1-pagers + Comic Poems: "Whereas" (aka "Proclamation"), "Wish You Were Here," "Cognitive Cryogenics" & "Robot Beavers"

Here, on the darkest day of the year, is some illumination by way of letting in a little light + levity. The buffer zone helps keep me sane, if not alive (speaking of darkest days). 

First up is a side-piece done not as a demo per say but an insurance policy on the collaborative page exercise in the Cartoon & Comic Arts course this semester. So as to ensure an unbroken chain of participants during each successive stage (script > pencil > ink > color), I will usually have an emergency backup prepped up in case anyone misses a class for whatever reason. I had an advanced student knock out a simple script on the day it was due, and then penciled in the page, and when nobody missed a session for any other stage along the path of production, went ahead and inked and (digitally) colored it as well. Note there was a lot of artistic liberty taken with my interpretation of the script.

I wanna take this opportunity to mention some meta about doing this assignment: aside from experimenting in the possibilities with collaborative aspect of comics (not many other mediums allow for such a process resulting in an amalgamation of imagery), a simpler point is made. That is how much you might get out of just doing random, weird exercise - at the least you'll have drawn something you never thought of before, and may very well wind up with a really unusual and creative creative synthesis.  

"Cognitive Cryogenics" was a collaborative exhibition up at UAF between Professor Sasha Bitzer and Ayona-Reily Dixon, a current art major student in the department. I couldn't take my Beginning drawing class on their semesterly field trip to the Bear Gallery (bonus 64th Parallel show was up, a dependable cornucopia of creativity + inspiration), but there was an outstanding show in our own gallery. When I was visually sampling & remixing some interesting textures on display, the individual titles for the pieces were not up yet, and so literally drew more from inference as far as the verbage. Sometimes it is a gateway into abstraction, like an artistic moulin.

Similar if not the same essential concept is at play with the comics poetry unit - now done as an exercise in all Beginning classes, not just in the Cartoon & Comic Arts course. These days when teaching in the studio, "See what happens" is my usual MO... try something new. This particular in-class exercise is so much fun to see spontaneous stories unspool - you never really know what will come out of the collaboration.

Like this last one, another impromptu page done during demos (reminiscent of "Costco," a recent Lamb of God mashup, and "Empty Spaces" too), for the semesterly landscape gesture exercise. I often go off on my own, whether in the woods or classroom, and wander about, doodling.