"Seasons"

I'm really pleased with this one. Not a Nuggets, but it'll definitely get printed up full-sized and framed like 2024's epic "Rush Hour" panel and go on the wall for the annual fall faculty exhibition.  It took a while, not so much to actually, physically draw, though that was also tedious, but more it sat around incubating (fermenting?) in sketch form for forever. The layout/composition was the most fun in the process. I oscillated a lot after it was finished, tweaking the three vertical floater panels with different ranges of value, but it always came across as too overworked, too Photshoppy, so I deliberately left them flat (update: yep sure enough, even after uploading, I still went back one more time and tweaked them yet again with a super-subtle gradation + a handful more digital flakes set off against the hand-drawn ones) and also using no color. The middle "smoke" panel was the only area not converted with the usual threshold setting after the scan - the 18x24" original being so big it had to be scanned (I now again have an Epson tabloid in my office) in two separate sections then digitally recombined, so as to retain the softer, grimy aesthetic.

The script was an emergency backup for a collaborative page exercise in one class, but wasn't used. Then it evolved into somewhat of a demo piece done in the background of several Pen & Ink sessions, hence the range of different textures: scumbling with a ballpoint pen; crow-quill dip-pen on the leaves (a real pain as it was on an 18x24" sheet of watercolor paper so the surface texture was constantly snagging the nibs); the regular Hunt 105 dip-pen on the background + dog; a stick dipped in India ink for the iconic black spruce; brush on the droplets (again, as with the dip-pens, a bit too chunky on account of the substrate but cleaned up digitally), and lastly the Microns (8, 10 and 12) for the text + panel borders. It was originally intended to double as a demo in using watercolors (hence the stock) and also how to incorporate masking fluid into the long-term development of a piece, but by the time I finished the linework, I was too impatient to monkey around with it any more. 

After a search through the archives, I dug up this image from the compost heap: from a post back in 2020 about an encounter with a neighboring stray, and an accompanying Bukowski poem I was turned on to back during my tenure at SCAD for graduate studies. I had always intended that to be a study for a much larger piece, but had completely forgotten about the project, as happens with many an artistic intention (again with the mental mulch-pile metaphor). 

So I was pretty moved emotionally to rediscover it and see it come full circle. I mean, how weird to semi-remember that the three-legged dog in that exact same pose had already been sketched out: it stirred a visual memory, and I made a mental note to ferret out and follow the breadcrumbs down a rabbit hole. And it only resurfaced on account of a random post on social media about either the same dog, or perhaps one of the many similar stray sled dogs that limp around maybe after getting mutilated by a trap.

The chosen lyrics were done at the last minute, on the fly, right before working on the final inks. In retrospect an obvious instinctual choice, from one of my favorite male vocalists of all time. A beautiful man with such a Hutchence vibe (suicide notwithstanding). And that particular song is so transcendent, so evocative and bleakly, perversely empowering, especially after out record-setting winter amidst so much existential stress and brutal horrors unfolding daily.

Finally, another note scribbled on the doodle is "*use Kakimori." This is in reference to a new (well, new as in new to me and the only reboot of the same technology since metal nibs were first invented) nib design from Kakimori, via Dick Blick. Before my professorship there is absolutely no way I would have been able to afford such a luxury toy, as it's fifty bucks, and another fifty for the holder - though the heft of the aluminum one is an interesting difference from the wooden ones I prefer, so it'll doubtless I will return to playing with it again sooner than later. My intention was to use it exclusively on this piece, but right away the rough surface texture of the watercolor paper really hampered any smooth flow, which was frustrating. This could also be partially attributed to the unbroken-in new metal in conjunction with a perhaps incompatible brand of ink, as I am currently using the standard Dr. Ph. Martin's Black Star, Winsor & Newton and Sennelier. Not to mention I am personally acclimated to using what to most folks who draw is one of the most maddening implements ever made for inking.

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...

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.

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…

Recap: Summer Sessions - Cartoon & Comic Art 2018

Confluence of Comics: Drawing a demo comic for the drawing class, who are all drawing their own comics, while in the background I'm playing a documentary about drawing comics, next to a huge table piled high with comics. Not to put to fine a point on it, this is one of the few days a year that I absolutely live for. When all the elements are aligned a sort of mystical + magical moment occurs that's truly on a Stonehegian scale of cosmic transcendence. And then it's back to reality for the other 261 days of the year.

Following closely on the heels of a return to the 2018 Visual Art Academy after last year's hiatus, I rebooted the Cartoon & Comic Arts course for UAF Summer Sessions for the twelfth year. Again and again, without fail, every single class is my absolute favorite one of the year, filled with my favorite students doing their best artwork ever. Of course there are always a couple who become quickly disabused of the naive notion that it's all fun & games, like a slacker student's dream opportunity to have fun and get some easy credits... this really is a boot-camp of creativity, an everybody puts out an impressive amount of energy and artwork.
Follow for more below the fold/after the jump...

Couldn't include the titles in the second photograph with the first because they were being used

Visual Art Academy 2018: Recap

Orientation

This marked the fifth year I was invited to teach cartooning at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Visual Art Academy. I opted for only part-time, so just two classes starting at 8:30am of 6-12th graders: eight in one class and sixteen in the other. Not only is it an invaluable, lifelong lesson in the camaraderie of comics creators, but we are bonded by the common drive to spend what little of the short season in beautiful summer days is afforded to us in the Interior of Alaska indoors drawing. I think I'm also the only instructor that assigns them homework: best quote of the year "Hey... this is just like school."

'Toon tools of the trade

Once again it took the tone of a boot camp with full-on immersion in techniques and generating material for character design, single-panel gags, comic strips, one-pagers, collaborative pages + comics and their own minimum 3-page piece published in the class comic book.
Check out other backposts from the archive: a couple from 2013 here and here, 2014, 2015, and 2016 for more recaps + samples of student work.

After the students arm themselves with pencils, erasers, ballpoint pens and various thicknesses of Sharpies, we start in on warm-ups to get the creative juices flowing. In this timed exercise we have six panels on a letter-sized sheet of paper, and ink up a character first in five minutes, then two, then one, then thirty seconds, fifteen seconds and lastly five seconds.  Somewhere along this continuum we discover the balance between lavishing detail on a drawing versus the logistics of having to redraw a character hundreds if not thousands of times under the pressure of deadlines.

Another timed exercise that also incorporates teamwork is the venerable "Think Before You Ink" drill. Still amazed after all these years how someone can knock out a rendering of fairly complex scenarios in sixty seconds.

There's also one that I really like to use along with gag charts to help come up with ideas where everybody has ten seconds to react to prompts and write captions (ex: write something you overheard this morning"), then sixty seconds to illustrate another series from another list of different prompts (ex: "draw something you saw in a dream"), and then rearrange the cards to see what kind of random juxtapositions can trigger inspiration.

Interspersed with all the daily exercises I like to drop the occasional jam, either captions for a single-panel gag, or strips, or even the exquisite corpse. These jams are such a great way to unblock and free up the flow of ideas.

 
They are also really fun to do with friends and can be a way to foment some funny feelings, and serve as a reminder that inspiration is all around us and ideas can be gotten from absolutely anything.

Eventually we all graduate to drawing finished panels on Bristol board, a minimum of two from everybody. By this point there's a huge repository (or mulch-pile) of material from which to literally draw from. It's accumulated on the walls of the classroom, out in the hallway showcases and in their storage drawers and sketchbooks.

Personally I'm continually astonished at what happens when they are left alone to come up with whatever they want to do. All it takes sometimes is a little push, and then providing the time + place to run with their own imagination.

One-pagers are next, and as a sort of prompt we do a round of a "Start to Finish" exercise to grease the proverbial skids. Students are given two random images and are tasked with creating a four-panel page that starts with one and ends with the other. This can be a challenge when it's, say, clowns and astronauts, planets in outer space and asylum residents, or dinosaurs and hamburgers.
I think of these one-pagers in terms of two-tiered Sunday funnies as a way to transition from strips into longer narratives.

Here's a set of sample swatches excerpted from the next phase in cartoon boot camp: the collaborative page. But instead of the normal three-day long exercise, it's compressed into a single session: student #1 has fifteen minutes to write up a simple script (3-5 panels) for a one-page piece; student #2 then pencils the page (11x17") in thirty minutes; #3 inks it p in half an hour; #4 has the same amount of time to add value (graphite or wash). It's intense and rewarding!

The next day we all worked up a class comic book: everybody assembled in front of the huge blackboard and collectively brainstormed what quickly evolved into a fantastically convoluted tale. It gave us a chance to explore basic plot structures and simple story arcs, before knuckling down and cranking out another one-page piece in about an hour.

There were as many pages to the comic as there were students in the class (ten for the first, and twelve for the second) plus a cover, one of which was penciled by special guest artist (and incidentally the dean of the college) Todd Sherman, and inked/lettered by me, the other by a couple of the advanced students who took time out from working on their own independent projects.

This was a new exercise for me, inspired by the visiting artist Maria Franz who turned me onto this delightful group exercise. It's collaborative in that the first and last panels of each student's page has to dovetail with both the preceding and the following student's pages, so there is a lot of interaction and plotting. And even though one primary student is responsible for character designs of each character (and setting) that appears, other students follow their lead but put their own stylistic spin on everything, so there are some great takes on the material as the pages unfold and evolve throughout the process.

Gradually the output from the cartooning classes metastasized throughout the department, occupying about a third of the hallway display cases. This wasn't just to humblebrag showcase the tremendous amount of work we accomplished in just a couple short weeks (not to mention in only one-hour forty-minute sessions per day), but to provide the buffet of ideas from which to literally draw from. No excuses ("I don't know what to draw" etc.) as there were any number of possibilities - a whole freakin' wall in fact - to pick up on and re-purpose into their own stories.

Manuel/Wallace/Ely/Harrell/Gieser/Conde/Garcia/Gilbert/Palchikoff/Moren/Knapp/Rurup

Ostensibly the grande summation of the entire experience is encapsulated with the end product: the official comic book containing everybody's final pages (1-3 pages). I like to think that it's also the overall immersion and exposure to so many varied approaches to creating comics. I almost hope that they are left somehow unsatisfied and yet maintain enough momentum to keep on making more and more. Works for me.

This year I had a couple bonus "advanced" (one repeat attender and another taking both sessions of cartooning for half the day) students who I tasked with creating their own minimum 4-page comic. They, along with a few other folks hidden away among the class, really really surprised me with the quality of their work - there's always some serious surprises in store for me when I discover the depth of talent and passion just waiting to uncap.



Everybody also got a photocopied set of the collaborative pages and also the group comic, so together with all the leftovers from innumerable in-class exercises, there was quite the haul. Of course this was all a cartoon carrot at the end of the proverbial stick: they only got the goodies after completing one final project on the very last day... a minicomic that was copied + traded with everyone. That and taking down all the artwork festooning the department!

The opening was amazing: great turnout of folks plus a chance to meet with friends + family of the students, and watch them proudly show off all the work that they've done. But for me personally the very best moment was in catching a cartoonist who just couldn't resist making one. more. little. touch-up on their piece...

... this is what it's all about

Residency Recap: Golden Heart Academy

Here's an overview - cribbed from my official "narrative report/evaluation" of my recent residency (following the ones at Eielson and in Eagle) throught the Artist In Schools program that the Fairbanks Arts Association fosters in conjunction with the school district. This was a bit different, as the Golden Heart Academy itself is housed inside the Fairbanks Youth Facility, which was definitely unique opportunity to reach an under-served and over-looked population.
More below the fold...

Semester In Review: Fall 2017 Recap

Wrapped up another simply amazing semester: always a humbling privilege to have the opportunity to sit in the passenger seat and see where students take their work. There's been a couple brief updates along the way touching on specific highlights (pen + ink/collaborative pages and the annual greenhouse outings) but it looks as if blog updates from the campus studio classes will at best get covered with these all-in-one recaps (like for last spring and fall semesters).

But I still do take plenty of images so as to capture the memories, which many of the artworks also do, but it's always interesting to juxtapose the meta and mullings against previous essays from back when Ink & Snow first started. In most cases there's really nothing more to add: repeated lessons have all proven the point that the exercises work. As the image above during a subtractive assignment using charcoal so beautifully illustrates, it's all about getting your hands dirty. And I'll include a few bonus images of my own examples, since there's sometimes nothing better than leading by example - as in the case posted up top of sitting in for the caricature exercise as a participating model.
More below the fold...