At first the caption said “His name was Doug.” But nobody understood it, so then I changed it by expanding it to his full name, “Douglas.” Now more people will get it. Just kidding, it’s another hyper-regional reference that only True Alaskans®™ will know anything about, with a big chunk of the Venn diagram overlapping the huge arboreal scientists demographic. There were a few guffaws after reading the main gag component, so the attempted two-fer isn’t actually necessary. But hey, “A right!” “Then a left!.” Though sure enough it was pointed out to me that there weren’t any fir trees up in our neck of the woods. There are however non-native Balsam, Siberian and Subalpine firs. So the print version had the bonus caption gag deleted.
By the way, the picture isn’t posed, MoochieBear, a poseur nonetheless, really did sack out in his usual spot sprawled halfway out his cubicle that sits in-between the drawing board and the computer desktop section. It goes without saying it goes very, very difficult to maintain discipline and focus in the face of such overwhelming peer pressure (“paw” pressure? “purr” pressure?).
Also as a bonus to Ink & Snow readers, here's a one-minute video of how I ink my spruce trees using, appropriately enough, a stick. The YouTube algorithm will no doubt ban it on account of the
accidental/incidental background music - as of late I’ve been blasting
an INXS mix in the studio, and the song “Burn For You” can faintly be heard in the background of the classroom. Michael Hutchence has been on my mind a lot as of late, following an emotional introspection of a similarly-themed Chris Cornell
(another charismatic and spellbinding frontsman whose song “Seasons”
was featured in a new comics-poem uploading here back in April).
Update: And just what I feared came to pass with tripping an
automatic flagging, which is under appeal: "I am a professor of art at
the University of Fairbanks Alaska and the video is of a technique I
teach in my Cartoon & Comic Art and Pen & Ink studio art courses
using a stick to create black spruce trees when published in my weekly
cartoon. The incidental background is less than 60-seconds of music
playing in my classroom during this demonstration. This educational
short is entirely afforded copyright exemption under the First Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution under the fair use provision as it is an
educational video.” We’ll see if they rule in my favor – I’ll know in
thirty days, but in the meantime.... Update II: as of this posting my appeal worked and the clip remains!
Here's a little teaser for an upcoming gig back at the University of Alaska's Museum of the North. Along with a hundred other artists, my work - both as a cartoonist and also as a drawing instructor - will be featured a part of an exhibit that'll run for almost nine months, titled "Thinking Made Visible" (direct links here to videos for "Sketching the Glacier Bear" and "Sketching the Beaver"). Absolutely great footage shot & mixed on-site by the director of exhibits, and seeing firsthand all the outstanding effort, time and energy put onto every wall at the museum by all of the awesome staff of designers, perparators and student assistants - they really know how to put on a show!
It's been since 2017 that I had a solo show up at the museum, but I'm on site each and every semester leading my posses of aspiring talents on sketching field-trips every semester for many years. It's an outstanding resource for research, reference and inspiration, basically a big ol' box stuffed with stuff to draw - every trip I always discover something new, and the students plenty to draw upon for their upcoming pen & ink assignments. Included here as a special bonus for this post are two recent demos that I just did a few weeks ago for a couple Beginning Drawing classes this very semester. In fact the originals of each (ballpoint + various Sharpies) will also be a part of the exhibit - along with my man-purse/gear bag and a small pile of actual sketchbooks from the studio.
I have a bad tendency to talk to the monitor and/or screen instead of directly engaging listeners with repeated eye contact. My bubbling, outgoing and vivacious personality while lecturing is pretty much a controlled panic reaction to being in front of people, and so actually locking eyes with anyone would derail my squirrelish attention span. Case in point on the videos you get the same exact view my wife usually gets of me when at home while I'm on the goddamned computer for hours at a time.
In the almost thirteen minutes between the two shorts (7.29 + 5.25) I manage to turn around only once - right at the end of the bear session, with a smartass quip about needing an applause sign, throwing money and saying “cut!” The flip side of that is I also never shut up the entire time, providing a running commentary on my process of sketching, defining Art, Love & God, and my fursona. While I might not be quite up to Bob Ross boss level – I even occasionally drift away while doing a demo and disengage entirely from communicating with speech – I can effectively walk AND talk… and chew all at the same time (if not weighty topics, then at least some gum).
It's all worth it if not just for the initial footage of sharpening a pencil with a knife (definitely frowned upon by official museum administration) whereupon I am shown deeply inhaling the aroma freshly-shaved pencil and uttering the timeless words “...because nobody ever sniffs a stylus” – which I, for one, am glad to have such a precious moment captured forever for posterity.
Earlier in the season I gave a talk for the Discover Alaska lecture series in coincidentally in conjunction with my "Colony" show down at Flossie & May's (which featured the centerpole piece "The Lodge"). As of late I've noticed the numbers creeping up on the hosting organizations video channel: UAF Summer Sessions (direct link here to YouTube video) features many, many great presentations from across an incredible diversity of college + community treasures. "Nuggets of Whimsey" is currently listed aongside a perfectly paired lecture by Ken Tape, Professor of Ecology at UAF's Geophysical Institute, and the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, on using both the scientific + traditional indigenous insights to document how this keystone species is playing a significant role in understanding the changing climate and how it affects Alaska and other northern communities. Most of my shorts garner tens of views (aside from the "How To Cartoon" gig from a decade ago + the timeless classic "Noosance Moosance") so this is some nice exposure - many thanks to all the hardworking staff behind the scenes that make such events possible!
I was recently honored with an invite to participate in the 2023 UAF Summer Sessions "Discover Alaska" lecture series. Seeing as it had been a decade since the last show & tell back in 2013 - that being the 25th year anniversary of the cartoon feature - I only showed content highlighting the past ten years worth of materials. As I told the audience, that meant 145 images in 45 minutes, so think of the presentation more as an annotated stand-up (well, more like sit-down in my instance) comedy routine. But seriously, it's a good recap, and thanks again to the outstanding supporters and hosts for a humbling opportunity to look back at the dam big pile of stuff created.
Bonus: And in an awesome one-two kersplah of the beaver's tail, there was probably the best-ever article written by reporter Jack Barnwell from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner recapping the gig and my career. And thank you for reading + watching!
One of my loose-ends tied up over “spring break” (in quotes on account of us just going from 35°F above to -30°F below) was finally getting around to making a follow-up video of a walkthrough from the 6th annual retrospective exhibition “Hindsight 20/20” down at the distillery.
Stitched together a dozen different scenes shot with the Iphone + spliced in around 150 still images… edited it all down to just over 20-minutes. Not exactly a professional end product, but amusing enough in its own way, and I really wanted to document the event for outta-town folks and far-away family & friends (not to mention anyone still understandably reluctant to emerge from pandemic isolation. A far cry better than the first footage I ever posted on an Ursa Major show back in 2016, and a definite improvement over last year's effort too. Maybe if I actually practiced on the program more than a couple times a year it'd get even slicker, but Imovie is so intuitive the learning curve is pretty steep but short.
Along the way I also inadvertently learned how to reformat a jump-drive (“too large for the volume’s format”) so as to transport the movie to campus, and thus upload to my YouTube channel (as it was over 12GB after attempting to upload it overnight from the cabin it had only processed 20%). Still some technical speed-bumps in production like equalizing sound levels, and remembering to talk to the camera as opposed to the artwork on the wall (a bad lecturing habit I still fall into when I keep looking at the screen instead of the class). Guess I can't ever help but reflexively critique anything I do!
What was hilarious was discovering afterwards, while editing the footage, that I’d completely spaced out shooting any footage talking about "Yukon Traffic Jam") - arguably the the tentpole piece to the entire show (and a couple other notable skips), but that’s okay as I took the opportunity to flag the accompanying process posts back over here on the blog. Also no worries since there’s gonna presumably be massive PR when the official BLM poster gets released so that’ll be an event unto itself. In the meantime, for my far away friends & family... CHEERS! *protip: make sure and hit the cog icon (bottom right) and up the resolution to 720 for best results
This particular panel is an ideal example of how a compositional arrangement of visual elements can create the illusion of a 3-dimensional space on a flat piece of paper. That's one of the fundamental reasons why a working understanding of linear perspective can be really helpful when "setting the stage" for your actors and props. Other aspects like foreshortening and the use of value can also be used to enhance depth on the pictoral plane.
Here's a doodle of the design done for a demo while on an Artist In Schools residency - I remember getting the idea in the middle of drawing some other panels using the concepts of huskies and sled-dogs and mushing (in line with their mascot/logo). So I did a quick rendering off to the side on some scrap paper, which never even got transferred to the sketchbook, just straight to the pencil stage on Bristol. The only real difference between that and the published version was in changing the number of "bedrooms" (assuming the cabin has just one bedroom we only needed five doghouses) plus the people underwent a little change and, most importantly, more dogs were added. It's always an improvement adding more critters to the composition.
Amidst the supposed might of American exceptionalism we have right here in Alaska a situation that mirrors the class issues and poverty that defines our society and accompanying systemic injustices. But here on the mythical "frontier" there's a current of nostalgia that hypes a rugged individualism + simpler "pioneer" lifestyle. In other words, what previously rented for $250 a month will now, a few decades later, will run a minimum of $650 to have a one-bedroom cabin without running water. You think about that a lot when taking a dump into a hole in the ground while outside at fifty-below zero.
Bonus: Here's a 60-second demo reel that touches on digital shading + a few more behind-the-scenes sneak peaks on the process. I sped up the process of compressing a half-hour sequence of screen grabs into half a minute, and I'm getting more comfortable with iMovie. There's still some issues like the soundtrack levels competing with the voiceover for example, but way better resolution than the recent experiments in streaming media. Enjoy!
Yet another fine example of how to endlessly complicate a cartoon - the inherent paradox of rendering a composition so consciously cluttered with details it defeats one of the core definitions of what makes a cartoon a cartoon - simplicity.
*Also note the QR code embedded in the final print version that links to the 907nuggets Instagram page. If it somehow manages to make the transition to newsprint and still retains enough resolution to actually work, that will be hilarious. We’ll see…
I've long since given up any resistance to what has over the years evolved into my own particular approach, but I'm admittedly still jealous at the gestural quality a good cartoon has that still retains the power of less-is-more while still getting the essential job done: rendering recognizable objects. I look at other cartoonist's works sometimes and think to myself now that's easy why can't I ever leave well enough alone with my own stuff. There are times I wish I could just let the initial doodle in the sketchbook stand on its own without redoing it, and there are certain instances it gets published under the "Nuggets Sketchbook" banner as an example of primal purity in the process. In a perverse sense this pursuit of an as-yet intangible aesthetic is what motivates all artists, that wait-just-one-more-thing and by god then it'll be done.
Anyone paying close attention will pickup on another homage to the great George Booth's work, who never failed to impress me whenever being exposed to his meticulous drawings appearing in the pages of the New Yorker magazine that casually illustrated the concept of a chaotic mess (and crazy cats as well).
Another subtle but crucial aspect of the characters interacting in the setting is contingent on manipulating the viewer's eye with deliberate gaze cues. As a visually reliant species we will always instinctively first lock eyes with another animal, and I believe this is a subconscious reflex that can play a part in arranging compositional elements so as to facilitate easier and rapid assessment of the situation (ie "getting it").
This piece lent itself handily to another demo, especially as the inaugural broadcast of a new feature: "The Cartoon Kitchen." Stovetop Session #1 made its debut during the first few weeks of quarantine lockdown at the cabin. The convoluted setup was actually conducive for a unique tripod arrangement with a special rig adapted to using an iPhone. Problem was, I forgot to keep the orientation the same as whenever you first hit "record" and so after entering the title + description for a Facebook Live event I then switched to a horizontal/landscape format, and so the ensuing recording has the classic look of a newbie. Added to that was the fact that livestreaming anything from our location in the hills outside of Ester is doomed to look as low-fi as the rest of of our way of life. Meaning all the painstaking attention to detail was rendered useless with a pixelated and ragged resolution. I might try again using the router instead, but the assumption is that it will presumably be even be poorer results. So I'll compensate with a bigger Sharpie, or just stick to using my Forever Stamps for any distance delivery for my doodles.
Aside from flipping the orientation back to landscape, with judicious editing I was able to cut the overall length by over half the original file size, down to just over 2gigs/15min. Mostly that was accomplished by cranking up the inking sequence to 2000% and crunching it down from twenty minutes to sixty-seconds. Plus I cut out the accompanying monologue and dropping in a beat instead. Also added bonus chapter markers so viewers can skip straight to the high-def stills and avoid most of the crappy live stream footage.
But if you think the resolution is crappy then you’ll love how long it took to upload the damn thing to my channel from the cabin: try ten freakin’ hours. At least it gave me an excuse to finally get around to backiup. Got an external drive that could take not just the current stuff on the iMac, but also soak up my previous external drive’s archives AND everything off the old external drive – the badass backup with a whoppin’ 320GB of storage capacity, man. We’re talkin’ early 2000’s here – some of the original raw image files won’t open anymore on contemporary software - doesn’t even read them).
Saved the best for last... one final post before turning the page on 2018.
Scroll down memory lane: The original premise behind this blog was to ostensibly document the behind-the-scenes process of teaching a beginning drawing class. Then over the ensuing years that mission statement has evolved mutated more into a cartooning platform, not that that's necessarily a bad thing in itself. But I'm still seeking to pull back the curtain a bit and focus on some of the little details that all add up to producing a panel. My hope is still that all these snapshots, taken from many varying perspectives, ultimately makes for a sort of patchwork tapestry of content, all knit together like a Frankenstein made in some crazy arts + crafts lab.
Exploring the video aspect has meant a few entertaining forays into a different medium: "Google Maps" (2016), "Cabin Fever" (2015), "Ruminate" (2014), and the very first attempt, "Smokey the Polar Bear" (from 2011). Lastly was the penultimate collaboration with banjoist Seth Danielson "Noosance Moosance." They're obviously - painfully so in places - all amateur efforts, entirely homemade with iPhone, iPad, iMac and iMovie. Lots of problems in retrospect, but as with the cartoons themselves, over time they get easier to do, if not clearer to understand.
Now here's what I think is a perfect capstone, as it really emphasizes the foundation of so much when it comes to basic drawing: namely structuring a composition, and utilizing linear perspective to those ends.
The bulk of this project happened over the same extended holiday weekend as did a background binge-watch of one hundred and eighty episodes of Looney Tunes, all from three Golden Collection DVD boxed sets. To quote Daffy from the classic 1953 Merrie Melodies “Duck Amuck,” emerging from the cabin and re-entering society afterwards made for a curious effect: "That's strange. All of a sudden I don't quite feel like myself. Oh, I feel all right, and yet I... I uh..."
But while working on this very process demo video I was focusing in particular on the methodical approach I have to creating settings for many of my panels: lots of overlapping layers using linear perspective to “set the stage” for characters + props. Simultaneous to this I kept getting drawn into so many of the designs created for Looney Tunes (Paul Julian, Maurice Nobel etc.) – such gorgeous scenes that often go overlooked. It really made for a big “a-HA” moment connecting the dots in a direct line of influence to my own work… that and MAD’s Don Martin + the sense of humor from Jim Henson’s Muppets (speaking of nostalgia I also often binge on every single season of the Muppet Show) completes my personal trinity of aesthetics.
Another aspect I didn't touch on in the video was how/why I didn’t just simply copy + paste the first
panel instead of laboriously redrawing it all for the second panel. Hell if shortcuts to save
time was of any importance to me then I’m in the wrong business
to begin with. Hence my amusement at the logic behind folks using
custom-made fonts of their own handwriting, or best of all, this humblebrag effort bemoaning how much more efficient the artist would
have been with hindsight. Give me a goddamn break: as an artist you
already surrendered the high ground when it comes to wasting your time
(and entire life). That's a cynical extreme, but the point remains - abandoning the craft in the name of speed leads to fast-food, art that is high on eye-candy & caloric content, but deficient in essential nutrients, so you wind up aesthetically starving.
I really wonder at how many folks actually missed out on the overall intent here: in retrospect I suspect that I ought to have rendered everything even more, ah, well... cartoonish, and really exaggerated the explosion. Like with added chunks of flying debris and maybe even sound effects. But then that would have run contrary to my usual deadpan approach, even if playing it underhanded for comedic value runs the risk of going unnoticed, especially in contemporary society's constant overkill on sensory overload. After daily, even hourly viewing of an unending deluge of streaming information that punches us repeatedly in the eyeballs and slaps us upside the brain for entertainment, something that just statically sits on the page just can't compete with the demands of today's attention-deficit-driven consumer market.
One of the new features I added to this demo reel was including subtitles, so as to provide something in the way of closed captioning. This was first done by typing in directly off the working script, then modifying it in accordance with the segments the words were tagged to appear in synch with on the screen. That took some toggling back & forth, but it helped juggling the overall timing + pacing.
Then I just simply read off the subtitles to get the narration, and
lastly plugged in another perfect background piece performed by Poddington Bear, my go-to composer on Free Music Archive.
If you hold it up to your ear you can hear the faint, far-off sounds of laughter
Actually this endeavor triggered a cascade of other miscellaneous crap: Firefox was all buggy and not even loading the upload page for YouTube – a common problem on many sites with a slow internet connection (dialup speed) that we have out here at the cabin on the hill. Note: Even uploading the mp4 took almost three hours!
So I did clean reinstall, which took a while, and wound up not being the problem anyways. So switched over to Safari, which meant finding and looking up all the account log-in info that is autofilled in Firefox. This solution looked good to go, but by then the editorial feedback I got on the beta version meant wrestling - then ultimately scrapping - any idea of text. Bummer but also kinda good riddance as it was a pain in the ass – but now after deleting everything it was back to shifting all the segments into lengths in time with the voice-over alone. Which in turn meant finding where the iMac microphone was, so as to redo the recording a bit more louder turns out REALLY REALLY LOUD and easier to understand. All in all a vast improvement on the first take.
Recently tripped over an old post that has actually aged okay: turns out the vodcast of me produced by Digital Beards way back in 2013 is now the fourth most popular video of all time on UAF’s eCampus YouTube educational channel. I spend most of the time (over an hour long!) talking down to the off-camera sketchbook - one of my handicaps in the classroom is not directly engaging an audience with eye contact, as I was raised on traditional slides and am infinitely more comfortable narrating from behind, in the dark. Awkward.
Protip/Note to Self: Start adding rodents to my tutorials.
Sorted by popularity, with over 5.8k views, this little lecture now ranks just slightly ahead of “Handling Procedure for Laboratory Mice” …but still not as popular as “Module 14.4 – Narrated Elevated Plus Maze” (very excited scientist narrates mouse navigating a maze).
Thanks again go out to host and producer Chris Malmberg, and here's a bonus supplemental post that followed up the vodcast with the completed panel as published in the paper. And stay 'tooned for a new video tutorial that should be ready sooner than later is actually uploaded here if you wanna check it out before the accompanying backstory is posted in a couple weeks.
Time for another tutorial of sorts... I partially documented the work-in-progress of this demo panel (similar to previous process posts like "Ruminate," "Cabin Fever" and "Smokey the Bear") mostly doing screen grabs of the shading-in step done on the computer in Photoshop, and uploaded the 2-minute short to the YouTube channel (see link below).
There are are a few glimpses of the initial doodle scanned from the sketchbook, then the penciled panel on Bristol board (Strathmore 400 series), and then the line art inked in by dip-pen (Hunt 102 nib + Sennelier India ink) and lastly, the watercolor wash variation on the original. As usual, there's debate over which variation works best: on the one hand I have been steadily including raw sketches as the "finished" piece and publishing it with minor tweaks, as an argument can be made for preserving the spontaneity + relative rawness of the doodle. On the other hand, I do so enjoy the cumulative stages in penciling + inking, refining it on the fly, watching it evolve into a more cohesive + effective panel. Then again, the final treatment with wash more often than not results in a combination of the two aforementioned aesthetics: refined + deliberative linework juxtaposed against looser application of value. Either way I wind up with several options in the end, which means triple the work, or I'm backed up by triple redundancy.
Bonus trivia: all this was inspired by a homemade sign posted just down the street by an irate neighbor who obviously was frustrated at the inadvertent trespassing by migrating herds of tourists seeking UAF's Large Animal Research Station (aka "the muskox farm"). Guessing there's either a few missing details on Google's end - which obviously happens a fair amount in Alaska given our areas of vast ie unmapped wilderness, or, more likely - the technology's fine, it's just operator error.
Due to the inherent complexity of the design (comparative to other, simpler cartoons) this panel took a bit more deliberative dinking with than usual. Or, in the studio vernacular: Delineating objects in the
fore/mid/background with successively lighter line weights so as to
emphasize depth, in conjunction with using linear perspective,
foreshortening and overlapping of objects. Then, on to crayons utilizing
value to further enhance the composition through contrast and gradation
for volume.
Here's a direct link to the YouTube video - enjoy + thanks for watching!
Introducing a very special production: once again I joined forces with the talented Seth Danielson (Frontier Scientist up at Troth Yeddha/UAF) , whose awesome picking brought the infamous Buck Henry to life. Always a total honor & joy to collaborate with another artist with his skill, and such an outstanding experience to hear a piece come to life so completely.
Here's a direct link to the tune, and some tech protips for YouTube viewing that some folks might not be aware of:
-->There's a little cog-wheel symbol under the main screen that you can click on to show a range of playback settings – hit “quality” and then select the top one ("HD/720p") instead of the default resolution. It'll take a bit longer to load especially with a slow connection speed like I have at the cabin but it's worth it. Also next to that is a little box icon to change a setting from "normal" to "theater" mode so the viewing window is bigger. Enjoy!(more below the fold...)
Here's another breakdown of the process behind working up a sketchbook doodle into a penciled rough, and from then into quick little inking demo. And I mean really quick - I'm still having fun playing with images edited in iMovie and incorporating footage from the iPhone then mixing in some spiffy Podington Bear tunage too.
Again I picked a comparatively simple composition for this demo so as to stay primarily focused on the figure in foreground. There's also a progression through some raw, unretouched scans + digital tweaks done for cleanup in Photoshop.
This panel in particular shows a perfect progression through the stages in preliminary sketching - literally setting the stage for the layout of the visual elements, and using linear perspective to define the space where the figure will eventually enact the scene. In the video it's really easy to see how I draw right through things... treating them as they are temporarily transparent so as to better project the baselines and build up overlapping shapes in successive layers.
Where the lines for the figure overlap with the background I just inked right up to those delineated shapes - didn't employ a "vanishing line" (discernible as a halo-like effect around many drawings) as there was ultimately going to be more than enough line weight variation + texture to differentiate between the objects + areas. While it might not be so readily apparent in the footage, where it looks like I'm just simply re-tracing in pencil is a final pass of beefing up the marks so as to better read the super-light pencil lines that I initially sketch with on any panel. That in itself at times requires some dexterity and finesse which is often a challenge for beginners, as they tend to have a heavy hand, and consequently spend a lot more time erasing - frustrating when the substrate has effectively become embossed through pressure and point.
While erecting the aforementioned infrastructure or the "cartoon scaffolding" that the characters will perform upon and making a place for the various props be placed about the composition, I gradually increase the line weight while sketching (as seen in action in the clip) with successively darker marks when I'm finally sure that everything's in place. Besides which there's always a couple incremental stages (during inking + digital) yet to go in the overall process, within which one can still correct things. Even so it's never too far from my mind the ultimate goal of getting it 100% "as is" - i.e. ready to scan and/or show without any subsequent modifications.
There's a brief segue in the video off to the side for some lettering: it's obvious how the inked letters are really out of sync with the penciled words, and this aptly demonstrates the subtle but ultimately significant distinction between writing versus lettering. And also we can see firsthand how much the principle of editing is done on the fly - another reason to sketch very faintly at first - since the initial marks I make are rarely if ever the "right ones," or at least in the right place.
A question I get asked more and more these days is why not use a tablet? Above & beyond the creature-of-habit "that's the way I was visually raised" answer is that I really, really love the organic quality and immediacy of just simply making these marks with an old-school nib on paper. I love drawing - everything about the way it feels & looks. And why dip-pen in particular? See the same answer above, plus even though it's not technically as fast as a brush - which the majority of traditionalists used to use (especially when holding a camera in the other hand in front of your face like I did for the video). It's also my chosen habitual implement in cartooning due to comfort, cost and the meta-pleasure of feeling like I'm participating in a long, er, line of cartoonists.
A note about that linear perspective: a bonus in being immersed in typical Alaskan architecture = no straight lines in any cabin I've inhabited. So the tendency for an organic line to happen is totally in place when doing a freehand trace over the penciled template. The wonkyness as it meanders across the picture is a part of the personal aesthetic.
Tools used: Bristol board (Strathmore 500 series); Ticondaroga (for dark marks) + Blackfeet Indian #2 (for preliminary sketchwork) pencils; 2 dip pens with both thick + thin thin nibs (Hunt 102 + Speedball 513EF, respectively); Dr. Phil Martin's Bombay Black (quicker drying time than my usual studio Windsor & Newton India ink); a spread of Microns ranging from 08, 05, 02 to a fake brush - which, handy as they are, never seem to be opaque enough, so I usually employ a beat-up old brush instead.
Take a peek:
Here’s a lazy Sunday project I did to accompany a blog post on a process panel, this time focusing on using washes. Just over a minute and a half vodcast that supplements this little essay, which was originally intended as a voice-over, but I just couldn’t bring myself to narrate over the backing track (one of many inspiring shorts available by Podington Bear). Not to mention I just talk too much, so take this write-up as the backstory before watching the video portion.
The particular cartoon for this demo was selected on the basis of it being a relatively simple composition: just enough elements present to arrange a nice, simple image with some minimal touches of linear perspective + slight foreshortening + overlapping so as to create more pictorial depth in the panel.
I sell folks original artwork of my cartoons all the time, but usually they’re just black & white line-art, so to add some value I try and treat the pen + ink pieces with some sort of wash after scanning it in (more often than not the print version is digitally shaded in Photoshop using grayscales – an aesthetic holdover from many years of using Zip-A-Tone/LetraTone to apply screen halftones).
Materials: I primarily use Derwent brand (or General’s) brand water-soluble pencils for grayscale: these come in various gradations ranging from Light/Medium/Dark and all sorts of different levels of hardness inbetween (4B etc.). An aside is that it’s vastly preferable to use these instead of the old-school method where one lines up a series of film canisters (dating myself here), or other small containers, which are filled with water and successive amounts of ink is diluted to achieve a gradation from dark to light. This is both time-consuming and a logistical hassle when doing public demos or working remotely from the studio in the sketchbook. For color I’ve been hooked on both Derwent Graphitint and Inktense pencils, and I typically use a cheap synthetic brush, mostly a Winsor & Newton #4 watercolor round (sometimes larger for big areas like backgrounds, and conversely smaller brushes for detailing).
It merits mention that technically the substrate I’m using (Bristol board, usually Strathmore 300/400 series: smooth) isn’t designed for usage with wet media. The trade-off is that watercolor paper tends to have a rougher surface texture that isn’t conducive to using a dip-pen nib to ink on. The main liability with using Bristol is the tendency to quickly reach a saturation point in conjunction with excessive scrubbing with the brush and the fibers start to fall apart and clump (which means it’s time to let it thoroughly dry before manually brushing off any random chunks), also large areas of wash will begin to buckle the paper. Taping the panel up on a backing board and/or ironing it can help, or most of the time I just let it go. A lot of these intangible factors go into creating the overall aesthetic of an original, up to and including the inherently looseness (ie sloppiness) of the medium and not staying inside the lines when coloring, little goof-ups with inking etc. – the end result is a piece that looks like it was handmade by a human. This as opposed to the look and feel of a digitally treated panel, which has more of a slick, mechanical finish to it.
Also it should go without saying that for the original drawing permanent India ink needs to be used lest you discover more wash than you envisioned, and usually this entails a prudent drying time which corresponds with the point of safe erasing of the underlying pencils. I also didn’t use any colorless masking fluid here, simply because I just didn’t care, I mean, I trusted in my degree of craftsmanship to stay in control.
It’s a constant juggling act to balance out dueling factors in how dark a wash goes down: how much was first put down when penciled out, and how much or how little water is loaded in the brush. Less water and more pigment will equal darker tone, and also the drying/rate of absorption into the paper fibers will play into the process. Sometimes just a little blush will do, or multiple passes layering in gradations, taking care to avoid the aforementioned waterlogging and subsequent buckling.
Also when shading in I maintain a consistent angle on the face of the tip of the pencil so as to better facilitate smooth, even application: this evenhanded burnishing motion avoids leaving heavier marks that are difficult to wash out later, and those marks also tend to break up the surface area with an unwanted texture if you’re going for a smooth gradation in tone.
Generally the first pass is for establishing a base tone: note here that I tend towards the lighter end as it’s a one-way process and so much safer to gradually build up a range of values in a series of passes after each successive application dries. Another technique when doing wet-on-wet is to have a swatch off to the side of whatever color you’re using and use that as a sort of palette with which to bring in a bit of more pigment for a darker tone. Use a rapid scrubbing motion with the brush to break up the initial pencil marks and then push around the color. Often it’s a race to blend in smooth transitions when there is an overlapping area where the wash has already soaked or set and a newer area of fresh area that meets it, like a Venn diagram.
One last step is with a sealant like a spray fixative, which seems to add the final touch insofar as literally glossing everything over. This is somewhat replicated to a small degree with boosting the vibrancy + contrast settings on the final scan in Photoshop. Tech notes: I used my lowly iPhone to shoot the hand-held footage, Photoshop CS4 and iMovie on the iMac (OSX 10) for editing and digital shading.
I was initially inspired to experiment with this short production after seeing the piece recently done by KTVF Channel 11 on our last 24 Hour Comics Day gig: the reporter wove together a lot of B-roll material and in one segment sped-up the frame-rate of me doing a sample demonstration piece, which I thought was pretty spiffy. There’s nothing more boring than watching paint dry, except maybe watching the paint being put on in the first place, or at least it’s a challenge to maintain interest after a few seconds. So this was an attempt to encapsulate and accelerate the process, and I hope it was amusing if not informative.
*Tip: When watching the YouTube video, the default resolution is pretty horrid-looking – so hit the little gear-cog under the screen and adjust the setting up to at least 480p.
Via Boing Boing + the producers of “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” comes a new behind-the-scenes tour of The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, situated at the Ohio State University. This is "the world’s largest collection of cartoon & comic book art ... established officially in 1977 when cartoonist Milton Caniff donated his entire collection to us” (curator Caitlin McGurk).
Spiffy little mini-documentary just popped up on a Facebook feed from the PBS series "Off Book" called "The Rise of Web Comics":
"The internet has given birth to yet another new medium: web comics. Moving beyond the restrictions of print, web comic artists interact directly with audiences who share their own unique worldview, and create stories that are often embedded in innovative formats only possible online. Sometimes funny, sometimes personal, and almost always weird, web comic creators have taken the comic strip form to new, mature, and artistic heights."
This still shies away from the "Infinite Canvas" concept advanced by comics theoretician Scott McCloud (also see "This Exquisite Forest"): the term "webcomic" tends to default to basically the blunt transferal of content to another platform without exploiting either the inherent attributes or potential of the new medium. It's just a different viewing method - whether on a wall, page, smartphone, tablet or monitor, the content is a static and fixed format. Interactivity with the creator is another step on the continuum, where the viewer works in a semi-collaborative sense with the artist, and the narrative becomes more "reader-driven" (as for example in "Homestuck" and "Exploding Dog"). Yet only those two of the nine total featured cartoonists in the documentary to explore this boundary, while the others are conventional.
One of the cartoonists interviewed - and one of the best things to ever emerge from my hometown on the East Coast - is Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of the Perry Bible Fellowship feature. From my jaded perspective his work was and is one of the most most pleasurable to read from a working cartoonist's perspective as far as craft + writing goes (also meaningit's funny as hell). The comic is also being hosted now at Boing Boing, where, for example, the pure genius of “No one can know about this” appeared just last month.
