Greenwich Native Is a Real Sketch for National Cartoon

By DJ McAneny

Maria Scrivan is funny for a living. A cartoonist, she's a Greenwich native now living in Stamford for the past six years with her husband, Andrew, and two uncooperative cats. 

"They're not so talkative. I've been trying to teach them photoshop. It hasn't gone well," she said Monday, the first day of a week long adventure of having her work showcased by the daily comic strip Rhymes with Orange.

Other guest cartoonists for the strip include Mo Willems, Suzy Becker, Jen Sorensen, and Rina Piccolo. Scrivan herself has had work published in "newspapers, magazines, books, greeting cards, advertisements and on licensed products," in places like "Parade Magazine, on Mashable.com, NobleWorks Cards, American Greetings, CheckAdvantage, Neato-Shop, Funny Times and on Salon.com," and has corporate clients that include "AT&T, IBM, Emcor, Mastercard and Deloitte."

She's also the vice president of the Connecticut chapter of the National Cartoonists Society, a North American group with roughly 400 members (there's a chapter in Canada.) For someone who's work has been feature so often, so prominently, she doesn't have any special formula for success, instead relying solely on being prepared for when inspiration strikes. 

"I don't know [where the ideas come from,]" she said. "I carry a sketchbook everywhere I go. I have an iPhone and tell Siri to take notes for me all day. I know my ideas are fleeting and if I don't get them down, they're gone." 

Scrivan fosters ideas until they've matured to a point where she can meld them into something publishable. Often times, she says a trip through past ideas helps meld something into fruition. 

"I tend to throw out a lot of ideas, throw a lot of things down and then those marinate," she said. "I have this big notebook filled with random thoughts and I'll go back to months ago and find something that never made it beyond an idea but I meld it with something else and suddenly it's a full vision."

For this week's featured cartoonist highlight, Scrivan pitched 18 ideas and a group of editors and regular Rhymes with Orange strip cartoonist Hilary Price settled on their favorites from the lot to run all week, including Sunday. 

Scrivan says she has lots of ideas or themes she'll revisit from time to time, things she thinks are funny. Bunny slippers, as seen in Monday's Rhymes with Orange strip, are a favorite. 

"I have a thing for bugs, insects," Scrivan laughed. "I have a handful of monarch butterfly jokes. Jokes about bed bugs. Panel cartoons let me tackle a variety of subject matter and characters and they're fun to design."

The path to her current job was a winding one, but one she always knew she wanted to travel. In 2008, she finally left the design work behind and committed fully to living the dream, and she said she's having a blast. 

"I have a background in animation, graphic design, web design," Scrivan said. "I'm always drawing and desiging. I was the cartoonist for the paper at Greenwich High School and my college paper. I've known since I was a kid it was all I wanted to do."