Lately I’ve been watching my mega-pal Kevin finishing up what will surely prove to be the sickest comics anthology of 2011. I mentioned it once before, and seeing more work coming in for it, I’m increasingly giddy for its springtime release. Its called Visions of the Aporkalypse, and it features plenty of Swineclopses like that guy up there. Kevin’s been dropping previews on his blog, including two pages from mine own entry. I’m so excited!

Here’s some more piggies. Pot bellies have the most personality and babirusas are even grosser than warthogs (sometimes those upper tusks grow into their heads!!). That’s what I learned.

Alrightch’all, I know I’ve only been giving you dribs and drabs lately. Hell, just a bunch of sketchbook doodles. I know. And I’m sorry. It’s time we got to some meat and potatoes. Or at least some seitan and wild rice. Would you like to see how I made another cover drawing, with colored inks and all? Well tough noogies, ’cause that’s what you’re getting!

I was asked by fellow CCSer/Springsteen fanatic Nomi Kane to draw the cover for an anthology she edited featuring stories set in a fictional Arizona town called San Papel. It was inspired by a papercraft kit assistant editor Jon Fine was assembling at the end of last semester. Despite these humble, cute beginnings, Tales from San Papel is filled with some pretty tough stories of predatory people in the mean, wild West. And some talking animals.

I’m not gonna go into as much detail concerning tools or the sketching process this time as I did with the Oak & Linden #1 cover, but I’ve got lots of pictures to show you, and lots of them you can click to see bigger. Suffice it to say that the pre-production was long and tortuous, with lots of different concept scribbles, and lots more of monogram sketches that I didn’t use for anything.

Then I spent a day making a big chunk of Victorian Arts & Crafts-y text, only to scrap it because it took up too damn much space (plus all the creators are credited in the table of contents, their individual pieces, and a contributors page at the back, so this would probably be some seriously narcissistic over kill on the cover).

I tried to make up for time I’d lost making that by rushing headfirst into the actual cover drawing, with little more than a doodle of a coyote twisted up in some barbed wire to guide me. That was a mistake.

I suppose it isn’t terrible, but I felt like it needed more breathing room, that the image wasn’t clear, that the coyote’s body should have more of a sense of twisting and bending over itself, and that the page design could use some bolder shapes. So then I did some actual thumbnail sketches, flipped over the piece of bristol I was drawing on, and drew the following.

Now for the inks, with a good helping of white out. I drew the ear at least three times before I liked it, and the coyote’s back I eventually had to paste-up with some new paper. This is more what my inks usually look like (as opposed to the Oak & Linden drawing, which I was crazy careful with because I did inks and colors on the same piece of paper). You can see I keep my pencils fairly loose and make a lot of changes at this stage (check out the buildings and mountains, and the coyote’s head). I don’t know if this is artsy-fartsy talk, but I think it keeps some spontaneity in the line.

Then I drew the title, on a separate piece of paper, which is unusual for me. In this case, I did the cover drawing at print size. I wanted to draw the lettering at “half up” so I could give it the detail that it deserves. So I did.

I put ‘em together with Photoshop, and here it is: the cover in glorious black & white, trimmed to eighth-inch bleeds.

Now, this time I tried an old-school comics coloring technique I’ve learned here at CCS. I printed the inks in 50% cyan on a sheet of watercolor paper, and then colored on that. The true old-fashioned technique is to to also print the inks in black on a transparency which you can use to see what the color will look like with the black over it. I don’t have any transparencies for my inkjet printer, and I didn’t want to face the below-zero winds of Vermont to get down to a laser printer at school last night. So I did without. I did have some trouble. When I wet the paper, I lifted a lot of the cyan ink and spread it everywhere. I don’t know if I should have waited longer to put water to the thing, or if inkjet ink really hates printing onto sized paper, or what, but consider yourselves warned if you plan to try this sort of thing. Anyhow, here that is.

Put ‘em all together and whattayou get?

Just before moving away to Comicsland, I had to finish up Guns, Germs, and Steel to give it back to Todd after borrowing it for something like nine months. The whole argument of this book is that the course of human history is basically an accident of geography. Essentially, Jared Diamond fills thousands of pages making a very thorough argument that the only reason Europeans got to kick everybody else’s ass is that crops, livestock and ideas can diffuse really easily throughout the gigantic landmass of Eurasia. He say the grasses that grow naturally in the Middle East (like wheat and barley) helped with a food production head start there, too. Also, the big docile animals in Eurasia didn’t die out as soon as people showed up (as they did in Australia and the Americas), partially because they got a chance to evolve with us as we were just becoming homo sapiens. Seemingly the African animals were on to us from the beginning, and have never trusted our species.

Diamond mentions in the last chapter that had African knights been able to domesticate rhinos and hippos, they would have mowed down sissy European horses and stomped all over the Mediterranean and who knows where else. That def put an image in my head. This was a bottom-up drawing, and the rhino wound up pretty tiny compared to its knight, but I still think it’s cool enough to show youse. As soon as I stopped drawing it, I also thought about how awesome these two would look in full armor, but that’s another story. Rhinoceroses already look like they’re wearing armor anyhow. Maybe Todd will draw them in proportion and with lots of metal plates and leather and muscles and stuff. You hear me Todd? That’s a mission!

What an adventure my love dove/co-writer and I had at Natural History on Monday! That place is the best. We were researching for Petrified Girlfriend locations, she with her camera and I with my sketchbook. Mostly we she took pictures. I offended Caitlin’s sensibilities by making her take pictures that look terrible as photographs but are useful for aiding a drawing. So there we were, making tasteless images with flash reflections on glass and blown out light areas that served no purpose but reproducing the displays placed in front of us. Like a couple of tourists. In the dim exhibition halls the camera’s flash was too weak to capture the room and we didn’t have a tripod for some long exposures, so I dashed off a couple drawings to get down the two best spaces while Cait drew plants and animals.

This isn’t to say that Caitlin didn’t get some really cool shots – hell, any of em that she really set up totally beat my drawings. Like check this out (in a Frog Blog first – photography):

I’ve gotta say, though, the dinosaurs have stopped doing it for me. I think ever since they remodeled that whole floor. Maybe it’s just a coincidence and I got old at the same time that happened, but I’m thinking maybe all the clinical, modern glass, and the layout built around evolutionary lineage rather than dramatic impact had an effect. I mean, I’m glad they have the T-Rex standing properly and they’re doing more to teach evolution and all. I just think the ocean life redesign works better because it retains the mysterious cavern atmosphere that the older mammal exhibits still have – plus it has those cool aquatic sounds!

Anyhow, I’m glad I’m not Craig Thompson, and I don’t consider taking reference photos to be cheating. Cause if I was, it would take me a really long time to make a comic that takes place anywhere specific. And I wouldn’t get this snapshot:

Or this cover for Caitlin’s 1978 solo album, Amethyst:

It’s Passover and it’s Easter, and Easter includes my favorite exclamation of all, as seen above. I thought I’d switch things up a bit this week and do more showing and less telling. Maybe you’ll like this drawing some stoner kid did in his notebook in highschool…

OK, actually there was a guy on the L train platform playing the blues b’jesus out of Amazing Grace and had me literally on the verge of tears. I didn’t have any dollars, though! Only change! I emptied my pocket, but he totally deserved better. So I guess maybe I thought I could make it up to him by drawing him on the ride home? Annnnd, (that’s the Obama speaking delay) how about this? I don’t know if Cait’s melancholy is rubbing off on me, or maybe I’m just overwhelmingly frustrated right now. I’ve been fighting customers at work and generally going around moping. Anyhow, He is risen!

This ship is turning around, this new leaf is turned, this bird has flown, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! Friends of the internet, I think I’m gonna go to grad school. I’m gonna try to go this fall. That might not happen. I think I need to be at the Center for Cartoon Studies. They’re not full yet and I’m trying to get in an application in the next couple of weeks. Yesterday I was going through what I’d send in my portfolio and I was confronted with the fact that my comics output since school has been running at about four pages a year. This has fortified my resolve!

Don’t you see? I’ve been going at things all wrong! It’s crazy to try to make a freelance illustration career that can support a comics career – I’m going at it bass ackwards! First you write a hit comic and direct it, then you feed yourself by drawing.

Now I know what you’re thinking: OK Pat, why not just draw comics instead of spending all your time building websites and promoting yourself to art directors in dying media? The answer is I’m just too fed up with how things are moving now. I don’t think I can hold out much longer doing what I’m doing, and there isn’t much else that sounds too appealing.

That, and I never got a satisfying critique out of my classmates at Pratt. They’d look at blue pencil lines under black ink and say if I added red, it would be like 3-D glasses. This isn’t to say that my friends haven’t been both supportive and constructive, but I’m yearning for a workshop environment and for classes on literature and writing and the comics medium and guest critiques by real -deal cartoonists. Does this make any sense? I don’t know, but it’s what’s happening now.

And I drew this semi-Phallic, World Snake-ish whale:

You may have noticed that this and the last posts’ drawings are particularly sexual and wiener-oriented (I checked the spelling Cait, it is “ie,” not an exception to the rule – I <3 U), blame Alfred Kubin. A few weeks ago Caitlin and Danielle and I went to the Neue Gallerie and looked at a show of his drawings and watercolors. It had sort of hokey mood elements, like creepy silhouettes behind windows and a room with period artifacts and brooding German music, but this stuff actually did its part in adding to the atmosphere, especially because it was relegated mainly to the hall and away from most of the artwork. I had no idea the man existed until Danielle said we should go see the show. Exquisitely disturbed, monstrous stuff. Sex and death and terrible beasts and bleak landscapes.

And speaking of terrible beasts, you can bet this wang would have been longer if I had known from the beginning that this was a horse man.

Yup, this is the first new Frog Blog post. We did it! We did it together. Since the last time I made a post, there was this big party for some dude who won a race or something? Also Caitlin and I got a cat. She’s stoned out of her mind on catnip and rolling around on the ground right now. Her name is Sheba, and she was Dan’s grandmother’s before she was ours. She’s marmalade, sorta fat with a kinda stubby tail, very conversational and all-around cute. Before we got her, I drew this cat:

Okay, now here are some composite sketchbook doodles from the last month or so. Can you see a theme here?

Here’s that follow-up I promised. These are marked as copyright of Field Publications, but it looks like they belong to the Dr. Seuss Collection at the University of California, San Diego. They’re from a collection my mom found at a used book store called Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. It’s by Richard H Minear and was published by The New Press, New York, 1999.

Apparently the good doctor drew political cartoons from 1941 to ‘42 for PM, a liberal New York rag, before he joined the service making instructional and propaganda films. Seeing this many of his drawings back to back to back pointed out how clearly Seuss used the silhouette to improve legibility. It’s a classic trick of cartooning and animation, that an action is clearer if it can be judged by the shape of the figure against the background (this is also a trope of character design). So, rather than sipping a drink held in front, cartoon characters turn their heads sideways and gulp it from an uplifted hand. Anyhow, the dude gets it.

I’ve also been reading Popeye and Krazy Kat and Little Nemo comics lately, and I feel like I could stand to incorporate some of the frontal, theatrical nature of old comic strips into my own work. I tend to compose cinematically, with camera angles and a sense of space, but I’m really drawn to the clarity and elasticity when the characters are at the front of the frame, and the scenes are behind them. This is something that’s worked for book illustration since the illuminated manuscripts. But what do I know? Maybe my overly-rendered backgrounds are my thing. Maybe I’m more a product of the movie theater than the stage.

Okay! That’s enough art school blah blah blah for today. Here are those drawings I’m ripping off:

Sorry blogfiends, there’s not gonna be a Portrait of the Week this week. I’m moving, and my hurried attempts at Tina Fey are so far no good.

In other drawing news, this is my contribution to a project by Eve Mosher called Insert____Here. The idea is, people see something that could improve the sustainability of their area, tag it with a sign that says what should be inserted, and then somebody visualizes it with a drawing over the image. Fun project! Good idea! Mine’s a bioswale, meaning a natural water filtration system, like a marsh.