Lubbock Artist Nick Rhode Is Funny AF

Lubbock doesn't get enough credit for the plethora of badass artists we have, bringing me to today's subject: Nick Rhode.

I've followed Nick on various social media platforms for years and I can never get enough of his hilarious cartoons and signature style. His skilled hand and crass sense of humor work together like peanut butter and jelly, and it's about time somebody put him on blast.

I'm always curious to see what makes an artist tick and Nick agreed to give me all the sweet deets on how he got so dang cool. You can also check out a gallery of some of his creations at the bottom.

Nick told FMX: "I can't remember a time when I wasn’t drawing. When I was very young my parents would put spiral notebooks in front and me and I would fill them front to back with drawings and stories involving Ninja Turtles or He-Man or whatever cartoon characters my hyper little child brain could latch onto. My parents always encouraged me and I had a natural affinity for it, but I can’t say that I ever thought that it was special or that I intrinsically considered myself good at it. It was just a thing I liked doing.

At some point in grade school, I realized I could replicate the lettering on comic book covers and video game boxes, which often used fonts that had a raised, 3-D effect, giving the letters the illusion of perspective. To me it was just a matter of looking at the lines, figuring out the formula of it, and putting it down on paper. But my classmates, much to my surprise, seemed very impressed by this. I suppose this gave me an inkling that I might be a little better than average at it, even though I still have a hard time believing it 3 decades later.

Starting in my teenage years, I got slightly sidetracked by the drums, which lead me to take a 15-year detour that consisted primarily of violently banging on things, damaging my hearing, and trying to trick people into thinking I was cooler than I actually was. During that time I never really stopped drawing though, whether it was filling my school notebooks with 20 different versions of album artwork and logos for the terrible punk band I started with my friends, doing cartoons for the one section of the Lubbock-Avalanche Journal that high school students could contribute to, or just drawing dick and fart jokes to make my friends laugh.

I started getting into indie comics in my 20s, and eventually got around to self-publishing, which mostly consisted of using the copy machine at Kinko’s. I produced 3 issues of sequential art that were enjoyed by at least dozens of people. Since then, I’ve mostly focused my efforts on posting things online. Some of it is portrait illustration, some of it is just single cartoon images, and at one point I started making animated music videos for songs I had thrown together on my laptop. But it’s safe to say that the vast majority of it is squarely in my comfort zone, which is cartoons and comics.

I have some prints that are (at the time of this writing) hanging in the back of J&B Coffee in Lubbock, Texas. Otherwise, most of my work is available to be viewed on Instagram @stayindoors, or my Facebook page, also named "stayindoors." I also have an Etsy store at misternicholasprints.etsy.com, where you can buy some of my drawings. If anyone wants to contact me, my email is rhode.nick@gmail.com. I'm available for commission work and high-fives, but only if you've washed your hands."