Ever watch the news and groan to yourself and lament the state of the world?
Groan no more, take up a pen (pencil, brush, spray can, double edged butterfly knife - your choice) and express your frustration like I tried to do with this one.
During the dog walk I thought about the composition, and tried to nail down the dialogue. You can see the final didn't change much from the original sketch, but little things did. I made the 2nd speaker a woman and changed her hand gesture because women don't point with their thumbs, don'tcha know?! Actually I didn't think such a gesture was very feminine. I spent some time on the two other roughs (with two characters each) because I'm working on a new style (best achieved with the cameraman) and also since I'm not 100% confident drawing on a Cintiq, I figured that good, well thought out roughs would help the inking.
30 - 45 minutes of roughs, and about 3 hours of inking and there you go. Now I need to figure out who to send this to!
I started this one a couple weeks ago, so don't hold our breath for the second page, but I'll get to it soon and don't worry... it'll make sense... well... as much sense as my work generally does! Trust me... it'll work!
Regarding the process, I did a pretty simple drawing on a piece of lined paper (the lines are quite helpful for designing the page and panel layout), then scanned it and inked it.
My concerns were to get the stork looking good. I looked at some photos online and could picture the poses and angles in my head, so he came together pretty easily. Also, I was worried I wouldn't be able to make the city look reasonable or interesting. Too much detail would kill me, so I decided to suggest the buildings with shadow and few simple details. I enjoyed imagining the city, the transit lines, the downtown, the industrial areas etc. Two radio-filled hours later and you can see the result. Take that, Mr. City Planner!
It was then that Christine looked at it and said the baby didn't look like a baby. Or rather, she said "What's that?!" Never a good sign - the drawing should speak for itself.
So, like I said, page 2 will be coming (sometime!) and when it is done, I hope you won't look at it and say "What the?!"
When I was in high school, we played a game called Strategem in which each player acted as a minister in government. One player would demand money to develop the military, another would request funds for agriculture, another would need money to develop resources, another would request funds to keep the country's environment clean and all players would have to agree on how to distribute the money. The goal was to work together to operate the country and make it "successful" - I can't remember what or how success was defined or scored.
Despite the name, it was a simulation that showed how each department had to work together to make the country "work". Most interestingly (to me) was how industry minister and environment minister were often at odds. If industry got too little and the environment got lots, your country would limp along, if most of the money went to industry, the environment would take a hit and in a few rounds your country would crash. Maybe the game needed a tourism minister who could show that a beautiful environment would bring tourist dollars?! Anyway...
When Stephen Harper said what he said (shown in the cartoon above), I was amazed and pleased that he was (I think) honest, but also very disappointed.
I can't do much, but I can voice my frustration and talk about my hopes and dreams. I can speak about what I think is wrong and what I think is important and how I want the world to be. But this isn't just about me. On this voting day in Ontario and everywhere else and every day hereafter, lets start talking about what we want, what's right, what's wrong and how we want OUR world to be.
When I was a kid (and sort of looked nothing like the one on the right in the drawing above), I used to do one drawing on a sketchbook page. Not only was it a waste of paper, but I think it created a bad mentality.
It's was all fine and good if I did a great drawing on a page. The page was done, don't touch it, leave it, keep it perfect. Same thing if I did a bad drawing, but I started a new page out of shame - don't touch it, move on, I never drew that. Worse yet if I did a bunch of skunky drawings in a series. That could wreck a sketchbook. Bad book, bad book!
Recently I've been doing something different. If I do a bad drawing and assuming I've not inked it or can somehow alter it, I do. Often weeks or months later, I erase as much as I can, try to re-imagine the original inspiration and draw on top of the old stuff.
I still tend to do a single drawing on a page and leave it. Take the one above. I did the guy in the center with the child standing on the chair few months ago. I liked it well enough when I did it, but the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. Somehow it's too cartoony and the adult's feet look too heavy or out of proportion. Maybe I didn't like the style. Maybe I thought I was being too profound or like I was trying to say something.
Anyway, last night I returned to this page and did the unthinkable. I drew some new figures on either side of the original ones! They have a similar style an weirdness and I can imagine some more elements - some other people caught in picture frames perhaps. But do you want to know the best part? I've dodged the shame of a lone bad drawing on a page and the page has been rescued! As for the quality and fate of the sketchbook? Well... that's not entirely decided yet!
It's interesting to consider what comes first when doing a cartoon; the drawing or the writing. In this case, the joke as a whole came first to mind - a guy in a bar complaining to the bartender that his wife was having an affair with one of her plants. But after that, what's next? I'm by no means an expert in drawing or writing comics and I bet there are a variety of ways to proceed, but in this case, I did the writing before drawing.
I puzzled over what exactly the poor schlub was going to say. Initially it was:
"What else do you call it? She spends all day with him, mooning over him, saying how beautiful he is, satisfying his every need. She's having a love afair...with Lennart Karl Gottling *sniff*... and he's an ORCHID! *SOB*"
You score two points if you noticed the spelling mistake. I'm a terrible speller which, incidentally, is one of the reasons I don't do hand lettering! Apart from fixing the spelling mistakes, I refined it a bit and decided what words to emphasize with bolding.
When I started the drawing, the first (drawing #1) came out like the final composition, but before I drew anything, I contemplated composing the piece more like what's shown in drawing #2. In my mind I saw the poor guy from the bartender's point of view, perhaps waving the beer stein around as he blubbers, but when I drew it, I didn't find it very interesting. The bar itself could have been indicated by the word "Bar" written backwards behind the complainer as if it was painted on the bar's front window - I've seen that done to good effect - but I didn't feel like doing that.
I wondered about having the schlub reflected in a mirror behind the bar and the bartender, but that gets complicated and time consuming and part of the point of these comics is just to get the things done, as imperfect as they may be, just to get them out.
Drawing #3 shows how I was thinking of showing the schlub's emotional state more, fist to mouth in a cold sweat but drawing didn't work for me. He looks like he's burping or something, not worried. I could have refined it to make it work, but I didn't think this was a profitable direction and it was taking too much time, so I went back to the compostion shown in drawing #1.
I find the bartender's facial expression is one of the best parts of the comic and helps us to understand how to feel about the customer's complaint. Even better, since we don't see the schlub's face, just "hear" his complaint and see his body slumped posture, we imagine his expression, which saves me the hard work of having to draw it!
So what comes after imaging the joke? Perhaps just doing whatever part or piece you can see or figure out, then the next, then the next and then it's done.
