Over the summer I did some guest instructing at CCS’s Summer Workshops. I taught one class on freelancing alongside Alec Longstreth. We’d done it once before. I also supplemented Jon Chad demonstrating nib anatomy and technique with a lesson on brush inking. It’s always a thrill to get in front of a class of eager grown-ups and talk about comics. Sure, it takes getting over a strong sensation of Who Am I to Tell These People Anything?, but sharing comics energy with enthusiastic fellow cartoonists has got it’s rewards, too.

So I inked these both as live demos. Later I went back in with a pen to tackle the backgrounds and some details. Then I colored em because Everything is Funnier in COLOR!! Even a pair of distressed Catholics. [Buchwald the Repentant Demon, ever-developing character at top. Wilma Whistlepig, who I miss drawing in Farmy Acres, bellow. If you don't know, now ya know.]

[Props to Jen May, who loved to say that and then pump the Jock Jams, once upon an undergrad.]

Here it is, folks. The culmination of a year’s work at the Center for Cartoon Studies. This thesis book wouldn’t be nearly as neat-o without the hard work of my best half, Caitlin. She diligently cross-stitched eight individual covers; three for the thesis committee,* one each for the library, archive and gallery,** one for CCS Director James Sturm and one for my masterful thesis advisor, Brett Warnock. Caitlin zipped through British Period Drama after British Period Drama while she embroidered, and would come home from work, cook, eat, and get right to business. She is a wonder and they look lovely.

The stitching on the front was based mostly some sample alphabets I found online. Thanks to flickr-er “superminx” for posting the inspiration for the shadowed title lettering. The single-thread  “comics by…” part I invented from whole-cloth, after seeing some examples of script and sans-serif lettering styles designed for gridded fabrics using a single thread, as opposed to a series of Xes.

The look of the front cover sorta dictated the design of the pages within. I chose Gotham Condensed Thin as my body type, since it feels like a cousin to that tall, skinny, humanist thread lettering that I made up.

Hicough & Belch in color, as they appear on Top Shelf 2.0.

Here’s a sneak peek at Petrified Girlfriend chapter 3: Invasive Species, which will come out in some form or another some time, I think.

And can’t for-get about the Farrrrm-yy Acres.

– – – –

*President Michelle Ollie, and cartoonist-instructors Alec Longstreth and Jason Lutes. Thanks to Alec for letting me keep his copy, and for looking forward to getting the individual books of the separate projects as they come out. Which, I assure you, he will, or my name isn’t…!

Aaaaahhh…whatever it is.

**Images from the CCS gallery show, featuring both original and finished art by each of the graduates, are up (thanks be to Josh Kramer) at the Summer Showcase blog. Lotssa talent and lotssa interesting work up there, my lovelies. (See if you can’t spot your red-faced Irish host, too. Oh, and his work.)

It’s been a bittersweet couple of weeks. The CCS class of 2010 has graduated and are trickling off to the rest of their lives. In one day, both buddy/”Big Banana” Ben, and good ol’ Gabby (who was up for the weekend) left my house. I’ll move out in August and things will be different. But! On the sweet side, I’ll be living with Caitlin and our cat, Sheba, again. Other bright spots have been walks in the woods, jumps in the rivers, and nights on the porches. One such night unleashed Kaboobs, a bunch of dirty drawings from some of the contributors to Caboose, including yours truly. José put them up on a Blogger site, but he’s using it more like a Geocities site than a blog, so don’t look for updates. Still, do look for boobs.

Continuing the theme from my last post, here’s another cartoon I drew in transit. This was drawn on the train up from New York…some time. I don’t remember when. It’s about a cartoonist’s worst nightmare.

…I think winter is especially magnificent to look at. In New York, the buildings become stark geometry, light in front of shadow, shadow in front of light. It’s fantastic! And then in the country, well-defined shapes strike against each other, in white, pale blue-gray, and lavender-brown. Woops, it looks like those years of painting class snuck themselves onto me! Better show you a picture of

another BIG DICK!!

…this is what my life has been like so far. For the first publications class project here at CCS, we made a facebook, in the old-fashioned sense where you see the names and faces of all the freshmen. Each person’s biography was xeroxed on the back of the previous person’s screen printed portrait. They were bound last Monday.

I realized I should let y’all know there have been a whole slew of updates at PB dot C recently. Not only is there the Abraham Lincoln comic, but there’s also one about a robot R&B star (which is also for applying to cartoon school), plus, like, three illustrations from The Big Money.

I’ve been thinking about doing one of those conception-to-finish blog posts that are so popular with illustrators these days. Would that be lame? Does anybody care what how some kid’s thought process/drawing process works? Is it really any different from anybody else’s? They only ever differ in the details. I guess I’m talking myself out of it. I dunno. I’m working on a wrap-around cover for the first issue of my comics anthology I’m calling Oak & Linden. And it’s pretty awesome. And it’s on much bigger paper than I’ve used since, like, sophomore year at Pratt. I was thinking maybe I’d post the process. Is that so lame???

Oy. Did I let another week slip by without posting anything? What kind of blog is this, anyhow? Lots has been going on. Buddy Colin and I are exquisite corpsing a comic for our table at MoCCA Fest (which is coming right up on June 6th, by the by). Oy vey ismir! Did I just say June 6th? I’ve got to print up my comics before then! To back up a thought, going back and forth on a comic is so much fun. I’d love to get a group of us passing things around in a circle some day and making up hilarious stories.

What else, what else? I sent in my application for cartoon school this past Saturday. But oy gevalt, I think I’ll have to wait a year even if they’re begging for me to come. Du-udes! I need to get some scholarships! They don’t have federal accreditation yet, so I’ll have to put the whole tuition on a private loan. I’ve got to try to lessen the burden a bit, nais pas? In the meantime I’m hoping to get laid off and live off the social safety net for a while – omg, jaykaying!…sort of. Odds are looking up since the copier is empty after 8:00 every night.

Leaf Boy!

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:

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:

If only I lived in Canada, and I could pull down a sweet salary, health benefits, and pension for sitting at my drafting table, you know? I mean, I’ve been a good boy and done my work! Doesn’t that mean I should be making so much money?

I couldn’t resist posting this one last Met drawing. The museum closed before I “finished,” but I think it actually helped me not take the detail bidness too far. As they always said in foundation, work the whole page, so the drawing can be complete at any moment. I guess I’m not paying those student loans for nothing. OK, now I’ll shut up about money and post a picture: