Saturday, December 23, 2023

"Baked Alaska" #57 - #60

Follow below the fold for another quartet of cartoons in our seasonal installment of recent Baked Alaska panels as appearing in the pages of the Alaska Cannabist magazine.


This came to me on a mini-road trip that took me past the Felix Pedro monument, not to mention an unending stream of other extractive - either active claims or historical evidence of activity - alongside virtually every road in the Interior.

This feature allows me to focus a little bit with an eye on the seasonal holidays, and the associative bottomless well of inspirational material.


Last year was the first (and as it turned out, last) (but not only) Cannafest, and as a freelancer for the hosting folks I got a table to peddle my wares. 

Had a good time and met some cool folks, even had time to wander around the grounds and check out other vendors. On had an actual plant on site for display so I naturally thought it would make for the best backdrop ever.

Like what sometimes happens with Nuggets, there are times with this series that, in retrospect, the spontaneity, is lost in the print version: even if non-archival ballpoint, there's still a fresh quality of organic linework (though the line weight variation is what usually sells the one done with a dip-pen). 

But then again if art is a verb, not a noun, and it's all about the process, then I take it all as continuous expression. The only way I can ever hope to get across some ideas is with the aid of a visual component. Or, put another way, in order to get it you gotta see the picture to understand what I'm talking about here. That said the technological technique is almost as cryptic and much of an undecipherable doodle by the next day as some pre-sketchbook sketches look.  

Hence this next series of sketches started with an emergency stop-gap doodle technique just snapping a quick pic with the iPhone and editing the image with a little notation and/or markup.

Aside from the aptly-named long-standing traditional venue for tourists and locals alike at Alaskaland, salmon bakes are about ubiquitous as clam bakes on the other coast. I'd be remiss in not pointing out the splendid front cover of the calendar - see recent, earlier post here - which was the watercolored version of the original linework (pen + ink on Bristol).

And lastly we have what I think was by far the funniest one of the year, in no small part due to the local connection of another colorful historical figure in early colonization

The reference sketch + accompanying snapshot of the grip was courtesy of anyone happening to walk past me while out sketching in a cafe - using such spontaneous, impromptu models is a crucial drawing skill to have as a cartoonist.



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