My comic strip diary is more than 800 pages long. I tried to find a sample to reprint here, but had to give up for fear of wounding my family, friends and my already questionable character. I still plan on keeping this diary until I die for my daughter Clara to have some idea of what life was like between her mother Marnie and me before she was born, as well as the events of her childhood. Meanwhile, I still draw in my old sketchbook (above), though not as often as I once did. Stupidly, the same themes of self-doubt, family and home appear unresolved
Illustration: Chris Ware
My graphic novel Building Stories, published last year, was based partly around the occupants of a Chicago apartment building not dissimilar to the building my wife and I lived in between 1995 and 2001, though the characters bear no resemblance to our former landlords and neighbours. This drawing exemplifies the self-conscious, perhaps art-schooly difference between what I think of as “real” drawing – meant to be seen – and the cartoon drawing of the graphic novel, which is meant to be read
Illustration: Chris Ware
Cartoonist Art Spiegelman and his wife Françoise Mouly have been mentors and close friends for my entire adult life, inviting me to contribute to Raw magazine as a 21-year-old cartoonist. Since then, Françoise has worked as the art editor of the New Yorker, for which she’s asked me to do covers and comic strips. In 1996 Art and Françoise took a vacation to Europe and left me the keys to their SoHo loft (above), giving me access to their incredible library of comics, art books and literature
Illustration: Chris Ware
While working on the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth, parts of which happen in 1893 Chicago, I spent a couple of days scrutinising original construction photos of the World's Columbian Exposition at the Chicago public library. Since this was before the internet ruined everything, I had no choice but to copy down whatever I wanted to remember, giving me a much better sense of the grounds and setting than if I'd simply squirrelled away hundreds of jpegs into a file folder on my laptop
Illustration: Chris Ware
While working on this extremely serious and pretentious Jimmy Corrigan book, I alleviated my anxiety at being made fun of by my judgmental and mean peers by doing stupid Rocket Sam gag strips, occasionally resorting to redrawing some of them as finished pages when I needed a quick filler for my weekly newspaper strip
Illustration: Chris Ware
I started keeping a sketchbook in 1986 as a freshman painting and sculpture student, but it wasn’t until 1988 that I began to enjoy it. This was for two reasons: 1) that summer I’d started drawing a little character that looked like a hyperthyroidic potato for which I felt unaccountable empathy; 2) I discovered the published sketchbooks of Robert Crumb, which changed my life
Illustration: Chris Ware
All through college I took life drawing classes because, despite what the 21st century would like us to believe, drawing is not a technical skill but a means of seeing and thinking. Plus, there’s just no getting over a naked person sitting in front of you, however cool everybody tries to act about it
• Chris Ware will be joining us for a live webchat on Monday 19 August from 1pm BST. Post your questions now
Illustration: Chris Ware
