Beowulf

I have commenced work on a four page comic entitled Beowulf. It's ten after one in the morning, and a steady stream of The Hives, The Arctic Monkeys, and The Hold Steady have kept me going as well as a band I only recently discovered called Dragonette. Good stuff.

Here's my setup, with the penciled, inked, and colored pages.

Here's the first page. There's a backstory behind this idea. I'll explain it once all four pages are finished.

That's the second page. I actually did research for this work. Sparrows do actually kill bluebirds and raid their nests. Depressing. The tree limbs are inspired by Japanese artists; I reference my Art of Edo Japan textbook for examples.

There are two pages left in this series. What fun!

Comic Jam with Mo

With more time on my hands this evening than brainpower, I finagled Mo into playing a series of drawing games.

Mo proposed the first one, where we each draw a crazy body and then switch drawings, each

drawing a crazy head WITHOUT SEEING THE CRAZY BODY!

Here are the results:

After there, we went on to Scot McCloud's EPIC TIC TAC TOE JAM:

The first one goes Mo-Vernon-Mo...

and this one goes Vernon-Mo-Vernon...

The time couldn't have been spent grander. Good luck on your homework now Mo.

*Edit: I have since looked up what the tic-tac-toe jam actually is, and we did it wrong. Oh well...

Comic #1

Hopefully I can begin to do this on a weekly basis. I should also get a working scanner instead of using a digital camera, but oh well. 

Steadman v. Crumb

Back to my blog after a long time of absence. In that absence, my love of comic books has grown. I had the chance to meet my personal hero, the Wallace Stevens of the comic book world, Larry Marder, creator of Beanworld, at wordstock in Portland, Oregon.

That meeting inspired me not only to write the run-on sentence above, but also to look at older comics and even create my own. Be on the lookout of "Tim in Taiwan."

So, Ralph Steadman and Robert Crumb, two counterculture cartoonists with very visceral visual styles. If you research comic art at all these two guys are going to pop up over and over. First, Mr. Crumb:

Robert Crumb. The

godfather of all neurotic and angsty

cartoonists. Crumb's drawings are hyperrealistic, his written dialogue is beyond frank, his depiction of women is misogynistic, and his outlook on life is bleak. Every local cartoonist who thinks he's somebody thinks he can become great by bearing his soul on a sheet of paper is emulating Crumb. That kind of copying is might demean to original, but so far, Crumb stands alone.

The only other artist I've read that draws from Crumb in a way that doesn't make me sick is Larry Marder. The images of his inspiration

 constellation carry with it a same qualities as Crumb's portraits. Marder even captures the roiling rhythm of Crumb panel in the intestine patterns on Gran'ma'pa.

I suppose like many people, I first discovered the drawings of Ralph Steadman in the pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. People talk about how Steadman is

 expressionistic, and how his work is a result of hanging out with and being a drug crazed lunatic. It's easy to pigeonhole Steaman's work into the violent counterculture world of the Hells Angels and Gonzo journalism of the late 60s and early 70s, but have you actually ever tried to draw like Steadman? It's not that hard, all you have to do is move like a dancer on your paper and splatter ink like you're a little kid again. Steadman is joyful, natural. Crumb is the real counterculture man here, his lines are too intentional to be happy. I'd like to crown Crumb the counterculture king of comics, but there is something beautiful about the intention behind Steadman's linework. And the picture on the right? Not steadman, that's Bill Watterson.