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.

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.

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

"The Broken Seal"

Gonna kick off the year with another message of hope nope for humanity, start off with positivity + encouragement obviously too much too drink. Originally drawn back in February of last year as another in-class demo for the inaugural Pen & Ink course. Students got to see the process of penciling from the original sketchbook doodle (posted below) to the inking of the basic shapes. Then I scanned the line art and proceeded to spend several hours the next day in-between classes working up the stippling on the seal, the hatching on the bar, and then the crosshatching for the background. Apart from the dots, which were rendered with Microns (an 05 + 03), it was done entirely with dip-pens, including a crow-quill + the usual Hunt #513EF. Note that this has always been a mysterious misnomer as the designation is "Extra Fine," yet the actual Extra Fine as far as a finer line and comparatively much more flexible point is the #512, which literally says ("ex-fine") right on the nib itself. Having a heavy hand I have always preferred the stiffer nib, as I can really bear down heavy while drawing, so as to get a greater line weight variation.

Also I would be remiss in inspiration not to implicate the influence of Edward Gorey, whose work I had highlit as an exemplary example of consummate craftsmanship. I had intended to use the usual flat colors in Photoshop as per my newfound MO for the print version, but became so enchanted with the end result that I felt the aesthetics of the piece merited the rare raw scan instead. I even resisted the temptation to tint a bit with some watercolor on the original Bristol board, and just left it alone. I did tweak it a wee bit during digital cleanup, but it's come closest in many years to the illusive goal of making a drawing that's done and needs no further editing afterwards.

What with my macabre sense of humor, this one cheers me up. What we find funny in the depths of seasonal depression more often than not works as a sort of defense mechanism, similar to gallows humor. Whatever gets you through the cold and darkness... emphasis on through. Some folks are successful with outdoor activities, others retreat into their own worlds, some healthier than others.

The panel ran in the newspaper during what I had once heard was the statistical height of suicides in the arctic. One reason being the sometimes agonizing yo-yo between slowly warming temps and being teased about the returning sun, contrasted against frequent snaps. I couldn't find anything beyond anecdotal evidence to back that assertion up, but Alaska routinely ranks as the top state for people taking their life, with young folks, Alaska Natives and military members taking a disturbing and frustrating lead in the numbers. In all seriousness, here's the requisite reminder that there are options to consider: please reach out for help.

Bonus Update: Hat-tip to the layout artist who juxtaposed trhese two items on facing pages. rAmen. 

"Cocktail Weenies"

This is reminiscent of a classic from a few years ago ("Sharing") which also dealt with the concept of such sticks serving as the real treat. All a matter of perspective, if you gnaw it over enough.

I tagged this post as a "demo" because I used the original pen & ink piece as an example of how to color in cartoons - colored pencils in this instance. With the caveat that the panel was inked in with the usual dip-pen on smooth Bristol, which is not as conducive as the slightly textured surface of of the vellum alternative, which is great for other dry media such as pastel and graphite. It still came out okay enough, and served as an exhibit on the patience needed to gradually build up layers of value. I had also commented on how The Simpsons skin tones have freed the cartoon world from ever having to use white again. Not to mention this is about as far as one can push the Crayola brand.

Pastel Demos

"Basquiat Bears" 18x12" pastel

As of late, it seems that the less I care, the more fun I’ve been having with these demos. And by “not caring” I mean ignoring the fear, bypassing that little voice inside that says “you suck,” which doesn’t mean stop learning, stop trying to improve, but don’t be shy about putting up a signpost by which to measure your progress. Another way of saying it is “first make it exist, then make it better.”

First time in looong time trying to use oil pastels (+ colored chalk, and mix-media w/wash, marker) and experimenting on black paper and also charcoal + pastel papers. These were largely from some donated supplies, playing in different media than I used to, so some fun & unexpected results. Like most artists who sometimes eventually plateau, I tend to “stay in my (art) lane” which can eventually turn into “stuck in a rut.” Picking up and playing with new toys, and staying humble – if not outright amused by your own attempts - is the meta lesson learned from years of observation + personal experience.

"Moosehead demo" 11x17" oil pastel

Have always loved pastels by other people, and it seems every year there’s at least one rising star art major in our department that creates stunning work with them, so I get to cheer students on when they go where I can’t lead – or even follow. As a medium I absolutely hate using them, one practical reason being I’m so damn ham-handed I inevitably bust up every one after a few minutes of use.

"Demo Salmon" 11x17" oil pastel

Another is I simply know for a fact that I haven’t spent any time developing my skills with them. As is the case with every single thing you pick up in the studio, you’ll need to practice. A lot, if you want to get any better at it. And teachers in general are somewhat comparatively constrained by the volume of work they have to do when school is in session. It’s a matter of routine now that I will feel the frustration at having to stop/suspend working on my own stuff, and instead take the time and energy to critique, advise, demonstrate, and any number of other departmental and professorial tasks. Note: Worth it, and damn lucky to have such opportunities.

Office door notes

And I deal with that observable, demonstratable fact almost every day with students in the classroom, anxiously gripping their pencils or pens or charcoal and tackling exercises, assignments and critique pieces. I am competing with a wide range of other priorities; life in general (eating, working, relationships, taking time off and spending it on entertainment, reading, recreational activities etc.) + other classwork. It’s why I relate more to Beginning students than anyone, as I face the very same inner critic, nomatter how long I’ve been doing it. And at the other extreme, seeing professional artists hit that plateau and never color outside their lines again, once they’ve reached their respective pinnacles. And to be honest, fucking up in front of people comes with the territory too.

"Muzzle Nuzzle" museum demo w/Sharpie + Watercolor

And as has been mentioned many a time before on this blog, if they can’t learn from my example as to how to do a good job, then they’ll get to learn from my mistakes. And those are the equally valuable lessons: showing how important it is to not take yourself so seriously, to fail, and remember to keep playing anyways. The discipline and practice is the same with sports, sans teamwork (though the support network of encouragement from peers is invaluable).

Sméagol

"AK Body Positivity" + Bonus Demos

This cartoon panel was done as an inking demo for the cartooning class, while we were working on out second critique pieces: four gags + two editorial panels. I think I penciled & inked it in under twenty minutes, which must be a new land-speed record, though coloring (both digital + watercolor versions) took another hour. I admit that I pushed myself to knock out the print version within a day of doing the demo. After all, when leading by example one has gotta continually prove that you can walk the talk when it comes to meeting deadlines. "It's called artWORK!"

And yep, this is yet another example of the reoccurring walrus motif that will take some time to get out of my system after Demo Day 2024. I was also advised I might want to give the portly pinniped a distinctive goatee.
In other words, I am the walrus.

Bonus Meta: While sketching this demo (posted below) during a drawing class field trip up at the the UAF Museum of the North, some tourists were up in the "Thinking Made Visible" exhibition where a looped video of me drawing the same bear froze, and when they went to complain at the desk, they just pointed them down the hall to where I was doing it live. Same bear. Same hat. Just to mess with the guy I froze in the middle of my demo.

But seriously, right after that amusing incident, the nicest thing to happen to me all year occurred after meeting one last time with the students at the end of the day's session for a quick sketchbook review. I was still sitting at my table in the lobby working up these sketches, an elderly woman from New Orleans came over and told me that she couldn't help but notice how kind and attentive I am to my students. Since I routinely worry about how I could have done so much better when first starting out teaching, which in turn lingers into the occasional imposter syndrome, that was so incredibly validating and humbling to hear from a total stranger. It made my day. Whole semester in fact.

Another sweet spot about this particular panel is how it appeared in the middle of a series of other pieces, making for a memorable day of making art. It started out in the morning Beginning class with 20-minute  demo drawing a "subtractive selfie" in-class exercise with charcoal from an enlarged portrait (current variation of this assignment). Since I was rather sick of drawing myself, I instead used an absent student's image as an example. Then in-between classes I did the Nuggets panel (20-minutes pencil > ink + another hour for coloring). Then for the afternoon field-trip with a class of Intermediate + Advanced folks, I cranked out a few demo sketches (approx. 10-minuutes each + another hour of texturing/color) for their pen & ink assignment. What a day, and I'm gratefully aware of how lucky and rare it is to get such an opportunity.

"Endsong" Demo: Macro Texture Swatches

It occurs to me that back in December I teased out a mention about a brand-new studio course I developed for the drawing department, "Pen & Ink," and since then have never posted any samples of the incredible work that's been produced in the class. I'll catch up over the upcoming break, but in the meantime here's a sample of a demo page I did during an in-class exercise.

Students were tasked with sampling from the semester's work to date and recreate macro textures onto twenty approximately 2" squares on a sheet of Strathmore 500 series Plate Bristol. So a super slick surface meant rendering with superfine tools like crow-quill dip-pens + o1/02/03 Microns. 

The words were sampled & remixed into the panels after the sample textures were randomly rendered, with only one frame specifically designed for an accompanying image ("It's all gone"). Somewhat similar to last year's comics poem of a Lamb of God + Gudetama demo page,  the inspiration for the text came from one song in particular, "Endsong," off the first album released by The Cure in sixteen years, "Songs of a Lost World." Other reviewers have done introspective, insightful reviews on this masterpiece of melancholia, but for me it means more than the usual nostalgic navel gaze: a mutual favorite band (along with Depeche Mode) with a long-gone dearly loved family member who we would often share mixtapes of adolescent longing. The faint penciled sentence reads: "and if you  think a fifty-something year-old man who still listens to The Cure is sad wait until you see him lose it over a new song of theirs (first in sixteen years or so." While I'm not a goth per say, it can look somewhat funny to see someone of my age not only singing along to some classic hits, let alone crying at how hard the lyrics hit. I mean, at his age when he sings about such things as loss and sadness, he really fucking means it now, which I can deeply relate to now more than at any other time in my life. To me it's simply their best song ever.

“Tundra God/Miyazaki ‘Boo”

Another class demo done for the Pen & Ink course (similar to a recent one of a buffalo), where I experimented with more tools + techniques; using India ink with brush, dip-pen, also Micron/Copic markers + Sakura Gelly Roll white ink pen, and wash with Derwent brand Inktense water-soluble colored pencils, and lastly a dose of varnish to bring out the details and lay on some luster. Since the evening class is after hours and most of my usual go-to community resources are closed (like the Museum of the North, Fish & Game etc) so for the first time in a decade I took the class on a safari field sketching trip to capture some textures in the wild at an alternative site Sportsman's Warehouse. I first focused on one mount on display in the store, then kept incorporating multiple other animal's antlers so as to evoke Miyazaki's iconic creation the Forest God from my personal favorite Studio Ghibli movie ever, "Princess Mononoki." I was obviously still under the influence of seeing only a couple days earlier the official 4k remastered IMAX version that was re-released and ran for a few days in Fairbanks. Having never before seen it on the big screen it was a thoroughly transcendent experience, on par with "Flow" and "The Iron Giant," which incidentally rounds out my top three animated movies of all time.

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.

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.