Short Hand Of Truth

I have heard it said that in order for there to be the most truth in a piece of art, you have to extract the most details.  That is why fairytales, Bible stories, classic art, political cartoons, pop songs, dance moves, plays, and mainstream movies hold such sway over the culture. That is not to say that all of the above always maintain the integrity of their message, but that they are a superior form to delivering one in some form or fashion.

Sure the above piece is a ridiculous scenario. Most editorial or political or op-ed comics are. Whether it's Obama as a mere stick figure or Bush as a monkey, it is a short hand for getting the point across. Whenever necessary the artist must practice this short hand.

Some of the basic components of a visual short hand that I have discovered are as follows:
1. On objects and products leave out as many unnecessary details as possible
2. Choose recognizable objects
3. Create easy repeatable characters (made of simple shapes)
4. If you're working with text, make it short and to the point as much as possible
5. Compose, so that your eye follows the action
6. Keep your style secondary to the message
7. Focus on rendering accurate human expressions on your characters

As always, I encourage my readers to explore and find more ways to deliver the message with simplicity and directness. Let me know if you have some things that work for you. I will be glad to talk about it here.

The First Mile

As the sun rises, you check off your first two items in preparation for your big race: 1. Appropriate gear: running shoes and a light-weight tank top and short shorts 2. Stretches. Then, you start to mentally prepare for the race ahead. In the 5K race (3.1 miles) which is a typical cross-country course, you begin to think about your tactics for competing in the race. With your art job or assignment you begin to think about the stages it will take to complete your project. What are the tactics of runners that will help you win/finish your art project successfully?

Frame Of Mind.
There are always good ways to run your race and bad ways to run it. You want to consider your options before you put your foot on the start line. I was always a slow runner. I am naturally contemplative. I like to think a lot. I was never the fast one, but I always finished the race running. I won a couple of ribbons in competitions, but mostly I just ran. That was because I could focus on the finish line.



Run In Stretches.
What I recommend is what I learned from those cross country days--consider the race as a whole. You need to keep your legs moving and your mind on the race. You need to consider each mile completed as a separate achievement. Gradually increase your speed as you go. Do not become stagnant in your competition. Eventually push yourself to your top speed at the end.

The Long-Distance Commitment.
What I do not recommend is darting off the start line at 100 yard dash speed. I know runners from my cross country years in high school who completely missed the point of running a race. They completely overlooked the fact that foot races are a long-distance commitment. When the gun goes off they would sprint off the line for the first mile. Often these guys were more fit than me. They were often taller and thinner. In my opinion, better equipped than myself to run these long distances. These "jack rabbits" as we called them may have put a good scare on the competition, initially, but then they burned out quick. What good is that in a long distance race?

Conclusion.
Consider your art project as a long-distance race. Some may in fact be very short term in the scope of your life, but art is a discipline like any other sport. I am recommending that you look at your project in stages or in stretches. Think through and prioritize your process in a plan (a later post). You want to keep your project moving. Consider the pace that you need to keep to be strong in every stretch of the race. There will be times that you can relax your pace, but there will also be times to surge ahead. The best tact that I have learned is to pick short goals and to seek to surpass them quickly. You are in a race, so you can't slow down. Keep this in mind as you figure out how to win your prize for finishing your art project.

Puzzled

I have a weakness for good science fiction and fantasy illustration. You could say it is a driving force that keeps me creating. Seeing fantastic things that never existed or imagining things that may someday exist is very compelling.This blog entry is connected to IllustrationFriday.com.

This is your introduction into my love for illustration. Occasionally I have shown you my quick sketches or sketch book entries. This is actually the first time I have brought up my illustration background in this blog. It is really no different than a watercolor painting, a comic strip, or even a one panel humor bit. All employ my creativity, but engage me in different ways. I will share with you some brief insights into what illustration is about. Perhaps you can use this knowledge when you create as well.

Illustration Is Art.
Much to my dismay many people want to compare the proper fine art to that of commercial art. Both have the same agenda, to make money for the creator. The only difference is the way they are sold. Sometimes the "fine artist" has less freedom than the illustrator. It all depends on intent.

Illustration Is About The Story.
Illustration on its own may or may not communicate the message it is intended to share with the world. With the back story, illustration will thrive. It is about the narrative.

Illustration Is Found Outside of Commercial Art.
You could say that classic art, especially oil paintings and sculpture, are examples of illustration. They fit the narrative mold. Many folk artists who only created art because it was an itch they had to scratch also narrated stories through their art.

Illustration Has a Decipherable Message.
Unlike conceptual art of the modern and post-modern era, illustration has one purpose alone--the message. If it is not communicated clearly, it may still be art, but it is not an illustration.  

Illustration Has a Diversity of Styles.
There is no set style to illustration. It has changed and grown over the years. Materials have changed along with technology that allows you to make sleeker art, but the media was never the focus. The message was central.

Illustration Has a Diversity of Applications.
Illustration as I said above can be found outside of commercial art. It is also applied to everything from movie animatics to comic strips to how-to books and even toys. As an artform illustration is very flexible.

Conclusion.
Though far from exhaustive, this list above represents the major points on what illustration is about. Perhaps when you look at a book cover or Greek statue or any other message baring image you will think differently about what the story is behind it.

Stay Young...FOREVER!

It took a second look at the shelf to understand it. My hands had actually shelved these books before without my brain connecting the fact that the titles were just stupid. Because they were so ridiculous I can't remember their titles specifically. But they all wanted to say this: "Stay Young, Forever" and they meant it.

What Are We Looking For?
Why o why, would you buy that nonsense? I don't know for sure, but it has to be a strange sickness that has made us believe this junk. Its just sad.

But maybe this thing we are looking for is what we said before, but it is good...staying young, forever. But maybe we really have it backward. Those words don't say what I want them to mean. So, I will show you what I mean. First, I will show you a simple comic. Then, I will explain it. See if you can follow...

I Thought Like A Child.
My first day of junior high I was so happy about the sports that I could soon play all that year that I carried home my duffel bag full of my text books for every class. As a preteen I was more happy about about getting in shape that this task seemed more important than even what people thought of me. I was just looking to succeed. Those heavy books were at least half my weight. Why ride the bus when I could get a work out? My creativity endured without criticism or skepticism. I was unleashed from material expectation. I had physical level of endurance I crave now, but lacked discipline and direction.

Crazy? Maybe, so.

That type of excitement lasted until college. Until I faced the big world problems. I was my own man.

Inject cynicism.

Grow Up, Already.
I hit the school of hard knocks hard. From the beginning of college to my late 20's I was cynical about authority, the system, and pretty insecure myself.Much worse than now. I was looking for a chance to show the world that I was something special, all by myself.  I was miserable because I never thought I could measure up. As one who follows Jesus, I doubted God's blessings in my life. Until, the day I started dealing with my problems. I had carried around a satchel, then as I had carried around that duffel bag before. It was full of all of my ridiculous priorities. And few of them were God's. In a sense this burden was worse than the weight I carried around in junior high and I did so for nearly 10 years. I missed it. I had lost myself. I thought I was mature. My creativity was mostly watered down. I allowed myself to waste away for some unknown reason. Until the day I got an affirmation on my calling. My only benefit was my outward endurance and ability to work hard. This rarely helped me, because I did not have the smarts to match.

Inject grace.

Start At The Beginning.
Much has changed over the last 4+ years. On the day that a friend offered me grace for my immature behavior, I started to begin again. I slowly returned. Older, yes, but my goals are much clearer. These days my fervor for creativity is much stronger. Now, I feel myself physically wasting away. My spirit is much more agile. I willfully carry a ridiculous amount of art supplies in my new satchel to be prepared for art at any moment. Where these past opportunities only built my cynicism, I now use them to build character or create art. They fuel my imagination. Essentially the benefit of returning to my youthful ways is that every second has significance. Though, I did not get here on my own. By investing more in my relationship with Jesus, the change happened to me. I did not create it. More adequately I gave up and just trusted.

Conclusion.
So, maybe we do have it backward. We are looking for physical youth and beauty that will not last. My physical condition has deteriorated, but my spirit has more endurance. The lesson I learned over the last 31 years is that growth is not about outward appearance, but an inward attitude. Youth is a condition of the heart. You can stay young if you put your trust in the right person, Jesus. And out of that ambition and creativity will flow like a mountain spring. Refusing the nonsense that society expects of you is only the first step. After that you have to be willing throw off the expectations you put on yourself and let God do His work. That is where your best creativity will come from.

What are you looking for? Remember and reach back to what drove you to be creative in the first place and reach up to the Lord and Savior of the universe. He will guide you in that. Look for ways to keep that momentum going.

Advocate

Creative habits may be the hardest kinds of habits to practice. It seems like creative types are either all in or all out. You could hit a wall at a moment's notice. Or you could have so many ideas that you run out of sketch paper, canvas, wall space, time, and energy.


I don't let these fears scare me. I am a cartoonist Doggone It!

Creative ideas swirl all around us every day, all day. As I have said before Life does precede Art.  I try not to discriminate which days I should create and which I should not. But it is a concerted effort of mine to rest on Sundays. At which times I could either let my creativity stay latent or just flow with what God is doing. From the midst of notes I practice my illustrative skills. The mix of words and images mustered on the spot. Cartoons for the sake of demonstration of a point or exempla. If there is anything else cartoons are better suited, let me know. For me, sermon notes take the cake.

View my pages here and see if you can find patterns and repetition. I do advocate the Holy Bible as the true word of God. His love story to His creation, specifically us. Take notes at a church service or presentation and see what images you can create along side the words to enhance your memory of it. Send me a link to your website or blog if you have posted it.

What Do Cartoonists Eat?

Many times I bring you the facts of creating and the process of thinking about creating, but today I thought I would change it up and bring you facts about the sustenance of a creative. If you can say that 10 times fast I'll give you a prize!

Usually whats eating a cartoonist is eating him because he hasn't eaten or slept (another blog post). Creative blocks are created by stress, hunger, and lack of sleep. Contrary to popular belief, cartoonists are not robots. But sometimes we think we are. So I understand the misconception.

When cartoonists are not eaten by anxiety and are apt to create a lot, what do they eat? No there isn't magic dust in our Cheerios or lightning in our mashed potatoes. We often eat what others eat. I drew this diagram the other day to demonstrate my point. I'll expound a little below, because I know that quick sketches are sometimes hard to read. Enjoy!

This isn't a daily routine for me, but the process of deciding what to eat usually is. I get off my part-time job after midday most days and I am usually revved up to create. After a couple of years without much money and figuring that eating out added up in the wallet and in the waist, I started going back to what I knew worked as a child. I had to find a fast healthy way to get the nutritional value I needed to create for about 4 hours (usually in the afternoon).

Recently I reverted to cold-cut sandwiches and soup. One, they are tasty if you know how to prepare them. Two, they are fast or require little preparation (a benefit for anyone on a time crunch). Three, little clean-up, little mess.

My sandwich is usually composed of wheat bread toast, cold cut turkey/ham, lettuce, onion, Thousand Island dressing, pickles, and sometimes other herbs or random things on hand. Flavor makes all the difference. No flavor, I won't eat it. When I have time I add extra veggies as a side, french fries, or rolls (something quick and hot). I drink water most of the time, but the Bolthouse smoothies are great when they're on sale. I eat a dessert item if I have it or have made it recently.

What time saving tips do you have concerning meals in the midst of a busy creative schedule?

A Firmer Resolution And Other Base Facts

I look across my life and see many failed attempts at following through on resolutions and vows of various types. As an adult, I am no longer surprised by this. Each year that passes is a new understanding of my personal failures. I am sure that most people, like myself, come to this realization once they have left the comfort of their parent's home. I am sure that some realize much earlier than others.

The encouraging thing about failing at resolutions and goals in particular is that you learn to do them the right way. Each time you fail it is important to pick up and go at it again. I learned some very important tips concerning personal growth by using measurable goal-making from Chris Oatley's Artcast just this last week. You can click on this link to hear it: Artistic Growth Is Not A Goal...

The hard part about living your life, especially to be excellent in every area you can be, is that nothing really stays the same. The only exception is God and His goodness. We constantly have to be on our guard concerning everyday challenges. Is there a set way to do a task or requirement? Some times there is, but rarely. Life consists of improvisation in repition. You can do it well, if you have done something like it before. But do not count on it working exactly the same way. So, life feeds art. It gives us due inspiration, because like life, art is a continuous process of change and growth.

Don't give up on your goals! Firmly stand in the gap between your starting point and your goal. Be excellent in your career pursuits, your family life, and hold high the tenets of doing right by others in as many ways as you can! Stay the course, because none of us have it easy and from time to time we can learn from each other's failures.

7 Day Work Week

Hopefully, I won't have to do this again. It's easy to enter the week optimistically, but dreadful if you think about the fact that you have no weekend. I wouldn't recommend this lifestyle to anyone.

Storytime

Every year the family gets together en mass to celebrate America's first Thanksgiving. We have built the tradition over the years of meeting at a certain relative's house and being fed and entertained in a certain way.

Some years we eat and watch football and then go for walks, because we ate too much. Some years we break out the ping pong tables and try to whip each other at bouncing a highly resilient plastic ball over a faux tennis court painted on a wooden table top.

But for as many years as I can remember, we have always played one game in particular, Dirty Bingo. This is a family-fun game that is a mix of a white elephant gift exchange and taking advantage of the opportunity to give your beloved relatives a hard time.

Often this game is a riot for younger children in the family, because the ordeal gives them an advantage over adults. Which they rarely have.  Each year we play we wrap up the most nefarious object we can find lying around our houses taking up room we can no longer spare. We have seen the range in our family. Everything from a brick, to soap, to toys, candy, and probably any other assortment of mischievous or endearing gifts.

It would not be Dirty Bingo without the classic bingo set. It's like playing the lottery. As the game caller you turn the hand crank of the ball, it magically produces a number and letter combination while churning and mixing variable combinations. At that critical moment you yell out the number and letter. If you want to have fun with it, you can include a bad pun when number and letter. I drew this to remember what fun it is to participate in this game. And of course I am making fun of the use of the ball, but one wonders what it would be used for during the rest of the year.

I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving. I look forward to hearing how you spend this season with family and creatively.

PEOPLE ARE...

Never mind the details. Don't waste your time with elaborate props. Get your characters on the page and have them interact. Actions do speak louder than words in visual media. And actions and reactions were divinely primed for use specifically in comics.

My friend Casey McBride and I tried all sorts of variations on Fill-in-the-blanks collaborations. Comic creators call this Comic Jamming. Late nights helped keep the process interesting. Casey is a trained animator and I am a trained as an illustrator. This activity always kept us entertained.You can see what he does by following this link: McBrideCasey.com.

Try this at home when you are stumped for an idea. Take 2 characters and put them side by side in 4 panels. Put different expressions on their faces and then go back and try to put words in the bubbles that make sense with the random expressions you chose. Then try it with another friend and pass it off to them to try. After that add as many people as you can. You will be surprised at the variety of original ideas you come up with.

Let me know what you come up with and I may link it to my blog.

The High Knight

As the storyteller you have a great capacity to invent. Given a protagonist and a conflict a great deal of interesting topics can arise between the beginning and the end.

What fire sparks your imagination? What sort of peril would this knight save a fair damsel from? Would he fight dragons or does he just tell the narrator stories as he sits on the mantel on cold rainy nights?

Take a couple of minutes and view the full piece on my fine art site: "The High Knight". Fill your imagination with what if's. Let me know what you came up with.

V Is For Verone: Part 2

Instead of giving up he strived one more time to make eye contact with someone, anyone. There huddled in the inner ring was the prettiest little girl he had ever seen. She looked up and in the darkness her eyes sparkled. A spot of passion reflected from the meager fire. Her eyes read him from toe to head.

“There is a place for you by the fire.” She murmured, and then she opened up a her blanket to reveal a vest.

Then the circle broke for him to come through. As the boy reached the far end where a path formed, he went to sit next to her.

“Who are you?” She asked.

“I-I am Verone, a Romani like you.”

“Well then, this vest was meant for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You see the 'V' stitched into the two portions in the front of the vest and the 'V's' making the Romani wheel on the back.”

“Yes.”

“I stitched this for my father last summer.”

“Why are you giving it to me? Where is he?”

“He died tragically a year ago, about this time.”Verone was dumbfounded. She smiled gingerly and gently handed it to him.

“His name was Viktor. And I am finished with my mourning just today at breakfast. I was told that I must find another man to fill his vest.”

“I am not a man. This vest is for a big man. Maybe better suited for a bear...I don't know.”

She giggled and then responded,“Do not worry Verone, you will one day grow into this.”

The fire died by early morning and the chill returned. Verone saw that the clan had already moved on and he was the only one left in the cave. The extra large vest was still around him. He was huddled into it. Today, the young thief had to reach his clan. He hastily jumped up with the vest still around him. He looked about the cave for anyone or any sign of the little girl, then Verone climbed back up through the crevice. He ran down the pass.

What would his future be, he thought? Then, he passed a small camp site. The hikers had their bag on mounted on a tree. Verone walked slowly up to the bag and grabbed some food out of it. The boy ate some of the bread and fruit and cold meat as he hurried to tell his family about his wonderful blessing.

V Is For Verone: Part 1

Who is Verone and where did he come from? And why does he have that "V" on his vest? In this two part story I present a little back story to "The Course".

As the cold winter wind broke through the mountains in some unnamed highlands of Eastern Europe a young gypsy thief ran and took refuge under the cliff. His clan had moved on a day ahead and he was seeking to survive.  Little did he know, there was a gypsy clan who had already taken refuge in the cave. He could smell the cooking stew, probably made from a mountain goat or some poor farmers stray cow.

The boy entered the narrow passage way under the overhang. There before him were several small families hunched together around several fires. They barely acknowledged him as he came down the crevice through an awkward rock path. The boy circled the first fire and no one made eye contact. They were concentrating too much on being warm or they just didn't care. He circled the second one and no one even moved. At the third fire the the boy was desperate. If he could not find solace here he would likely freeze to death if he tried to go on. Though, the stew smelled heavenly, he could endure the hunger. He had done that before. It was warmth and rest he longed for.

Value Composition

Part of the process of producing a comic page is laying it out. Almost all professional comic book artists use some method of figuring out where all of their dark and light areas go on the page before applying any ink or drawing it up.

After realizing that I had not planned my inking out very well a friend suggested this method of blocking in the dark and light values before going to ink. I have chosen the traditional inking method entailing brush and dip pens, because the blacks are much more potent, permanent, and versatile than using technical pens, ball point pens, and Adobe programs.

My method of blocking in value is to scan in the page in its penciled state, scale it down to the actual page size, print it on gray paper, then use black and white pastel to find the best possible scenario for the values of the page. I have to seriously consider the light source when I do this. Typically when you are working with just lines it is more difficult to consider some of these things ahead of time. Back tracking with this method has helped me think ahead on future pages.

Arapad character

This is the completed, inked, and colored version of my main character, Teleki's best friend, Arapad. More to come.