Well this is the first 1st Friday in a decade that I don't have an annual retrospective of the best cartoons of the year down at the distillery. Nor anywhere else (except the required faculty exhibition) this year, like cafes, dispensaries, museums or galleries, and only the one public gig for the newspaper.
A few more notes below the fold...
Oh yay one of those year's-end seasonal reviews: a traditional chest-thumping recap - but that's pretty much what a navel-gazing blog does anyways, so perhaps much more fitting to feature instead student work, or more accurately, students working. So along those lines I'll share an insight that changed the way I live, or at the least, look at life. Which, sure, sounds like a cheesy infomercial, so here’s a caveat that it’ll probably revert back to normal mental cruising altitude ie skimming barely high enough to avoid a crash in a few more days, or hours update: too late. Something something mood swing? Reminds me of one of my favorite quips from an old dear friend Jeri (whom I still miss almost once a week): “when you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot, hang on, and swing!”
Anyways I was recently interviewed by a student for a Communication class paper they were writing, and I talked AT them for a solid hour in my office, like some sort of a sourdough professor. But in all seriousness it uncorked something that was on the verge of being forgotten, the resurrection of a recent idea - one of the usual thousand this week - to revisit the habit of taking snapshots of people's hands holding their respective artistic implements whist drawing. But as opposed to the way I had traditionally (see here, here, and here) focused on – the range in diversity of their unique, individual grips while sketching – this time I wanted to include equal attention to what they were drawing, namely that they’re all drawing comics.
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Because the specific epiphany I had was like a literal cartoon lightbulb moment going off over my head that all three of my current classes at this exact moment of time in this semester were all simultaneously engaged in drawing comics. The awareness, or inciting insight, dawned on me after a sudden realization right in the middle of one class that everyone was all actively and intensely engaged with their respective three-page comic (required in all my Beginning Drawing courses). Think of calm in the eye of a creative storm, sitting there leaning back at my desk in the center of the studio where I had been doing a demo, and looking all around the room, seeing such focused energy, let alone at 8am.
The semesterly class schedule specifies several “open studios,” which are relatively rare, an they mean my hands are mostly off the wheel, stop being one of those "helicopter teachers" (probably makes more sense these days to refer to us instead of as a "drone professor") who endlessly hovers around micro-managing ongoing assignments. These are the days that being an effective teacher can sometimes mean simply standing there holding a door open, and not getting the way: no lecture, no overt lesson, more an emphasis on creating a space. It's like a collective cocoon, a buffer zone against the cold + dark of winter hitting and the constant existential dread of current events. Put on some cool music, sip a cuppa coffee, and hang out and draw for a couple hours. How cool is that? You know, like a real artist, making art. Sure it's for a class, and for a specific assignment, but still, "it's your story, you tell it however you want."
But wait: then the next morning, the very same exact thing in another class, with the added bonus of connecting even more dots realizing that later on that evening it would happen yet again in this semester’s Cartoon & Comic Arts course. Now I’m used to the creative oasis which that particular unit in all my drawing classes offers me every semester, but the convergence of all three of current classes was like a whoa dude, big picture, full circle, you have officially arrived moment. How humbling and so awesome to see what a special moment in time it was, like everything in life was leading up to this.
Sure it surely had already happened last spring, with an identical schedule, but I was so consumed with the occupational stresses of a first-time full-time professor I hadn’t taken the time to reflect on such things. Acknowledgement of this Grand Confluence of Significant Events is a way to feel weirdly grateful for my wife, cats, friends, fellow faculty, staff and students, and know that nomatter how screwed up life has been, with so many bad choice and wrong turns along the way, if everything has led to this, than it’s all good, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Livin' the dream I tell ya.
All tolled that’s almost fifty students that, as of this writing, are all bent over their respective pages, inking away. Soon I'll scan and format over a hundred pages of their comics to get the class comic books formatted for the printer – along with the few 420’s/Advanced independent projects published as well - and also hang all the corresponding pages of original art in the hallway display cases. In short, awash in a wave of comics: Reading them, teaching about them, drawing them, doing demos, critiquing them, piles and piles of them on every flat surface of the office, in the car, and at home. Not to mention just a few weeks ago a wall of comics in the gallery as part of a student’s BFA thesis exhibit. So this is sort of a semesterly Cosmic Alignment of Harmonic Cartoon Convergence.
Stay ‘tooned for another (like last year's) really big data-dump – we’re talking wharrgarble caliber - where I catch up on samples of student works in all of the semester’s courses.
Especially the... you guessed it, comics.
Technically it's the ink that's thermoreceptive, but whatever, the whole thing was a disaster, and serves as a great example of a weak execution that should have been shoveled back into the previously mentioned "mental mulch-pile." I failed to get across the core concept, that of it literally bottoming out, like the mercury in an outdoor thermometer at fifty-something below zero. And much as I prefer my brew at home to be as thick and rich, having it actually look like mud is not very aesthetically appealing.
My Xmas panel (previously teased out here) that ran in last year's Sundays section (subscribers "get it" first). It's also doubling as this year's Xmas card, which gets handed out in person, and mailed out to inlaws + the handful of relatives still alive or not on the shit list. At least the ones who send me one first, so I don't have to do the requisite detective work finding out where they get snail mail.
Actually that always just reminds me how most folks are grown-ups by now and thus have had a house for many, many years where they've since lived and raised a family, and haven't moved around like a migratory peasant. Ah yes, the twenty-fifth of December, where I get both of the year's most depressing events over with both in one day.
But seriously, folks light up when you actually hand them a card, as in a tangible, physical object that manifests and encapsulates all those feelings into an actual thing that they can throw away later. One of the meta-reasons print media is still the main, original "platform" for my work is how I deeply appreciate the opportunity to directly give readers a sort of a "card" via the newspaper. Which they can still throw away.
Here's also a bonus watercolored version I know, it's confusing, as I leave the freshest material unreleased on social media, usually staggered a year later or at least a few month after it appears in print (Instagram posts are mostly scheduled two years after publication). Membership, or in this case, subscription has it's privileges. Still on the scale of specialness, nothing beats the real thing, especially while doing a demo and making something appear for the first time.
... plus a bonus teaser of what'll appear in print this weekend. Stay safe folks, and thanks for reading: CHEERS
Here's one that's exclusive of Ink & Snow. First & foremost, this post + piece are both to wish The Significant Otter a most happy-est aMAZingest birthday ever. Given that she isn’t a regular reader of Ink & Snow, I can safely slip this one under the radar, and similarly assume that uploading it onto one of my many social media platforms will go unnoticed – at least until it’s pointed out (on other social media platforms). Albeit this blog is the one place and space I can somewhat safely expound upon the process and include more in-depth metacommentary.
Moving through time + space... our Alaskan life, her history in the hills of Iowa, ore merged cabin with a wall of DVD' & comics and our respective mediums (though see excels equally in painting, photography and digital design); these three floater panels are superimposed upon a backdrop view through a window to her raised bed, all anchored by cAtticus and MoochieBear.
So it was originally a demo piece for the fall semester's Cartoon & Comic Arts course: One of the many tweaks and recalibrations to the class after it's initial offering (first time during a regular semester), was to add in another critique - assigning an 18x24" sized Comic Poem.
A couple problems occurred over the course of making this. One, I rushed
the inking stage - never mind showing off to students with a "show ya
how it's done" demonstration, I was just trying to keep up with the
assigned workload. So it was a shame to try and bang out the inking (done with a dip-pen, India ink, borders with a stick, and lettering with Microns) in
one sitting, especially after investing so much comparative time and
energy plotting and penciling. So the playful cavorting chickadees
mutated into misshapen blobs of raven-ish shapes. Another unfortunate issue occurred after choosing the
wrong kind of stock: I provided the majority of the students with 18x24" smooth Bristol, and a few watercolorists, including me, used watercolor paper. Just, as it turns out, not really the best, as this warped and buckled. That's also why there are some highlights off the gloss varnish btw.
I gave myself bonus gold stars when knowing her favorite poet was Robert Frost, but still I didn't know specifically which one was her favorite, that being "The Sound of Trees." I also was surprised to hear "Hell's Bells" reached number one in the favorite song category (great choice, even I'm more partial to a cover track from the Bon Scott era), and the mashup proved to be almost as much of a puzzle as piecing together the piece. Hence the staggered staircasing of panel boxes to ease the path of the viewer through the page.
Meanwhile the original now nesting in a really spiffy frame including a pre-cut mat... some newsprint making for functional wrapping paper while it awaits her upstairs. I think of all the artwork of mine she's collected over the years I will be am most proud of this one. Even though I did manage to get a good high-res scan of the line art stage, and can make a bunch of edits before digitally coloring it in... nah, it was made purely for the process + this purpose. In other words nobody's gonna see it anywhere else but here, and the original itself.
I suppose this panel works anywhere that it gets cold, but the farther north one goes, the pause for basking becomes more and more of a luxury. A brief bath of bliss, a recharging of our mental, physical and spiritual battery amidst another seasonal snap.
Indeed the difference is as obvious as the literal contrast between the two versions of the panel: before and after cutting in some shadows to push the range of values + some directional highlights. I want the viewer's eyes to also echo the "ahhh..." when they visually feel the warm glow.
Normally I am consciously choosing to de-saturate the digital feel and flavor of my colored panels, as has been mentioned many a time here before. But in this case I used the Photoshoppy effect to a singular advantage, as evidenced by a failed attempt to emulate the effect in watercolor, which didn't work and needed an extra boost with my last-minute makeover with markers.
And here is proof positive of a frequent metaphor of mine: that of a sketchbook being more than a repository of ideas - it's a veritable compost heap of concepts, the mental mulch-pile where kernels of cartoons are incubated, fermented until ready to fertilize more funny ideas. Eventually it'll grow into another, even better variation of the initial seed that was planted back on page whatever. "Aaahhh..."
This is reminiscent of a classic from a few years ago ("Sharing") which also dealt with the concept of such sticks serving as the real treat. All a matter of perspective, if you gnaw it over enough.
I tagged this post as a "demo" because I used the original pen & ink piece as an example of how to color in cartoons - colored pencils in this instance. With the caveat that the panel was inked in with the usual dip-pen on smooth Bristol, which is not as conducive as the slightly textured surface of of the vellum alternative, which is great for other dry media such as pastel and graphite. It still came out okay enough, and served as an exhibit on the patience needed to gradually build up layers of value. I had also commented on how The Simpsons skin tones have freed the cartoon world from ever having to use white again. Not to mention this is about as far as one can push the Crayola brand.
For a few weeks of a few months out of every year I'll grow out a mustache + beard, basically as a default setting when "depression shaves" set in during the winter season, aka "I have stopped caring about general appearance and matters of personal grooming."
It's only a matter of time before becoming acutely aware that there's hair sitting on top of my upper lip, which is most disturbing. It also begins to be a factor in eating, to say nothing of the subzero snot-cicles adorning the face pelts of large, fur-bearing arctic mammals.
Personally I thought that this one would be at least a runner-up to the dumbest gag of the year. It is also an example of the comparatively rare strip format, a the timing + pacing of the delivery lends itself quite nicely to a one-two-three punchline. Hat-tip to the original meme.
Even though I initially envisioned it as a single-panel, now it's proof that letting a concept ferment in the sketchbook for a number of years may sometimes yield a better idea or caption or even the visual component that one's initial doodle.
I still to this day live without running water. I can use a hand-held devise to communicate with a satellite orbiting the planet and access information on any subject in history, all while crouched over a frozen hole in the ground while taking a dump. It's all a matter of perspective, but whenever I visit someplace that is civilized and flush the toilet, I am acutely aware of how much goes swirling away, and have a keen and intimate appreciation of knowing firsthand what resources you rely upon that other folks take for granted, if they ever even bother to think twice about their carbon assprint. And when every day you can see how literally full of shit you are, it's humbling to say the least.
And yes I also haul water in 5-gallon jugs - the ubiquitous blue Colemans - to cook and clean, which makes me appreciate every cup that goes down the drain. Our amazing landlord installed a leech pit, so there is a sink instead of a slop bucket. So it's not like we live like barbarians or anything. But besides the stink curlicues (technically an emanata known as a wafteron) wafting about the cabin, there are all sorts of visual cues that will connect with other residents of Alaska who choose such a lifestyle.
