"Fair to Midden"

My personal favorite and also one of the best made panels I’ve ever created. It’s probably not very funny, since my initial test marketing revealed about 90% of folks know neither what a midden is nor are familiar with the original turn of phrase, which as several of my classic started out as a mondegreen than morphs into the usual malapropism. Typically a more colloquial version is heard/pronounced as "middlin'" which eases the grammatical sleight of hand (or mouth in this instance) that is being spoofed, but regardless it’s perfectly done.

The drawing itself is an ideal composition, with exemplary linework, the palette too. Every element is no more, no less of what is needs to be. There’s just enough cutting in of cast-shadow shapes for contrasting value (example: the slightly darker inside of the tails, and on the tree trunk), and not too much airbrush gradations to add a hint of volume (see the footpads) so the overall aesthetic isn’t too “Photoshoppy.” It also helps that the colors are not high chroma, so not very vibrant, almost pastellish (just a dozen colors: three shades of brown, three greens, a blue, pink, yellow and gray + b&w). The only texture is a lot of stippling, a touch of spot-blacks using gestural stickwork on the drunken forest. *Technically those three back spruce, the same ubiquitous species that comprises much of the boreal forest and is also supposed to be what the squirrel on the right is leaning against, since those are the trees which typically have a midden – but hey, there are also talking rodents, so…?

Speaking of speaking the speech bubbles are positioned just so: the first one balanced in the upper right corner of sky and set a tad bit higher than the second, which overlaps the tree and thus overall reading left-to-right/top-to-bottom it leads the eye down the vertical pointer of the trunk to the midden itself, the darkest area w/highest contrast. The lettering is simple, legible, balanced and occupying a perfect amount of real estate within the bubbles leaving plenty of breathing room around the letters, words and unit of dialog. So this relatively simple panel is a perfect example of sequentially processing the parts, both text + image, and arriving at the idea. 

And that completes our over-assessment of the cartoon in question for this episode of flogging a dead horse, aka "pole-vaulting over a moose turd."

Recent Gig Recaps

The Fairbanks Library Foundation's "Alaska Author Series" went absolutely wonderful: a full room with some literary luminaries amongst the crowd. I actually got a little choked up while dedicating the talk to the memory of my reference librarian mother, and reminiscing about the convoluted adventure my cartoon life has been leading up to now. Nevertheless there was much laughter and I did manage to maintain a pace that pulled off over a hundred slides in forty minutes, followed by questions and a demo and signing some books too.

As evidenced by the super-soaker sweaty tshirt shot while at the demo table, I was really nervous about this talk. Since I'm away from my comfort zone of a  campus classroom it reminds e how much I empathize with students in the my art classes who are nervous about not only putting their pieces up on the studio wall for critique and review, but oftentimes just the simple act of having to do it in front of agroup of people can be terrifying. In fact my energetic antics are probably nothing more than one long sustained panic attack."I'm a visual artist not a performing one!"

Seems like as of late been sitting & sketching at a lotta tables for so many venues, and that includes several gigs for the university, the college, and the department; I manned tables at three campus events  like for orientation, for a student job fair (hiring models) and  a celebration of the second week back for the fall semester. As it happened, I had just introduced a Life Drawing class to the concepts of Urban Sketching, and so half of the event was spent on the other side of the proverbial easel with a posse of aspiring talents, sketching around and about the crowds.

Faculty show 2026 opening: Just like last year's annual fall semester faculty show, this current one is also held over, so it'll be up for another few weeks (September 24th it'll come down). On display now I have another experimental printed canvas of a panel (that'll be posted about later on this year here), along with a couple other "best of the year" Nuggets that still haven't been printed or posted yet. But a nice 18x24" color poster of "Seasons" is up along with a framed print of "Fir Baby" are included in the suite.

This truly is an amazing assemblage of outstanding artistic ability + truly impressive academic instructors of all their respective mediums. It's a distinct honor to show alongside the work of my peers who all continue to inspire me on both sides of the easels after all these years, and this is the strongest faculty I've yet to see in this department.

READ!

Long-time followers of this blog (in fact one of the first-ever posts here) know well of my penchant for promoting literacy. While there are many other issues that I might personally care far more about, we wouldn't be in this mess as a society if we didn't have better literacy skills. Hence it being the sole cause that I donate art to.

The spot illustration was ostensibly intended just for a sticker + bookmarkers too. The QR code goes right to the home page for the group, but since some of y'all are reading this post on your phone, that's a bit of a logistical impossibility so here's a direct link.

It's a pretty slick-looking professional logo, as opposed to my beaver/book initial idea, but c'mon man, ya can't have Castor Canadensis on everything.

Behind the scenes was a funny (now) (in retrospect) situation where I spent some time recreating a concept it turned out I had already done. Soon as I found the preceding design I didn't even bother to clean up the admittedly superior version. Dam it.

Demo Day 2026 "MOX" Recap

Following up on that 1st Friday Demo Day VI gig down at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (subscription here). No new subscriptions but couple dozen renewals along with a buncha regular subscribers showed up, and some friends & superfans, and some bonus art student kids and a handful of both aspiring & established artists dropped by. Even made a bit of cash from the stickers & books on the merch table. Of course as usual the whole newspaper staff all got an original. Grand total was around 35-40 pieces, and since I didn’t remember to do a batch beforehand it was non-stop from the start, from zero to eight-five all day.

Since it’s the beginning of the semester, my M-TH workweek hit fifty-four hours already, so I really needed a “day off.” Overall slower than any gig before, but I put it down to a combo of really horrible weather + timing with a holiday weekend and so judging by the downtown traffic there was quite the exodus all afternoon of folks bailing out in advance of a 3-day weekend (and moose season natch).

The only speed-bump occurred with a fellow who was gonna give me a few extra days before picking up a custom-ordered sloth. Which was not on the roster of critters, nor within my reach of rendering. No, I explained, on this gig’s menu there was a choice between the table and rack and floor of muskoxen. And neither was the second-choice order for some Sponge Bob fanart. Pro-tip: a really quick way to an artist’s bad side is to tell them to draw someone else’s intellectual property (I've gotten these at conventions before and it's like WTF man, can you not see the spread of my own merch before you?). People are so weird sometimes.

I used a dip-pen, the nib my usual Hunt 512 with India ink, on watercolor stock. For color, the four squares of the newspaper cartoon strip was by a set of bright, poppy Prismacolors; and the muskox using Derwent Inktense water-soluable watercolor wash pencils (a bark, tan, oak, shadow + an ivory borrowed from a set of Caran d’Ache Aquarelle set). Eventually I was able to stabilize the pace of production to where it would take approximately one minute to loosely sketch each piece with pencil; about two minutes each to ink it in (whereupon it would lay on the floor propped up in front of a little fan I brought along so as to expedite drying time); and then lastly a couple final minutes to apply the color, both marker + watercolor wash.

Here’s the last half-dozen, which were inked in but unfinished, so over the customary 6:30am breakfast at the café, I watercolored ‘em all in. Also on this set I did a little trick that Sandy Jamieson taught me: he would finish off his little watercolors with a couple passes from a can of gloss varnish. Really makes the blacks come back, and gives a rich luster and depth to the watercolors. BTW there’s one flagged with a yellow sticky-note as that’s my personal fave (only one with an expressive ear) of the whole day, and so it’s going in the little collection I have documenting the previous five years of this gig. Viewed this way the variations are so unique, they’re all the same but each one’s different. Watching someone not be able to make up their mind which one to pick is so much fun (“ooo but look at THIS one…”). Originally I intended it to be a baby musk-ox , but shortly into the session it occurred to me the horns were rather large for its age.

"The New Guy" + "The Roomate"

Not just another double-header post but this morning there's twice as much walrus on the table too. This first one was a real belly-flop of a demo. Every once in a while when doing the performing art thing in front of folks there's a subliminal pressure to if not make a somewhat decent drawing, then at least do it quick. I suppose for most folks watching someone pencil and ink a panel in is about as engrossing as a cooking show (which my classroom demos are structured like having pieces prepped at varying stages of development like making a quiche); similar to literally watching paint - or ink in this case - dry. After all, there's a big audience for fishing and golfing shows, and I know my own personal proclivity for falling under the spell of an entrancing artist in person or even watching documentaries (here's what I'm talking about).

Anyways, I messed this one up and it required a lot of digital editing ("I'll fix it in post"), like for example deleting the nostrils because they wound up looking like alien eyeballs. In retrospect the bath mat that's over the edge of the tub should be on the floor, and it ought to be a fluffy white towel as indicated on the sketchbook rough. But then again once you go down that road you lose sight of the fact that the roommate is a walrus and at what point does the illusion fall apart that this is a cartoon.

Next is an excellent example of the considerable evolution of an idea that can sometimes be fleshed out in imagination or at other times, as in this case, needed to be doodled out first then fermented a while in the sketchbook, and then tweaked on paper. The choice to swap out the scenario into a circus setting was a bit more complex, as evidenced by the advanced doodle done while at a faculty meeting, where I'm usually the only one without a laptop.

"Dipnetting Fish Sammiches"

Dip-nets adorn many an Alaskan domicile, and I caught sight of one on the side of a garage on my way home, with a bag of greasy fast-food by my side. "Where do you get your ideas?" Regular readers will recall a recent piece that explains my answer in detail here.

Not that I ever actually have eaten a McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwich in many many years, to their credit it's Alaskan pollock - reminding me of another closely related faux fish favorite from my time in Maine.

Demo Day 2026 (+ Bonus Landing Page linkage)

Yeah I know, supposedly last year was supposed to be the last year. Well what can I say, with the most recent event down at the public library being such a stellar opportunity to market this as a perfect follow-up gig, for just as an important institution worthy of support: promoting both literacy and independent local journalism (now more important than ever what with this particular the ongoing attack on democracy).

Looks like the critter for Demo Day VI will be a baby muskox. And seeing as how now still I gotta do an otter, a bison, and a sandhill crane, there'll presumably still be more of these yet to come. In retrospect, I still maintain it's the moral duty of every cartoonist as the peripheral talent - most especially of all the big, famous ones - to giving back a little time + energy going to bat for the local rag. We owe it to them. So it'll be super awesome if you could subscribe or renew your subscription (on-liners can even email me a grab of yer receipt + mailing address and I'll send along a personalized mox in the mail!).

color mockup

"For the sixth year Fairbanks Daily News-Miner cartoonist Jamie Smith will be doing live demonstrations all day in the lobby of the newspaper for this upcoming First Friday, September 4th, from 9-5pm.
Watch how the “Nuggets” cartoon has been created since 1988, support local independent journalism with a subscription or renewal, and receive an original work of art drawn on-site!" 

Here's linkage to: 2025 (here & here + recap); 2024 (here + recap); 2023 (here + recap); 2022 (here); 2021 (here & here + recap). Hear, hear.

concept doodle

"A Very Long Road Trip"

Mmm... the clean, fresh scent of pine. Or maybe it just needs a toothpick after the drive-through lunch? And after the widening of pupils, I wonder if they also resort to the cat-like behavior of wiggling their beaver butts before launching at a log...

Guest Speaker: Fairbanks Library Foundation "Alaska Author Night"

I'm humbled at the opportunity to talk at a very important venue, the Noel Wien public library, for a lecture series hosted by the Fairbanks Library Foundation. It'll be this Wednesday, August 19th from 6-7:30pm.Hopefully folks will have a lotta laughs and a little learning (the opposite of in the classroom) with my stand-up sit-down routine. For once it'll stay focused on funnies, no artsy-fartsy, no politics, nor any drugs, sex or violence either. Okay maybe just a hint.

Along with the usual demo stuff, and a portfolio of process pieces + sketchbooks, I'll unearth the archives and see what books I actually have on hand to sell, along with some original artwork and stickers. This'll be after the approximately 45-minute show & tell of one-hundred slides, which I am rather pleased with in that it covers a lot of ground: I'll have samples of work spanning history from highschool and colleges; from New York, to Alaska, to Georgia, to Maine, and back to Alaska; from freelance to commissions, artist residencies, and over fifty cartoons spanning over almost half a century of doodling, and twenty-five years of teaching too. 

While I haven't come out with a new book (aside from a few titles over on the Lulu site) in at least a couple decades, this talk will double as a warm-up/teaser to a big upcoming event in 2028, marking my forty-year anniversary of being in the local paper. And so plans are now afoot to offer a new collection should fill in the big blank from 2008 onwards, and a tshirt, and a few new stickers. That and beat the drum/spread the gospel about the crucial importance of literacy, especially at a critical moment in society, and how comics can inspire a lifelong love of literature. And all this has resurrected a long-simmering plot to shift more energy & attention back to supporting this institution, as it's been a while since holding a gig down at the library.

Something different will be the inclusion of family influences, namely with an opening dedication of this presentation to the memory of my mom. Fittingly enough she was a librarian, and along with the teacher/bookseller dad, indelibly shaped my journey though the pages of my own life story. Or in this instance, comic book.

"Strength in Numbers"

Ostensibly done as another demo for the Pen & Ink course during the stippling unit, it actually isn't all that much of an example - there will be another upcoming post with a far better exemplification of the technique - but it does illustrate how I usually use one of more of the principle textures (including hatching/crosshatching, spot blacks and scumbling) as quick ways to render volume through value via textures. Also ain't exactly a very good specimen of how to draw krill either. Or a whale - not sure how baleen works with such a toothy grin, but hey, you get the point. I hope. In retrospect this isn't very funny at all, and is really cynical, but that's my perspective on futile resistance in the face of increasing consolidation across the media ecosphere. Especially when it comes to creeping AI slop on every damn platform whether you want it or not. Oh and the corruption and loss of voting rights too. Speaking of, please vote in the primaries this Tuesday.Anyways, as Josh Blue would say: ha ha ha.