Recap Postscript: Spruce Moose + VAA Redux

A few more addendums to the recent updates on extracurricular activities from over the summer. Also I now have an excuse to post this shot from my studio overlooking the early morning light, which is dwindling fast...  more below the fold!

Recap: Cartoon & Comic Arts 2024

In an earlier post I highlit the UAF campus newspaper publishing a piece about the Cartoon & Comic Arts course inaugural class for the first time ever offered during a regular semester (as opposed to the twelve years during the summer). This was half a year after the interview, but I easily doubled that time delay by just now finally getting around to a recap post – uploading this only a few days away from the Fall semester restarting, and kicking off a radically revamped syllabi + schedule.

Sydney

This, thee second time ART F220 + ART F420 was being offered during a "normal" timeframe (two nights per week, 2.5 hours per class) it went into waitlisted status I think after only a few days of general registration. Degree-seeking (art) majors get first dibs, and there is a section of the course specifically geared towards satisfying the requisite upper-level credits that they need to accumulate.

Hailey

The majority of the students are not, however, and that’s partly the reasoning behind offering it in the evenings, so as to attract folks who are not traditional students. Usually a healthy percentage of the class comes from outside the department, the college, and even the university. There is a vibrant community of like-minded individuals all hiding in the Alaskan wilderness, and if you shake the bushes, not only do you get blueberries and cranberries, but many a fellow aficionado and partaker of craft will roll about the tundra. *Join me after the jump for more...

Center for Cartoon Studies: Gag Workshop Summer 2025

Just returned from taking a week-long workshop on gag comics under Hilary Price (creator of the syndicated cartoon “Rhymes With Orange” since 1995) at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. It had been nineteen years since I was there last, when it was Harry Bliss who taught a class on single-panel comics. Proving once again the meta-lesson in that you ought to remain teachable, and you're never to old to go back to school, and that taking classes is always humbling when you realize just how little you know. It was a perfect balance between professional development as a teacher, especially one that teaches comics, and inspirational insights into my own personal creative process over on the other side of the drawing board as a publishing cartoonist. There was a great mix of personalities and varying skill-sets within our group, with a wide range of ages and experience all brought to bear on an intensive, immersive five-day deep dive into one of the most foundational aspects of sequential art.

Both buildings of the campus are located right on main street downtown in the historic village, and our classroom was in the former post office building. One particular highlight was getting to do research for our homework right next door in the Schulz Library, which was a mecca for us comic nerds to geek out on. There was a daily, sometimes hourly rhythm to the course, each day consisting of a constant stream of warmups, lectures, exercises, breaks, group/collaborative exercises, jams, writing/conceptual exercises, more warm-ups, etc. (repeat). The collective synergy from all eight of the students was fantastic, plus we had a teacher's aide who was a current second-year student at the school, and his contributions and artwork was excellent. We hung out together in varying small groups over lunches and dinners, getting to know the story behind everybody, and made some wonderful new friends & colleagues.

Hilary Price is four-time winner of Best Newspaper Panel Cartoon by the National Cartoonists Society + Cartoonist of the Year in August 2024, with her feature appearing syndicated in over a hundred newspapers. I was in awe of how much energy, output and passion for not just the medium, but also for teaching others about cartooning, was so inspiring on both a professional + personal level. Emphasis was on many components in the creative process like hand-lettering, and how the deliberate arrangement of visual elements in the composition - both image and text - are in fact “sequential” insofar as how we perceive/interpret the cartoon. Hearing someone of such stature further re-legitimizing this particular medium was so gratifying and empowering, as sometimes this single-panel sub-category gets lost amidst the ascendancy of the lofty graphic novel. Another fantastic aspect to this institution is the variety of different genres students can explore, as there was a horror workshop running concurrently with ours. The Center even has a manifesto free to download (here) called "The World is Made of Cheese," which literally illustrates the center's MO.

Price (who considers herself “a writer who draws” rather than “an artist who writes.”) was the perfect instructor at the right time in both my life and career. It was revealing to experience such a course from a student perspective, and if maybe a third of the lessons were familiar exercises or assignments that I use in my own courses, she totally customized them and taught them in completely different ways, some of which I shall dutifully emulate to improve my teaching the same material. Doing essentially double-duty by taking notes on how-to-teach plus doing the assigned work, I wrote and drew so much so fast my hand cramped a couple times – that’s really rare. She was such an exceptionally attentive teacher, very inclusive, supportive and engaging. Since her emphasis was on the generation of ideas, it was ideal to focus on the conceptual underpinnings ie words first, then drawings. We progressed through character development, then plotted punchlines stressing "process over product" ("Amplify - Simplify"), setting + design, some collaborative exercise, "crosstraining" in longer formats like strips and other multi-panels, and constant group reviews of all the work we did during the workshop. An omnipresent timer was used for everything, so as to bypass the inner critic and short-circuit the impulse to over-analyze. A few lessons were in part drawn from Ivan Brunetti and Lynda Barry, each of which are "textbooks" in my own classroom, and another suite of recommended titles have already been ordered. We spent a lot of time exploring various techniques in brainstorming tropes and visual cliches, and the pacing + placement of punchlines with repeated emphasis on how "it's not the joke - it's the getting the joke."

Another highlight of the week was on the morning before the last class when I was last on the list for having a 20-minute one-on-one review/critique with the teacher, whereupon I proceeded to split that time into two 10-minute sections: the first was an attempt at encapsulating my experience of the entire workshop in the context of a cartooning teacher. The second was an overview of a mini-portfolio, from the perspective of the recent NCS rejection (which I'm over btw, and now back at the "self-made rugged artist" thing hand-carving cartoons borne out of the "independent arctic work ethic") (grrr) (snort), and most importantly, showing how the aesthetic effect both her work and that of Peter Gallagher's "Heathcliff" has been in directly influencing my recent stylistic shift. This was true for both the coloring approach/palette overhaul, and now also in the revamped gag-writing aspect. I can't wait to see the growth of even more low-hanging fruit and to in turn share the creative juices with this fall semester's group and future classroom gigs. One irony is that in all of the differing assignments & critiques the weakest and hardest one by far for me personally has always been introducing the single-panel/gag cartoon in my own classes. Now it with be the tentpole for the whole semester.

Yeah I went into total fanboy mode over a special guest cartoonist Suzy Becker (1990's “All I Need to Know I learned From My Cat”): she gave a show & tell of her work + process to our class one morning. Exposure to so many cartoonists during this workshop reminded me of how the relative geographic isolation of living in the middle of Alaska tends to make one even more ingrown than a lot of "normal" artists, and that I really need to get out more. Meeting and listening and talking to both of these artists, each a consummate professional in the field, taught me to add yet another re-evaluation of my own personal work, in that of my entrenched tendency to overwork my panels. It's a good thing that I only have to do a weekly feature, because if I had to do a daily for syndication, I'd never leave the damn cabin. The process, belabored here on Ink & Snow for years, of doodling, then sketchbooking, then penciling>inking>scanning + digital and watercoloring, is resulting in cartoons that many times illustrate perfectly the industry mantra that "a good joke will sell a bad drawing." Unfortunately my parallel career as an art teacher who constantly insists on criteria such as enhancing depth in the composition by using fore/mid/background elements and obsessive attention to linear perspective etc. I love to draw, and absolutely enjoy incorporating all the tricks of the trade that are quite simply just not necessary when making a cartoon. As per usual I'll over-correct on the mental highwire in both directions, going back and forth between extremes multiple times, before finding the correct balance.

This last image is an example of a homework assignment where we were tasked to use an everyday regular object/nearby scenario as a photo reference to incorporate into panel. My hotel room was right down the hall from an ice-machine, and since this transplanted barbarian from the north was suffering from a comparative 90° heatwave (w/60% humidity), it personally resonated with me. On a closing note, maintaining the momentum after a sorely needed reboot has rekindled the daily ritual of putting pen to paper… One final lesson on how everything is fodder and fuel, and anything can be a canvas, even a sick-sack.

In closing, an all-around immersive and powerful experience on many different levels: the Center for Cartoon Studies is an outstanding place full of wonderful folks that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to other aspiring talents, at any stage in their career. After a pilgrimage to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, I aim to return to Vermont for some more serious, scholarly study into cartooning.

Sun Star: Cartoon & Comics Arts Course Article (+ Bonus Editorial Feedback)

A super article, penned by Nóra McIntyre, appeared in the last issue of the semester of the UAF student newspaper about the inaugural offering in the fall of 2023 of the Cartoon & Comics Arts course. It's not on-line at the moment, but if and when it does, it's rumored to perhaps contain many, many more of the sample works provided to the paper when they first wrote the piece, since the space constraints of the print media version logistically limited how many could appear in meatspace. My own humble idea to completely convert one entire issue to just comics (similar to what we did when I was the comics editor of The District at SCAD) still stands.

But in all seriousness, hopefully a couple more cartoonists will start submitting their work on a regular basis as a result of the course now occurring on a regular basis. As it was a handful of folks got to see print: strips by Renee Kurka, Karl Stevens, Jenae Matson, and an example of the collaborative page exercise.

Speaking of the student newspaper, while Googling my name and “Sun Star” to see if the online version had run, there was a post on Reddit about a recent editorial panel of mine that the paper had run. Of interest was a comment that highlit the death of irony. Specifically it's always a going concern, a fear that folks who are the target of satire are sometimes so dense that they might miss the point of a cartoon, and instead interpret the sentiment of it being in support of their position, ie too fucking stupid to get that it's at their expense. To be sure, one could charge the artist with being to witty for their own good, which I'm guilty of being convinced of my own greatness so it can't possibly be my fault someone doesn't get it.

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.

Guest Artist @ Creating Comics Camp!

One of the eighty-odd summer camps offered through UAF is "Creating Comics" (taught by an alum of the Cartoon & Comic Arts course - now being revived for this upcoming fall semester). I was so happy to recently get a chance at sharing some of my experiences to over twenty kids on their last day... especially with topping off the talk with a special sneak peek at the as-yet unreleased Spruce Moose comic book. 

Professor (of Cartoon & Comic Arts!)

A quick update on a couple recent developments: the first being news on an ascension into the upper ranks of academia with the title of actual professor, and the second, the long-awaited enshrinement of my Cartoon & Comic Arts course into the official UAF course catalog.

This follows fifty-five-ish semesters as an adjunct (technically “Adjunct Lecturer”), then the past couple years as a “Term Instructor” (one as bipartite, then as tripartite with expanded duties ie attending meetings + sitting on committees), and now, starting this fall, as a professor (technically “Term Assistant Professor”). Note this is non-tenure track, with the next rungs on the ladder being Term Associate, then full Term. Also I’m additionally endowed with the designation of “lead instructor” of the drawing department (meaning it’s now all my fault), tacitly tasked with studio maintenance and other duties, but don’t have to worry overmuch about updating the ol’ CV and the stress of standing for review. Just remember to shave and get a haircut every once in a while, and maybe watch my mouth/mind the manners a wee bit more.

As mentioned here earlier in some cryptic teaser posts, this goes hand-in-glove with my promise to reward any advancement in the ranks with the creation and development of courses like this (next: Pen & Ink, Illustration, Caricature, Tattooing etc.). It’s a consolidation of all my experiences from SCAD + elsewhere, and as a working professional in the field, and represents the grand summation of all my educational priorities: mainly, that comics count. 

The "Buffet"

Here’s a couple backlinks to previous posts recapping 2020’s of the VAA comics class and the summer sessions course, for both of which it was my last time teaching them. One of the things I’m really looking forward to is literally drawing from the voluminous archives of former student works with which to continue to amaze and inspire the next generation of budding talents. 

Excerpted sample student pages

All along throughout my teaching career I have incorporated sequential art lessons into the classroom, as the academic advantages are very familiar to regular readers of Ink & Snow. Establishing the educational legitimacy of this medium as a uniquely powerful and popular means to express and address a limitless diversity of topics and issues, as well as develop technical rendering skills in the studio, has been an ever-evolving personal mission of mine. Also, the results speak for themselves.

Excerpted sample student pages

From flunking art classes in high school before dropping out, then dropping out again from a community college and then taking ten years to finally get a degree, plus another decade to earn the terminal, it has been a convoluted path - “three steps forward and two steps back” - but I’ve never stopped going forward, and that’s a meta-lesson well worth passing on. 

(Still the best student caricature of me ever made)

That, and keep making comics.

The Return of Cartoon & Comic Arts: ART 220 / ART 420

Note that this is a slightly different screen-grab than the similar one recent appearing on the "Teaching Teaser" post from a few weeks ago. The key difference is in flowchart down the right-hand side of the screen that indicates that the progression of the paperwork for this course (and also in tandem with the Beginning level, ART 220) has now moved from off the desk of the Provost, bearing their signature, and will now at long last appear in the catalog for the fall semester of 2024. Hence the absence of any link to registration for direct enrollment into the class, but it's now just a matter of time for the finishing touches and it becomes formally added to the official UAF catalog as a legitimate part of the College of Liberal Art curriculum in the Department of Art. More after the jump...

"Come gather 'round" - The Buffet of Awesomesauce

(Teaching Teaser)

Long-time readers are more than familiar with my advocacy for comics in the classroom as a powerful medium in both literacy + art. Relatedly, I've been dropping hints as of late about what might possibly be the personal summit of my entire career. But, as can be ascertained from the above snapshot, I'm still awaiting final approval a little bit longer along the academic food chain, so more on this exciting possibility when it actually goes live... so I'm resisting posting anywhere else on social media about it. Folks following Ink & Snow, as compared to thousands of others across other platforms, are a much more select, almost private group that always gets the news first. Appreciate your time & attention!

"...shhhh..."

In the meantime here's a set of samples done as demos during the linear perspective portion of Beginning Drawing. They literally illustrate the advantages cartoonists have in the studio for showing students how to easily accomplish, with just a few, quick lines, depth on the picture plane.This is the fundamental miracle behind the voodoo magic trick making a drawing can do: a three-dimensional image on a flat 2-D surface. Making marks on a piece of paper that stand for something, and visually communicating a concept to another. How amazing is that.

Best of all, and bonus points for irony here: extra-funny detail that for a linear perspective assignment doesn't even contain any straight lines. Making a hyper-realistic copy of reality isn't what this is all about, no knock on that style but for me it's not the point. Sometimes I'll joke about it and tell students if that's their goal spare yourself the struggle and just take a picture instead. Plus these demos of mine shot from the artistic hip aren’t so good as to intimidate, and not so bad as to inspire a loss of confidence in the instructor’s abilities. Even doing these day after day for fifty-odd semesters I still screw up, which is also an important meta-lesson in itself. I  try to knock these classroom demos out in a couple minutes while Bob Rossing the hell outta the process – for some folks it’s helpful to see someone sketch stuff out in person.

"stool sample"

Fifteen Years of Ink & Snow

Tomorrow will mark fifteen years of posting punny pics + accompanying cartoon commentary. Thought I'd take a moment to say thank you to the regular readers, I always appreciate the eyeballs.

Made way back in 2016 during a Visual Art Academy course, this one-pager piece was done as a demo for the Cartoon & Comic Arts class. It was initially conceived on the spot as an emergency last-minute backup to the in-class exercise for our week-long “collaborative page” unit. This is when I orchestrate a section of the course for getting a taste of a more traditional team approach to creating comics: one student does a script for a one-page, 3-5 panel comic, then a second randomly selected student will in turn pencil the page out, followed by a third and fourth student respectively inking then coloring what turns into a really neat amalgamation of talent and skill. This particular demo page laid around the office a number of years before scanning it last year, and then it again randomly resurfaced on a search of my desktop for an unrelated image. I just used it to warm up for some other coloring work, and so can now show it in the studio classroom to illustrate the full process. A note that the selected excerpt is sampled from a particularly appropriate piece by poet Tom Hubbard, and the other two stages sketched/inked by a couple of amazing former students Tara and Amanda, both incredible artists in their own right these days. 

On another side-note soon I'll hopefully have some exceptional news to share with folks about a long-held dream coming true. It follows on a recent ascension in the academic ranks to the degree that one of my official duties is creating not just artwork, or art majors, but curriculum development as well. The posted pics are snapshots from the studio classroom when we move from experimenting with comics poetry into the sequential art/comics portion of the semester: the buffet of sample comics on the main display table in the center of the studio, and the ever-growing pile of sample student comics from previous semesters. 

Relatedly, here's another example of the particular effectiveness in this medium with of one of the many in-class exercises I frequently use in the studio to demonstrate how to guide a viewer/reader through a sequence of images that transport us on a journey through time and space itself. "Behold the power of comics!"

Cartoon & Comic Arts: Recap 2019 (2020 Drawing With a Phantom Limb Edition)

Unfortunately ain’t gonna be no posts about the 2020 Cartooon & Comic Art course on account of there not being any more of those classes anymore. That’s mostly due to it at long last reaching its allotted academic lifespan as an elective. Well, technically it exceeded the duration of a “Special Topics” class, as it’s supposed to be offered for no longer than one semester, so off by only eleven years. And after a dozen years of one of the top, uh, draws in the department, routinely the first class to get waitlisted, and a favorite of many successful art majors and future professionals, I entertained the novel idea that perhaps this might be the year my value as a faculty member would be recognized.

I felt more than justified by my decision to hold out for any forlorn hope to maybe get a real job with benefits etc. out of all this. Administration repeatedly attempted to entice me into completing the paperwork needed to legitimately add it to the curriculum, as in include it in the official university catalog. I would dutifully counter with the proposal to hire me something other than an adjunct, since this course was only one of the many strong, proven assets I could bring to the department. I was also encouraged to develop an on-line version of the course for a few grand, but that would have given up control one of the aces up my sleeve as far as retaining my bargaining position and unique abilities + experience. Not that any of it mattered in the long run, as bureaucratic academia pretty much takes advantage of anyone for as long as possible before burning them out and discarding the empty shells.

So instead I’ll put up a list of backlinks to a selection of the best-of previous posts about the Cartoon & Comic Arts course (2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2018), and also put up a handful of images here that were left over from forgetting to write up a recap. Seventy-five initial pictures in fact, which were whittled down to a much more manageable 50-odd (and I do mean odd), most of which are ganged together or excerpted samples, but still quite the data dump. Who knows, this might be my very last post on this topic as well, so I’ll make it a doozy. Eight pages of annotations typed out beforehand in a Word document and over an hour of uploading & formatting this post with about a billion hyperlinks also alludes to the in-depth expose that awaits.
Have fun faithful reader, and follow me after the jump…

2019 VAA Recap: Drawing With a Phantom Limb (2020 Edition)

Sadly because of the plague sweeping the country the 2020 Visual Art Academy was canceled – it would have been the sixth I’ve taught cartooning for (two morning classes). Beyond the disruption to routine the social distancing hit teachers pretty hard, as I found myself really missing the annual experience. On the other hand, it was an opportunity to get a little distance and reevaluate participation in such events. Not to mention continuing to recap these gigs as it’s approaching the broken wheel stage of blogging – aside from the usual refining tweaks, reshuffling of exercises and testing out the occasional new activity, I’m really just repeating myself. Fortunately the students and their work will always entice me to continue, and their energy + enthusiasm never fails to come full circle and inspire me back in my own studio.

Here’s a list of backlinks to linkage about previous posts from the Visual Art Academy experiences (2013, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018)

*Join me after the jump for a condensed recap from last year’s gig… especially seeing as how I never got around to posting any samples from 2019!

"Squirrels"

 Gonna finish out 2019 with a post breaking down one of my personal favorite panels of the year. This was the primary demo piece for the summer session's Cartoon & Comic Arts course. I signed a set for each of the students that contained all the images posted here (excepting the snapshots of the actual squirrels - that's exclusive to Ink & Snow readers).

It all began with an endless inundation of rodents, wave after endless wave, triggered by the ousting of a  long-term resident that decided to raise a family. Right under the cabin as it happened. So after enough episodes of scavenged for bedding from shredded toilet paper in the outhouse etc. we had had enough, and out the whole extended clan went.

Ever since moving to Maine we switched to entirely indoor cats, so there was no way to control the population with the help of our own kitties. Given the roving bands of coyotes, flocks of hungry owls and other raptors, the omnipresent threat of traffic, and an increased threat of a deadly disease, it's been a good call. Especially for the birds - whose feeders around the cabin were yet another reason to begin the season's program of depositing squirrels down the road or up the highway.

Now the Significant Otter, who hails from Iowa and is of noble farmer stock, would just as soon have shot them all and simply be done with it, but we procured one of those "Havahart" humane live traps instead. I will admit though, that after dozens of relocations my sense of humanitarianism has some bare spots worn through from the incessant shuttle service. I even think back upon the evil advice from a former student to try leaving crucifixions up on tree-trunks in warning around the property might actually be a desperate last-gasp option (the neighbors might wonder). Maybe, while I'm at it, in conjunction with stringing razor wire around the feeder.

Note: My humble numbers are tempered with the knowledge of one friend (and patron who purchased the original) whose wife has so far ousted “...286 (and counting) Eastern Fox Squirrels” in Boise, ID. One must have role models.

It caught the attention of this dude whom I always seem to run across on a frequent basis working outside on the campus grounds, who rumor has it was a poetry major, and I mentioned that the caption was in all likelihood gonna go away. I mean, who the hell has even heard of that ancient aphorism (not many of us left based on my impromptu polls), much less any familiarity with the author. Well a few weeks went by, and on an offhand chance we crossed paths again, and to my pleasant surprise he offered up another vote in favor of retaining the philosophical proverb. And so it stayed. Unlike these little rat bastards.