Painter Phil McBride

"Tol Brandir" (acrylic, 20x30")

Here's a piece by local Maine artist Phil McBride, which I routinely camp out underneath whenever it's time for some creative juices (damn good conversation and coffee) at the downtown cafe in Bar Harbor. As alluded to in a previous post, this painting partly inspired one of my panels ("Think Outside The Box") because of his approach at re-presenting from observations and recollections of the landscape around this neck of the woods. For me this piece of his in particular visually triggers an aesthetic response that is keyed in on the many lingering impressions Acadia can leave on someone who is not just driving by, but really investing in a more intimate, firsthand experience. In other words, taking the time and "taking notes" makes for a more lasting connection, not to mention better art. As with any painting this posted sample doesn't do justice to the color and texture as opposed to seeing the real thing up close & personal, much like the landscape itself. But more than any other image I've come across over the past year, this one is the next best closest thing to being here/there.
Check out his website here for more works and writings.

"Mussels"

Based on a reoccurring scenario that follows any visit to a local Irish pub, and the inevitable bowl of steamed "Dublin mussels." What's even worse, or better (depending on one's perspective at the time) is that nobody else at the table seems to want to partake of the appetizer but me. Darn it.

Cartooning @ SERC Institute

Instilling respect through fear as an educational tool.

Earlier in the week I had an awesome opportunity to participate in an event hosted by the SERC Institute (Schoodic Education and Research Center) in conjunction with the Maine Sea Coast Mission folks. Along with Acadia National Park Rangers and VIP volunteers they put on a youth development program called "EdGE." The kids get to spend the day learning about science and nature, pick up some lessons in healthy nutrition and outdoor activities, and are sent home with a bag full of cool stuff. For example, from our sessions (four groups of 5th-8th graders, numbering approx 10 or so in each class) they scored a sketchbook and some drawing/coloring materials. One young girl was already working on her first graphic novel, and I was impressed at the unusual preponderance of above-average ability and interest in this particular group.

The theme for this particular session was "Winter Adaptation," which I was able to weave into my narrative during the show & tell, and hinge a few images off their experiences hiking around the island with some familiar species and scenarios. It was really fun to show both the Alaskan and Maine sides of my work, with a little interjection about basic drawing skills and pitch opportunities in the industry/field of cartooning (freelance etc.). They had permission to doodle on practice sheets while I babbled, and after the slides, everybody gathered around the main table to look at sample originals from the portfolio, and finally a quick demo panel to show the penciling and inking process.

After that they could work up a drawing in their new sketchbook, whatever they wanted to draw, or use one of the shown images in the presentation to work off of, or use a bonus on-site "model" - a handsome (dead, but still handsome) Fisher. Plus I learned a bonus trivia nugget as to the French Canadian phrase for "porcupine" - cuchon de pin.

Thanks to the volunteers and staff, especially Ranger Kate!

"It's magic..."

"Oh Buoy..."

Actually the sentiment works pretty much any day of the week - so it's been recaptioned now to just say "oh buoy." Or, as Pogo (Walt Kelly) once said: "We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities." Better still - "How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure." courtesy of Robert Crumb.

The funniest damn thing I heard all last summer was from one of the local lobstermen while working out on Islesford. He recounted an awesome practical joke played by a dude who would pull up another guy's trap, take out one of the lobsters, dress it up in a Barbie outfit, put it back in the trap along with the others, and sink it for the "victim" to find the next time they hauled out their catch.
I got the idea for this panel (which for most folks will work on any day of the week, not just Mondays) while watching the boat captain on the mail-boat ferry, who'd been doing his job for over forty years, navigate his way through the veritable minefield of buoys that dot the waterway leading into the harbors to eventually reach the dock of Little Cranberry Island, like playing diesel-powered pinball while atop a bucking, 800-horsepower bronco seahorse.

"Dropped Cone"

Another one inspired by nothing in particular (cough... cough)

Sculptural Interlude

As it happened, during another gig as a participating artist (which I'll post about tomorrow) I took a break in between sessions and toured the facilities at the SERC Institute (Schoodic Education & Research Center). There is an annual artist in residency program hosted by SERC called the International Sculpture Symposium, which fosters the opportunity for artists to create works using local granite, and the ensuing pieces are scattered about the Acadian community. In 2007 Swedish sculptor Ian Newbery made this piece - "Tribute To Life" - which is located smack-dab in front of the main building for the Institute. Especially given the recent hoopla over the sculpture fiasco in Wasilla, Alaska, this particular piece just made my freakin' day. Maybe it was in part due to the background noise of crashing surf, but there's something about enormous stone spermatozoa that is tremendously inspiring and empowering, even for those of us with vasectomies. Create Art... Create Life!

"Spring Breakup"

Raining again this morning, and rummaging through the archives for yet another show & tell when this old nugget was dug up from the mulch-pile. Man, talk about airing your dirty, old cartoon laundry. But then again, as I've said many a time, I have no sense of shame, or much pride, apparently. The top panel is, miracle of miracles, actually dated (in more ways than one): 1986 - that would be the year after my assuming residency in Alaska. This was one of a set of cartoons that ran in a now-defunct magazine by the name of "Alaska Today," a product of the Journalism department majors at UAF.

Alaska: The Vagina Monoliths

Santorum Approved

Wasilla, Alaska's high school has - again - attracted national attention (even making the big time with a post over at Pharyngula): this time for coddling the repressive and pathological projections of some Concerned Parents™. This manufactured controversy is about a sculpture which has upset the community pearl-clutchers, and resulted in school officials wrapping that rascal, and then coyly re-unveiling it again. Teasers. 

"Conversation Inversion"

Not based on a true story by any means whatsoever I swear...

"WHEEE!" (Indoor Training)

"Snuggler's Cove"

Petit Manan

Uploaded a few more images to the Picasa album: Bird-Dog and I trekked up along the coast of the Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge today, which is situated a couple-hours drive north of Mount Desert Island. Started out cold, dreary and grey but after a few hours the weather cleared up quite nicely, and it was the first time I experienced a windless, flat coastal hike. We spent a lot of time sitting mentally becalmed on driftwood logs, or aimlessly poking about the shoreline detritus, where a depressing volume of litter was washed up. Besides a solitary fishing boat and the constant hooting of the (now) automated lighthouse there wasn't any other sign of people, just some porcupine tracks in the snow. After eventually rejoining the trail, there was one particularly interesting perspective in lining up an outcropping ledge just offshore with a tidal pool, overcast with a great cloud pattern. From cobblestones to mudflat ripples to weatherworn pine, endless textures kept drawing my eye. The monumental views of Maine might command all the commercial attention with its epic vistas and cliched stock images, but these subtle moments and often-overlooked details are what I'll miss the most.

Brianna Regan Art

A quick highlight of the work from one of the best artists in Alaska: Brianna has really been creating some wonderful pieces lately (this one being a personal favorite). Previously posted were some samples from the 2010 24 Hour Comics event and there's some on an earlier blog, but check out her website here, and also now on Facebook and Etsy. Love it!

Rock On Redux

Last April as part of the summer field internship I designed a sign to remind the 2.5 million folks who visit Acadia National Park to not pocket any pebbles. The official signs arrived and should be in place by this next season, which I won't be around for, but it was cool to see it, uh, cobbled together so far.

Happy Valentine's Day

Color panel for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (thanks to the readers who wrote about seeing it in the paper!). The sentiment changed somewhere between the doodle and the finished version. As often happens.  
And yeah, there is also something to be said about not being a prick. But seriously, I love everybody.

"Haute Cuisine"

Dovetailing with yesterday's panel, this is a common culinary occurrence amongst substance users in the Interior, or for that matter Maine and anywhere else that ungulates are eaten. For months. 
Inspired by past server experience, perusing some of my favorite foodie blogs and the waiter scene in "American Psycho":

WAITER 
With goat cheese profiteroles and I also have an arugula 
Caesar salad. For entrées tonight I have a swordfish 
meatloaf with onion marmalade, a rare-roasted partridge 
breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale...

WAITER 
And grilled free-range rabbit with herbed French fries. Our 
pasta tonight is a squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth...

AK Culinary Delights

Grandma called it "roughage." I'm convinced the lack a multi-chambered stomach accounts for my antacid chewing behavior as a sort of an urban evolution of a cud. Or at least this explains the subtle difference between ruminating versus mulling.

Sunset Hikes

Sunset: Schoodic Point (View across Winter Harbor to Cadillac Mtn.)

One of the sublime rewards to spending a year hiking here in Acadia has been catching the "magic hour" at various viewpoints. While I've visited the Schoodic Peninsula portion of the Park numerous times, this happened to be perfect timing for a beautiful sunset. The view across Winter Harbor to Mount Desert Island and the profile of Cadillac Mountain capped a poignant moment. This shot wasn't filtered in Photoshop at all, not even the usual tweaking of tone, contrast and color: it's just a raw image that's only missing the wind and sound of the surf.

Building Snowmen

As a side project DR Hunt and I are experimenting with hybridizing our work - her color sensibilities and use of media like watercolor wash and pencil is sublime, and so far above and beyond my crayola paint-bucket approach that it really transforms even a simple doodle into something entirely new and wonderful. Collaborative efforts are often a unique aspect of comics which is a potential avenue worth exploring for any artist, whether it's any combination along the creative continuum: concept, writing, penciling, inking, coloring etc. (as an example, the above image was from one of my sketches). Finding a balance in the synthesis is an awful lot like building a snowman, in that sometimes learning to play with others is almost just as much fun as it is working solo.

Residency PPS (Few More Faves)

Still culling through the scans of student work... only fifty more beavers to go!

Gazing (Into the Abyss)

(Reprinted in full from The Ester Republic)

One of the more prevalent stereotypes of atheists is just how damned angry they are. Far from being evidence of any spiritual incontinence, I usually attribute this phenomenon along the lines of the infamous bumper-sticker “If you’re not pissed you’re not paying attention.” Case in point being a recent upswell in the fame of one particular charlatan, Braco, an up-and-coming Croatian purveyor of woo who holds transcendent “gazing sessions.” These consist of The Great & Powerful Oz standing before a crowd of rapturous suckers and silently… staring… at them for only eight bucks a pop. This reaches previously unheard-of heights in swindling, as it is a classic song and dance routine: but instead updated without any singing or dancing. Genius! 

Comic (Book) Tragedy

Image: James Sturm

*Update: As if I needed another reason to not watch another shitty movie by Marvel.

Amidst the constant sound and fury of cinematic regurgitations from superhero movies that seem to have taken up permanent residence in movie theaters, comes the ramping up of "The Avengers." James Sturm (also see Center for Cartoon Studies post here) has a provocative essay up on Slate that broaches the subject of corporate ethics in regards to these endless Hollywood franchise cross-overs with comics, with a focus on the legacy of Marvel artist Jack Kirby.:

"What makes this situation especially hard to stomach is that Marvel’s media empire was built on the backs of characters whose defining trait as superheroes is the willingness to fight for what is right. It takes a lot of corporate moxie to put Thor and Captain America on the big screen and have them battle for honor and justice when behind the scenes the parent company acts like a cold-blooded supervillain. As Stan Lee famously wrote, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

The ensuing comment thread (and many others) further expands upon the inherent moral minefield, one additional case in point being seminal writer and perennial industry critic Alan Moore's fear & loathing of DC's announced Watchmen prequel series. Moore's reaction is predictable given his longstanding and outspoken attitude towards lamestream publishers, but it is hypocritical when one considers his own fame and success in comics is in no small part derived from hinging works on already-established characters. Mark Hughes, among many others, points up the glaring relativism in a Forbes essay:

"Does anyone want to guess how the original authors of those stories might feel about Mr. Moore creating a comic depicting those kids having explicit sex constantly in a comic book? They might be as angry as Mr. Moore is about his comic getting prequels. (It’s also worth noting that Moore was dismissive about the licensing claims made by the copyright holders of Peter Pan due to his use of characters.)"

Corporate cannibals picking over the profitable corpse of pop media is no surprise, but what makes this interesting is juxtaposing Moore's criticism against Sturm's, and contrasting the relative merits of both positions. One irony is that Sturm's Fantastic Four book "Unstable Molecules" was one of the exceptionally rare instances which I not only bothered to buy a contemporary comic - the anthologized edition that collected all of the miniseries into one book - but really enjoyed it. The above-posted sample panel mirrors the deliberate aesthetics used in "Molecules," chosen as an homage to Kirby's original style (as illustrated by Guy Davis). So, fast-forward to today, there is quite a turnabout in position as compared to the criticism of The Avengers.

One salient point is left out: ethical issues aside, there's no need to boycott what you'll never see anyways, due to the overwhelming majority of comic book movies being just as predictably shitty as the source material.
 
And if you missed the Superbowl debut of the new Avengers trailer (only in the ADD world of sports + comics would sixty-five seconds be considered an "extended version") fortunately it is also now available on YouTube.

Calmly, Joyously, Recklessly

Sound, sage advice (part of the continuing series) that applies to the arts, including cartooning.

Migrating (Where the river is windin'... big Nuggets they're findin')

Who needs leprechauns at the end of a rainbow, or a guardian angel, when you have a one of these as a personal guide? Or maybe this is just what you start hallucinating after being lost in the woods for a few months. From the front cover of Alaska-Yukon Magazine (1909), dug up on one of my formerly frequent forays into the archives of the Alaska & Polar Regions Collection section of the UAF library. As of late we've been catching a slew of documentaries on the history of Alaska on a local Maine Public Broadcasting station here on Mount Desert Island. Which has been contributing to a creeping thaw of nostalgia and homesickness (except for the whole subzero temperatures and eternal darkness part). But this inspirational image is a metaphor for the motivation that is always simmering away on the mental back-burners. Or maybe it's just a tripping sourdough.

Call it a remix on the Homesick Alaskan (and the Homesick Southerner): while taking a break from that residency gig I doodled this out while sitting on a bench at Seawall in Acadia, in between staring wistfully out over the ocean being a poseur. Then, when I made a call on the cellphone, I noticed there was a message waiting. Turned out to be from the g-friend - it looks like we will officially be pulling up stakes and migrating back North.

Tentatively slated to hit the highway in early March. From Alaska to Maine to Georgia, then back to Maine, and now... back to Alaska. If there's a theme here, it's best summed up by Wash:

 We'll be in the Anchorage area, so a little bit closer to the Interior, and nearby a whole new world of previously unexplored vistas. Seems to have been a most fortuitous serendipity to add coastal lexicon to the mental mulch-pile, which will surely come full circle into Pacific coastal cartoons. Having mastered lobsters and lighthouses, I suppose next up on the drawing board will be Dungies and dredges.
In all seriousness, it has been a simply awesome year here in Maine, full of incredible experiences and opportunities, and making some good friends and great connections. At least now my memoir is already written, or at least the chapter about Down East. 

"Acadian Troll"

"Who's that tripping over my bridge..."

Stemming from last summer's internship experience reviving pen & ink pieces along with exploring an altogether different and darker aspect of Acadia. Briefly alluded to the initial concept back in an earlier post: the original inspiration came about from a doodle done while out hiking around the park one fine day. 

A similar/parallel thought processes went into developing this troll character as it did with the Squonk (backlink). The ol' moose-nose makes an appearance, along with the g-friend humoring requests for taking more weird reference photos (see below). Which in turn gave me no end of new ideas on what to do next Halloween... And as with another, earlier panel's philosophical/compositional framework, the depicted environment is largely an imaginary assemblage of different elements. Meaning, aside from the huge, hairy monster, it's all completely made up. Needless to say taking a hike with me can sometimes be an adventure, if not an exercise in make-believe. After investing some time on lots and lots of little dots - "stipple cripple" - I had some fun experimenting with random Photoshop filters. After flailing about for hours with different masks and blends, I discovered the joy of the "Apply Image" function, which yielded another bewildering host of variations on the theme. *Big hat-tip to photographer Jerry Jones and his fabulous Shadowhouse Creations blog for uploading cool textures to play with. Still, technological advances aside, can't fix stupid, digitally or otherwise - there are a couple glaring mistakes with the basic drawing (booyay for linear perspective) that are filed away under "next time I'll get it better." At the very least now there's another print to offer for sale at an upcoming exhibit, signing and/or convention table. Work like this always reminds me of my de-formative years, as I was brought up on fairy tales and mythology (the legendary Maine Minotaur?): perhaps one of the greatest influences for growing up a freethinker and skeptic as far as "modern" religion goes. On the artistic side, one of the most lasting inspirations from my childhood was the illustrations of the Swedish artist John Bauer, most notably his iconic trolls. Since I'm now well on my way to hoofing it across the majority of established trails in Acadia, as of late we've begun checking out the network of carriage roads where most of these photogenic stone bridges are to be found. Sketchbook and camera in hand, I'm collecting as much reference material while on these little sorties in hopes of generating a little side-body of work along this narrative. Maybe a cryprozoological field-guide of sorts of an unexplored, mysterious side to the Park. Soon as I gets me some more billy goats...

"Now I'm coming to gobble you up..."

"Guilty Breakfast" aka "Hangry Birds"

*Update 11/26/2018: Recently searched the my computer for this cartoon, and then this here blog, as I was watercoloring the original to have for sale at an upcoming gig, and I wanted to see if there was any evidence out there as to exactly when it was first created.

And ta-daa... turned out there was one of the dreaded "image not found" or "broken link" icons in its place (thanks to Google shit-canning Picasa). And being too lazy to trawl through the digital archives on external storage to track down the panel that appeared in print, I thought I'd take this opportunity now to go back in time and not only restore but improve upon the past. So here's a couple bonus process images, in lieu of the published version, from the Jamie of the future.
(original post appears below)

Shortly before Angry Birds, there's usually a Hungry Birds stage. Loosely based on some insistent chickadees around this neck of the woods. This is the second of the two panels I did as demos in front of the students for my recent Artist in Residency.

Residency PS

The school put up a brief note about the Arts Week events on their website here. 

Currently reformatting the many, many scans of student work for reposting!

Minicomic Demo

From the Artist in Residency: Using one of those awe-inspiring Sharpie Magnum® Permanent Markers (don't try this at home kids) I drew some sample panels on an easel in front of the classes for the final day's minicomic exercise. Also helped illustrate the point about speed + economy of line being one important aspect of the medium.

Bonus: While at SCAD, our class had an assignment using a modified layout (template posted above) to create a minicomic that involves some cutting. Makes for a nice touch in presentation and is different than the usual way I do it, which I think is a little bit better suited for quick & dirty classroom situations.