truthful. Written in the mid-90s, it is rewarding to still get an occasional note over the years from other siblings who have found the book useful.

Most of my work for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe is drawn with the Blackwing Pearl. If a piece requires hand-lettering, I use the Blackwing 602 which is sightly harder than the Pearl. If I want to add some depth and darkness to the finished drawing, I top it off using the softer, richer Blackwing Matte. A great thing about these warhorses is that, while they differ in softness, they all appear to be the same color.

After the pencil work is done, I apply layers of ink wash with a brush. Finally, I scan the original analogue drawing and spend a lot of time trying to make it look good in Photoshop. I move a lot of pixels.

In a digital world where we are being rapidly force-fed imagery, you must reflect, to pause, to consider, to open up to other ideas and feelings, and let them sink in. I try to finish my work at least a day before it is due and not to look at it for 24 hours. Not always easy to do, but the work always benefits from being seen freshly, available for last-minute tweaks, those tiny improvements that ice the cake.

Slowing down is not only a key to my work but at the core of my teaching practice. I teach the creation of graphic novels at The Rhode Island School of Design, Boston University, and The Center for Cartoon Studies, and again and again, I've seen how, when students take the time to pause, to reflect, they get much, much more out of the lesson. We need to slow down to get things to stick.

Draw every day…and don’t take the red-eye to Albuquerque.

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Website - www.paulkarasikcomics.com

Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/paulkarasik