“When I built this home, I thought it was important to have a place isolated from the rest of the house. When you have a family with kids, you need a place with no distractions. I put all of my favorite things in here, to boost my mood and fabricate a good atmosphere to create.”
He does need the isolation within all the personas filling up his surprisingly calm being. “I have three professions at the same time, on the same day. In the morning, I’m at the agency for creative copywriting, in the afternoon, I’m a cartoonist, and at night I’m a pharmacist.”
However, a glimmer paints his eyes when speaking of one of those professions in particular. An inherent part of his identity, and passion first and foremost, that trickled out of his being from his earliest years.
Letting the creative flow guide his very first steps
“When my father would come home after work, at the end of a long day with several newspapers, I would jump on them, as soon as he was done, to cut the cartoon section out. I started to imitate those cartoonists, trying to draw like them, seeing how they chose their angles, how they would draw the eyes, the nose, the mouth, and how they would write their comments.”
He chuckles as he reminisces on his initial, unrestrained outbursts of creativity: “I was drawing all over the walls so my mom, after getting upset many times, decided to give me a room where I could freely draw, and not hold back. “
"Some people, when they’re kids, they want to be a doctor, they want to be policemen, for myself… it was a daily cartoonist in a newspaper."
Yazeed al Harthi
Yazeed’s pencil marks followed him all the way into the classroom, where he would make sketches of his classmates, and then across borders, through his family travels.
Solidifying his vision on the wobbly Parisian cobblestones
“When visiting Paris, I would stay in Montmartre just staring at the cartoonists to see how they used shapes and figures to make people laugh. It was at that moment when I told myself that I wanted to be a cartoonist in the future. Some people, when they’re kids, they want to be a doctor, they want to be policemen, for myself… it was a daily cartoonist in a newspaper.”
The path towards becoming a cartoonist would be anything but a conventional one. In the early 2000’s, when Yazeed faced the daunting decision to cull his higher education studies, the Kingdom did not have an art school to offer. The background murmurs leaking from his family of physicians, directed him towards the medical field, within which he elected the pharmaceutical path, at King Saud university.
Regardless of his protracted lab hours and convoluted chemistry lectures, he worked diligently on his own creative craft, whenever he had the chance. “It was difficult, at the time we had no platforms such as youtube channels to follow artists to learn from or get inspired.” His self improvement came from within, one upping himself, with each cartoon.
Yazeed ran through pounds of sketch papers and led pencils throughout pharmacy school, landing him a job as a cartoonist before even receiving his medical license. It was the moment for his drawing skills to venture out, beyond the confines of his personal, nurtured sphere. Staying true to his desires on the Montmartre sidewalk, he now published daily cartoons for a new, local newspaper.
Upgrading from his led pencils to the newsroom’s ink
As if it weren’t enough, after becoming a certified pharmacist and learning the ins and outs of cartoon work, the multifaceted talent also became a creative copywriter for an American advertising agency. He explains this unlikely trifecta to us with great humility : the advertisers hosted weekly workshops at the newsroom to which he stumbled upon. “At this time I had no idea about the advertisement world.” But his curiosity took over and he attended a workshop, where he presented his work. They offered him a job right away, adding a third one to the list.
"The situation has changed for the better in Saudi."
Yazeed al Harthi
Since 2009, he has remained loyal to the agency, dedicating his mornings to them, creating multidimensional ads that feature on television screens all over the world. His afternoons are unchangeably a time for his cartoons, ones that have led him to be the first Saudi artists at UNESCO’s cartooning for peace, and at night he takes the time to maintain his pharmacy.
Yearning for progress, beyond the entertainment
Cartoons, for him, are far more than a hobbie, or a job even. They are a tool for change.
“The situation has changed for the better in Saudi. Before we had many red lines we could not cross, but today we are free to draw all the cartoons we want. Nowadays, we also have organisations that facilitate the process of exhibiting our work. The new generation and I have an opportunity to publish our work and show the world our art.”
