Hyacinth and Sal

Although the first Hyacinth and Sal strip only dates back to May 17, 2021, the story behind the strip goes back a little further.

In April 2018, I had a spur-of-the-moment idea for a comic strip entitled Levinson, about a young squirrel with low self-esteem. Although my interest in this specific comic idea diminished relatively quickly, various aspects of it endured. One of the characters was a skunk named Hyacinth (yes, I named her after the flower). More or less, this all felt innocuous, and it would feel that way for some time.

In August 2020, I knew I wanted to start a webcomic starring Hyacinth and her twin brother, Sal. Through insubstantially harmless impulsivity, I came up with something like six weeks of ideas to get started. I knew I wanted to start the comic the following May, and I knew I wanted to have enough strips prepared in advance. While I ended up discarding a lot of my initial ideas (I either became bored of them or just thought they were terrible), I created enough comics from September 2020 to the middle of May 2021 to cover over three months of material. I was set for the summer.

Now about the strip itself. The long and short of Hyacinth and Sal is that it is a webcomic that chronicles the ventures and goings-on of two young twins and their experiences growing up. Whether they are making breakfast, going to school, or talking about words (as everybody does), they will be accompanied inevitably by their idiosyncrasies. Over time, they meet and interact with a variety of peers, providing more experiences as a result.

The daily strips are drawn with archival ink on 7” by 17” Bristol. The Sunday strips are similar, except with 8.25” by 17” Bristol. The strips are all fed through a scanner, and the Sundays are colored digitally. I’ve never timed myself when drawing a typical strip, but even the simpler ones take hours to make. When coming up with ideas for the comic, I like to draw from my myriad of interests and thoughts.

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