I Love Television, 7/31/08

Watercolor Studies, Those Never Seen

Here are three gouache watercolor illustrations that were created for a portfolio presentation, but which were never used. They represent a return to a medium I have come to utilize more frequently during the past year. The original art to each is now available for purchase at Comic Art Collective.

Sequential Circumstances

Here are two recent examples of sequential narrative coming into play, in A Drawn Perspective and I Love Television, my weekly art appearances in the Pacific Northwest. One, the first, was intended (a running commentary on the recent sale of Seattle's NBA franchise), the other, in two unrelated TV columns by W. Steven Humphrey, was not.

A Sleepyhead Tale: Exposed

From April 27, 1989, until March 6, 1992, I created a weekly comic strip entitled A Sleepyhead Tale, which ran in papers in San Diego, Los Angeles, Boston, and Buffalo, later being collected into three paperback editions from Fantagraphics Books. Beginning as more-or-less direct retellings of my own dreams, featuring a cartoon version of myself as the narrator/protagonist, the strip soon evolved into an obtuse reality peopled by the long-nosed Sleepyhead, his best friend, Sig, his indeterminate girlfriend, Insomnia, and other reoccurring characters like Dr. Verge Tabou, The People’s Pig, Mister 5 x 5, Limbo the Wooden Clown, My Govt., and Big Ma Nature. The first fifteen months or so featured self-contained episodes, built around Sleepyhead’s increasingly inscrutable diatribes against society and government, six or seven panel cartoons ultimately so conceptually complex that I was stacking facing mirrors, accusing fingers pointing in every direction. The last ten months of its run featured a serialized novella entitled The Island of Dr. Moral.
The working process for these cartoons was quite an involved one, requiring many notes and thumbnails and multiple pencil drawings, before I was ready to apply the final pencil version to board, which was then inked with a brush. I have selected three of these to showcase here, “Mexican Car Death”, “Viva La Resolution”, and “Cowboy Surgery”, offering a phase-by-phase view of their creation, from earliest notes/script, to thumbnail, to inked art, to the final printed piece, in order to reveal something of my working mind, and the disciplines encountered in creating such cartoon art. I hope you might find it illuminating. For those interested in seeing more of the final strips, I have also created a slideshow presentation of some three dozen of my favorites from the first year.