April Fools: "Jack In The (Dog) Box"

It is sometimes such a simple relief to just do a pure, basic slapstick panel. Doesn't make much fodder for introspective analysis solipsistic navel-gazing on a blog post though. *Edit: Come to think of it, the spring is backwards, as the could ought to technically be overlapping from the head to the base, not the other way around. Update: Also it occurred to me how half the readers from the Lower 48 won't have any idea what the hell a dog box is, as they are ubiquitous up in this neck of the woods.

UA BOR DEI WTF

Both the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and the Sun Star ( reminder to please support local, independent journalism) published editorial panels of mine addressing the recent decision by the UA Board of Regents to remove all language and positions relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion. One cartoon depicts our mascot polar bear eclipsing the black and brown, and the other, a claw shredding these bedrock principles of academic freedom. With this edict, the University of Alaska Fairbanks joins the UA statewide in capitulating - abject surrender - to Republican's bigoted, pro-racist, white supremacist, Christian nationalist, fascist takeover and takedown of what makes the United States of America a champion of democratic values. Additionally this falls into line with with the big-picture/long game objectives of the billionaire class + oligarchy's wet dream known as Project 2025 in assaulting public education.

"Nuthatch"

 

You can always see when I try too hard to get it right, especially when it comes to complicated critters like birds. Knowing how picky ornithologically inclined folks can be (ie your basic birder) I'll sometimes go out of my way and make an effort at drawing them at least a little more realistically than the usual menagerie. I'm also inspired by a returning pair of Red-breasted Nuthatches that hang out around our cabin feeders - evidence that their northern range has been extended beyond most maps. They routinely buzz right past my head when out on the deck, giving adorable little warbling chirps as they pulse through the boreal woods on bombing runs back & forth to stash their caches. One of teh few things that actually makes me smile to see and hear, joining along with the usual crew of chickadees (both Black-capped + Boreal), woodpeckers, gray jays and grosbeaks.

Herding Cats: Chasing (and Catching) One's Mental Tail

So much for spring break: it was neither spring, nor a break, as evidenced by the backlog of drawings I had to catch up on cartooning with this year. In answer to the requisite water-cooler query "what'd you do over break?" I'll be answering with: This week went on a walk in the winter with new ice cleats, experimented with different kitchen timers, graveled the cabin walkway, drank whiskey with a Kentuckian, read some Reader’s Digests, ran the Iditarod, went combat fishing, visited Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park & Preserve, played on a carousel, watched a nuclear explosion, attended a 12-step meeting, rewatched An America Werewolf in London, The Return of the King, and Game of Thrones. I hung out with my wife, porcupines, sled dogs, a giant garden gnome, a couple old timers, a few grizzly bears, and some salmon, moose and beavers. ("So, ah... you stayed home and worked").

A snapshot of the accumulating compost heap inside my sketchbook, nevermind the mental mulch-pile. Sometimes when asked "where do you get your ideas?" I'll answer with the candid observation that it's more like just remembering to take lots of notes. This then is an example of when that process goes off the rails, and the blizzard of little scraps of papers starts to coalesce into deeper drifts. One of the rituals I really miss this semester has been the habit of hanging out with my sketchbook at a local cafe. If I put it off for a while, the scraps of paper just multiply exponentially, unless I slow down > stop doodling and/or coming up with ideas. This slow suffocation of the creative drive is an inevitable side effect of having a full time job (aka paying the bills), and leads to a lot of existential stress, that feeling of always being behind, of never catching up. Or, as is often said to me: "You're always working." Actually this semester saw the occurrence on at leas two distinct occasions that I had to make the conscious, deliberate decision to put down whatever I was working on and instead attend to my student's work. That hurt, but there's really no second thoughts at all when confronted with the choice. Much as I retreat into the buffer zone of my art when confronted with the pressures and demands of being a grown-up, I try my best to not shirk the duties of being full-time faculty now. Suffice to say I have a keener appreciation of what one of my students has to endure when, presumably, they have to juggle other classes, a job and a relationship ie a life, and all I ever ask is to make drawing their priority. Yeah, ask me how well that works out.

As a result of teaching the new Pen & Ink class (some spectacular samples coming sooner than later) I've been exposed to a slew of comics that are currently the favorites of a few students, and a bunch of relatively new-ish classics that I've been meaning to catch up on - this seems to now be a habit in-between semesters and over any "breaks." Big shoutout as usual to all the awesome folks down at the Comic Shop of Fairbanks! The current reading list: Junji Ito’s “Uzumaki,” Milburn’s “Lure,” Liu/Takeda’s “Monstress” Omnibus 1 (“If you try to draw to impress people, you will end up drawing boring art. All you have to do is to demonstrate all you have!” ), Tradd Moore’s “Doctor Strange,” and Ryan North/Erica Henderson's “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.” To be sure, a lot of the recent acquisitions have been with an eye on expanding my semesterly tabletop display of sequential art in the classroom to include more diversity, namely works from female artists and creators. Maybe a third of the comics class is now women, but the samples on the roster for pen & ink class was all men (ex: "King" Kirby, Bill Watterson, Maurice Sendak, Walt Kelly etc. etc.)  again, until I realized how I was unconsciously participating in the exclusion that is a hallmark of institutionalized patriarchal systems.

Speaking of systems, as a side-note to the big ol' stickers I slap on all the books in my studio stash, now everything's adorned with my chop logo. That's a call-back to the bookplates meticulously applied to every single one of my books as a child, courtesy of my librarian mom. Nowadays it's meant to be a deterrent to the occasional borrower that sometimes takes years to return, and usually a title I haven't read in a while but sure enough soon as it disappears I'll need something from it. As another collector once said all I ever worry about is what I've bummed from someone else, and let the rest take care of itself - there's a lot more worrisome things to try and stay abreast of these days, and books on loan are the least of 'em.

Guffaws & Applause

As a follow-up to a recent posting about the process of selecting representative work for an application to join the National Cartoonist Society, here's the rejection letter. Not that in the grand scheme of things do these things actually matter, which is the same as what I say to students who get their work rejected for the annual student art exhibition in our department gallery. Or any show anywhere for that matter: it's a healthy recognition that while sometimes it can hurt, the reality is that it has little to no bearing on your overall success as an artist. Note that it's the same with getting work accepted into a show - hooray, but don't get carried away: at some point you will deal with someone's bias and ignorance, which also works both ways, as anyone who's ever participated in a critique with the informed (one hopes) opinions of others can tell. Anyways, it's a humbling reminder that being a big fish in an even bigger pond - a sea really - is always gonna be comparatively insignificant to the folks with followers up there in the millions. After over a few deacdes in this market I reckon I "only" get 10-20k pairs of eyeballs a week peeking at my panels between platforms (on-line + print), not to mention the mountains of merch that's moved over the years. Since there are no clear guidelines, it's anyone's guess as to what degree this criteria weighs in on the scale of acceptance, but it's a safe assumption syndication is the threshold.

One metric I've mentioned many a time before is how for so long the cartoons actually paid the rent. That's something to be really proud of, as the gig economy gets really old for dancing bear circus acts. Now, mind you, as the Significant Otter often points out, there are actually a lot of other bills as well. Nevertheless, as the guidelines stipulate, “NCS membership is open to all creative professionals who earn a substantial part of their income working in the fields of cartooning, illustration, animation and graphic storytelling. We are an organization of esteemed peers and we welcome new members!” Again, reading between the lines, the non-syndicated probably need not apply, and presumably the role of education in the comics arts is not taken seriously as well. Kudos are in order though for their membership committee makeup, it's now far deeper than their historical roster of legacy winners - there's hope it'll eventually evolve along with the limping industry.

Accolades from the art department saved the day: As fortune had it, shortly thereafter, I was caught by surprise at the outpouring of promotional postings the UAF College of Liberal Arts + UAF Fine Arts did in ramping up publicity for the final First Friday - actually the entire month of the show - at Ursa back in January (see posts here & here). Always grateful for their recognition + support of peers that are near!

PS: Also as a side-note to that same recent posting wherein I also humblebragged about cracking a million unique visits to Ink & Snow, I neglected to look at the tiny little ticker way down at the bottom of the right-hand menu - seems my suspicion about most of the traffic (three quarters?) being bots and/or solipsistic navel-gazing was probably true, although I can't remember exactly what the statistical data points are for tracking with this program from when I originally set the blog up back in 2009. Well anyways, I'm still hear, and so are you too - thanks as always.

"Sabotage on the Iditarod Trail"

Went back and forth on the verbage for this one: my preferences were to default to "Yukon," but then since that race is unfortunately defunct + derailed, and "mushing" is too ubiquitous and generic, I guess "Iditarod" will suffice as far as a turn of phrase that is still within contemporary Arctic parlance. Now if I can ever get my idea across to honor the last one across the finish line with a red hydrant instead of the historical red lantern...

Plain Ol' Wood Bison (demo)

Here's the breakdown of the process, from the initial light pencil sketch, a basic contour (done with a dip pen + India ink), then a couple hours of rendering volume with value through gradations of texture for tone (playing with a new set of Microns for the hatching). I also experimented with using a varnish on the finished piece, after prepping it with regular fixative. This added some luxurious depth + luster, and restored the blacks which got dulled after smothering under the watercolor. PS: This was a tip I always meant to follow up on from Sandy, and so this is dedicated to him.
And then, at the end, I did what I so often do in life; what has marked my artistic deviation from drawing normal illustrations and consequently securing my fate as a cartoonist: I had to go and goof it all up by adding some smartass commentary. This was in part inspired by the lame joke "What did the father buffalo say to his kid on the first day of school? Bye son." And yeah, there wouldn't be any grass around the winter solstice up in our neck of the woods, but that's okay because buffalo also don't think in English, I think. Update: I eventually edited the JPEG caption to say "summer" solstice instead, but then again, there wouldn't be any snowflakes in June, but so what (see above). Then the "Nuggets" header was affixed and the image got used as an unexpectedly classy crafted cartoon - probably a few subscribers that are unaware of the different styles I can draw in.

Recently my Beginning Drawing class decamped to invade our local state office for the Alaska Department of Fish & Game to take advantage of an opportunity to gather reference sketches for their upcoming pen + ink assignment. I decided to get a jump on not only this class but dovetail the demo as an example to show the Pen & Ink group, as we will be taking a different field trip to Sportsman's Warehouse - it can take some logistical planning to accommodate the wildly divergent times for these studio courses this semester (an early morning session bookends every week with a late evening one, neither of which happen to coincide with the operating hours of my normal go-to resource on campus at UAF Museum of the North).

They had slightly redesigned the facility since last year/last time I visited, having taken out the big fish tank in the visitor lobby, and most notably, adding a Plains buffalo mount to the diorama. It brought to mind the recent efforts to reintroduce the native Wood bison to Alaska (albeit in a region that there isn't any record of them being present, according to the overlooked opinion of the affected Native groups). Last summer on another field trip my class got to go behind the scenes at the Large Animal Research Station and we got a bonus sight of the transplanted herd being held temporarily in their pastures. Quite a sight seeing them charge around, with "little" babies gamboling about.

While technically there are largely cosmetic differences between the two subspecies, it's akin to the aesthetic variation between most big, hairy mammals of the north. Which I got permission to quickly grab a couple snapshots of their hooves (hidden from view so I had to jump the ropes), and the moment was captured in turn by a student. As a result I think I now know exactly I want my body to be used for when donated to science, but preferably housed in a closet in the art department, right next to our classroom skeleton.

"Watering Eyes"

This one is based purely upon personal experience*. As with many other subarctic denizens of Interior Alaska, this is just normal routine for many months of the year. And then in the spring we all have tears of gratitude and relief over the first sight of emerging dirt and dead, dry grass as it is unearthed from beneath the blanket of ice + snow.

*To clarify: just the part about excessive dryness of arctic air causing the river of tears to flow - not any of the other stuff (well, except for crying at the coffee-hut).

PS: It was minus forty-something when I drew this, and then - great timing - it went up to forty above (including hideous rain in January in Interior Alaska), then afterwards back down to subzero temperatures again. Which is why the self-portrait so accurately reflects the state of mind of so many residents this time of the season.

"Over-Easy: Alaska"

Or "Alaskan Over-Easy," which is improper but usually sounds/reads better than what the print version says. I'm still influenced (FLUE?) by my first-ever Blaze King. Draw what you know I guess.

Requisite reminder that you'll always bring what you see to a piece anyways.

The Editorial Review bored

"Good Boy"

Yet another from the ever-expanding mulch-pile of marriage material. Far be it from me to exemplify the incompetent male trope but it's funny 'cause it's true. And not just in an anthropomorphic sense, because my cats always ignore me. Woof.