Workshop work

I just (literally) attended a SAW workshop on Narrative Voice in Comics, facilitated by Tom Hart and hosted by the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV. It was totally excellent, as Bill and Ted would say. 

Tom walked us through examples of narrative styles in contemporary comics, and we completed two-minute writing/drawing exercises after each variation, using any character we chose. Here are my wiki-wiki texts and comics based on the prompts. (I used Betsy Murgatroyd, my philosophical barfly, not that these quick sketches do her any justice.)

First, objective third-person narrative text:

Next, subjective third-person narrative, from the POV of another character:

First person narrative:

 

 

First person narrative through dialog directed at another (in this case, a letter)

First person narrative, words and pictures juxtaposed in mood:

First person narrative depicted only visually:

Second person narrative, reader is the character:

Second person narrative, reader is interacting with the character from their POV:

Seriously, this was a great creative exercise as well as a formalist observation. Tom is a wonderful instructor and I can't imagine how great taking an entire course with him would be. But I hope to find out!

 

Moar Style

So, I have sort of become enamored with my blowsy barfly and have been using her as a model while I try out different pens/line weights/styles and so forth. In that vein, I really appreciated the feedback from my SAW colleagues Syne and Tim at our co-working session yesterday morning.

Since I am putting Betsy Murgatroyd (I have decided that's her name) through her paces as an artist's model, I have also had her spout quotes from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Albert Camus. I love the juxtaposition of image and thought that results. Never judge a book by it cover, or a barfly by her drink.

In any case, here are three studies of Betsy, completed last night at the SAW Starlight Studio.

 

 

 

 

Style - a shaggy dog story

Fair warning: This is a meandering rumination, so settle in...

Since real life is a little busy now, I haven't given myself a project-of-the-month -- after Sawgust, the September Strip, Nountober, November Space Tales, Adaptuary, and Flaky Feb -- and I have just been doodling/sketching/practicing/whatever during my open studio time. 

The other night, I drew this barfly (on a piece of scratch paper):

I like the way it came out -- she's not dainty and definitely has some attitude -- so I decided to ink it:

I like this one, too, and thought perhaps she might might become an ongoing character in somethings, and I started to think about how to draw her consistently.

At the next draw jam last night, I took a detour -- the CBC series Pretty hard Cases was on my mind. so I used a reference photo to draw a sketch of the main characters:

I decided to ink this one, too:

Frankly,I found this one a little meh -- and lacking in energy, for sure. So I reinked in with a thick marker-type pen:

I really think that this one jumps off the page, and that it captures the essence of the characters better than the other version, even though it is much simpler and more stylized.

In today's open studio, I went back to working on the barfly again:

Again, I tried inking:

Not bad, I like some of this. But thinking back to the draw jam, I did a marker versionof this one too:

Again, I really liked the energy... so coming full circle,I went back to the original barfly sketch and did a marker version of that:

There's something about the bold, simple lines that seems to bring the the sketches alive,and I am not sure what to do with that. For almost a year, I have been developing my cartooning praxis thinking I am heading toward a style something like Dick Calkins:

But what if I am not?

And how do I switch gears and cultivate that simpler style - which, it seems, either soars and sinks, with little in-between?

And still, how do I develop that consistency.

I am not sure I know the full answer, but I know that part of remains working at the drawing board every day.

See you there.

The Return of Captain Stratosphere

 So, I updated the Buck Rogers pastiche comic so it would be more understandable out of context; to wit, with this cover:

New flip book link here: https://anyflip.com/ugicz/knuc/

Friday semi-marathon

So, some of the SAW peeps had a maxi-session on this Friday holiday-for-a-lot-of-folks, and from 7 am to Noon I participated in reviewing three of the Friday Night Workshop videos and doing the exercises. here we go...

The first was Simple and Specific. The exercise was to evoke a very specific emotional response or feeling in four panels, using minimal words (sound effects allowed). We did it in under twenty minutes. Here's mine:

The next was Four Panel Fun and it had a very specific prompt. We were to find three things in our space to use as characters and a prop and then create a four-panel strip with this structure:

1. Introduce the characters and prop in a context.
2. Introduce conflict.
   
3. Deal with the conflict.
4. Resolve the conflict (or not).

Here's what I used:

Here's the strip:

The last one I did was Drawing Monsters. The first part asked us to draw some blobs on the paper and then turn them into monsters and name them.

In the second exercise, we were given a series of specific prompts and sixty seconds to draw a monster from each prompt.

1. Monster with at least seven eyes
2. Baby minster
3. Minster with hooves
4. Extremely long monster
5. Monster that is strong but not large
6. Monster with a long tongue
7. Monster with a hat on
8. Monster in the water
9. Monster with a stomach ache
10. Monster wearing glasses
11. Monster with too many horns

After so much fiddly-bit work on Captain Stratosphere, it was nice to try some different styles. Most of all, it was great to spend some time with my online community, sharing experiences and tips and stories and art.

SAW Friday workshop strip

Did a summah-time themed diary comic exercise at SAW Friday workshop.

SAWgust ends early!

At least comix-wise.

So, I was on the struggle-bus a bit with both Kinko's and Lulu today but managed to get to the end of the line with Selkie-Boy: Stories of a Cat, the zine / mini-comic / whatever-it-is that I have been working on this month. Here's the upshot:

1. I have the self-published, self-printed hard-copy version in hand, enough for some gifts and the archives.

2. If anyone wants to read the whole thing in its entirety, it's an online flipbook here:

https://tinyurl.com/selkieboy

3. If anyone actually wants their own printed copy, you can buy a sweet print-on-demand magazine version from Lulu here:

https://tinyurl.com/selkieforsale 

That's it! 

Not sure what I'll do with the remaining five days of SAWgust... besides cheer everyone else at SAW on and enjoy all the work that is being produced.

I'll close with a pre-Sawgust warmup sketch of Selkie. Lots more in the book! Peace out.

 

 

SAWgust interlude

The subject of tonight's SAW Friday workshop was Comics about Pets - oddly congruous with my SAWgust project goal!

In any case, we did three 5-10 minute exercises on the theme. 

The first was to draw our pet, not realistically, but in a way that captured their personality or essence. I always that thought that Selkie would have been a biker, so here we are:

The next exercise was to do a strip about something we taught our pet. This little strip is actually a bit of a preview of a longer scene that will appear in the SAWgust zine:

The last exercise was to create a strip about something our pet taught us. I think this speaks for itself:

I sure am drawing lots of cats...

SAWgust cross-post

 Check it out: Hi-ho, hi-ho.

Savoury food spreads

There's a Kiwi and an Aussie in the Thursday SAW jam and we got talking about Vegemite, Marmite,and Bovril, so I drew the jars. Do you know which is which?

Jam 220602

 I joined a Zoom drawing jam hosted by SAW tonight - kinda like a writing group only for cartooning. You sit and work for two hours with supportive, like-minded folks.I was surprisingly productive and had a good time.

The host, Libby, is in Nova Scotia and was telling us about feeding a snowshoe hare that was living in her yard. I wanted to practice my ink-work, and that seemed as good a topic as any, so I went with it.

First, I googled an image of a snowshoe hare and tried just a nice drawing:

I like a lot about it, although I am still working on my cross-hatching.

Then I did a little four-panel comic, inspired by the anecdote Libby had related:

There's also a lot about this I like, and a lot I want to work on.

Underdrawing

I attended a Zoom workshop this morning from SAW in which we did a series of two-minute sketches of human anatomy. I think the intent was to internalize and simplify the skeletal and muscle structures. I don't exactly know how this will fit in with my cartooning practice, but it was an engaging exercise.

First, we drew a human torso, including as many muscles as possible, from memory: 

Then we viewed a diagram for a few minutes  and tried to recreate it (hence the different pose):

Then we drew it again while looking at the diagram:

I gotta admit, this one has a lot of life to it, compared with the others. That seems strangely counter-intuitive...

Then we did a skeleton from a diagram:

And in the next sessions starting adding more muscles:

As I say, these were interesting to do...but they seem to fly in the face of some advice I just received via email from another source, which warned about getting too fussy: 

...make cut-throat decisions about priorities, and stick to them. It demands that you prevent yourself from getting sucked into the "interesting" or "fun" details that leap out at you when you look at an image, and instead, absorb and capture the direction and energy of the complete figure as quickly as possible

 I am put in mind of this observation I had of John Porcellino. 

Anyway, ever forward.

Continuing the theme

Tonight I once again participated in the Sequential Artists Workshop Free Friday Night Workshop. We walked though the development of a three-panel strip; after looking at some examples, we had about 24 minutes (8 minutes per panel) to complete our narrative. Here's mine, extending the story from the earlier entry.

9 x 12 sketch paper, a couple different pencils

I came, I SAW

Friday evening I attended the Sequential Artists Workshop Free Friday Night Workshop. It's sort of a short lesson-cum-jam session with different guest artist/instructor(s) each week, There's prompt, and the instructors walk through it, and everyone participates  making their own, and there's sharing at the end - sort of like a writing group, I guess.

The prompt was to illustrate a symbol of bad luck, a symbol of good luck, a personal good luck charm, and an item or method to curse someone else with bad luck. This exercise wasn't particularly sequential, but focused on drawing, so I tried some different approaches.

So, here we go:

For a symbol of bad luck, a ladder, as in don't walk under:

 

Pencil roughs and nib pen finish

 

 

For a symbol of good luck, Noah (I was tempted to do Russell Crowe) and that bird that came back to say there was land somewhere:

 

Pencil roughs, fine line marker, and brush pen

 

For a good luck charm, a waving Chinese cat statue, something I have actually owned:

Pencil roughs and felt-tip marker

And finally, for a curse, the malocchio fingers:

Fat pencil

I did them all on one sketch sheet so at least it looks like a comic if you squint:

All in all, not a bad event. I think I'll keep dropping in.