"My name is Leighton Luckey. I grew up as a frequent doodler and enjoyed drawing more than taking notes in class. I took whatever artistic capabilities I developed from that time into university and focused on a degree in video game design, enjoying the merging of art and technology, before later transitioning to the field of user experience," the artist behind Trying Times Comics shared with us.
"While in my day-to-day job, I'm able to flex my artistic skills from time to time, sometime mid-pandemic I was looking for a little more artistic expression and a little more connection to the outside world, so I decided to start drawing comics," Leighton told Bored Panda.
When asked how they'd describe Trying Times Comics to someone who isn't familiar with it, the artist said this: "Trying Times Comics is about nerd life, relationships, and these trying times. That's kinda the tagline I'm going with at least. But more specifically it's about my personal interests, conversations/situations I have with my wife and friends (and cat), and whatever else is going on around me."
"I am by no means a great artist and I developed the comics style around this," the artist shared with us. "I told myself to make it simple, make it easy enough to draw that you'll keep doing it, and just focus on making jokes within my artistic and stylistic limitations. I think in creative spaces, limitations always improve the work."
We were curious to find out more about about Leighton's creative process. "It's really just based on whatever is happening in my life at the time," the artist told us. "Am I watching the Mandalorian? Mandalorian comic. Have I been playing an uncomfortable amount of CIV6? CIV6 comic. Did my wife say something funny to me? Boom, comic."
"These ideas all get thrown into a list on my phone and if I reread it in a few days and think it's still funny, I'll go for it. A lot of times it's either not that funny or I have no idea what it means. The first one on the list just says, 'hot dog, hot diggity, get-along little doggy.' No idea what I was supposed to do with that. Maybe one day," Leighton added.
Currently, there are 90 amusing comics on Trying Times Comics' Instagram page, touching a broad variety of topics. As of now, the account has almost 3,500 followers.
If you'd like to check out more of Leighton's works, you can visit their webpage, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts.
