I’ve been thinking of going to Paris. And Italy. But this is a perfect reason to visit Paris.
I saw this report on CBS Sunday Morning about Vincent Van Gogh and a new digital feature about him and his art.
The Musee D’Orsay in Paris has a new exhibit of Van Gogh called, “Hello Vincent.” Anyone can go up and ask Vincent anything they would like to know about him.
His replies and his image are AI generated and the answers come from the over 900 letters he wrote in his life, where he told (in the letters) about everything from his health, personal life and art. You just walk up and ask him anything, and he’ll look at you and answer.
Seth Doane (and Vincent) on CBS Sunday Morning.
It works along with the art because people ask serious questions of Vincent; things that they really want to know about.
Maybe the exhibit will travel to the U.S. and I won’t have to go to Paris, although I still want to go to Paris. And Italy.
Digital Vincent Van Gogh
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Some people call my cartoons memes. I don’t know why, and I’m not crazy about that, but I have been known to use #meme as a hashtag at times. But it’s a comic or cartoon. Not a meme.
I also have been described as having an “old school” or “old fashioned” style of cartooning. It’s called drawing, not A.I.ing or computer generation. I guess the future is that – A.I. generated or some sort of electronic design. Like an NFT-type image.
Then there are the people who don’t get some of the cartoons. That’s a whole different category. But I do find that different gags don’t work in different parts of the world, even if we speak the same language , things come across different or confusing at times.
I mentioned in a previous post that my method was called drawing in an “exposition box.” I looked exposition box up and it says: “An explosion box is an origami box that pops open and “explodes” as soon as the recipient takes the top off, revealingpictures, messages, and even gifts inside. It’s a bigger version of our Explosion Cards project.”
I hardly think I fit into that category.
Must we label it? If so, it’s a cartoon or a comic or a comic panel or a comic strip. That’s it. People used to call online comics “online comics,” now they are just “comics.” But there are categories for them when it comes to awards. The National Cartoonist Society Ruben Awards (like the Oscars for cartoonists) has categories like, “newspaper strip,” “newspaper panel,” “online long form,” “online short form,” “gag cartoon,” and so on.
The gag cartoon is a panel cartoon like mine. Online long form can be a comic strip or longer and online short form is usually a single panel like mine.
Categories and labels all for basically the same thing.
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I’m sure you saw this in the news. A couple of activists threw soup on the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in Paris over the weekend.
“What is more important?” The one activist asked the shouting crowd. “Art or healthy sustainable food?”
The protest had something to do with France breaking its climate commitments and they want France to give people access to more healthy foods. I’m sure it was a good cause, but it’s a case of alienating the people who are on your side by doing something stupid to bring attention to the cause.
Warhol’s soup cans at MOMA.
I’m not sure how this involved trying to destroy the Mona Lisa, luckily she is covered with glass. But wouldn’t it make more sense throwing the soup on Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can Art? Which I hope never ever happens. I’m just sayin’.
Showing Starry Night my t-shirt.
I remember the first time I saw Starry Night, my favorite painting, so many years ago. It wasn’t covered in glass, as it is now. You could literally put your face right up to it. Luckily it’s protected with glass now.
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CBS Sunday Morning did a profile on Sharon Stone, the actress. But it was all about her artwork. She’s a painter/artist.
I love her work, some of it is on display in a gallery in Greenwich, CT these days, which I would love to see. Maybe when the weather gets warmer I’ll check it out.
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This Tomversation cartoon ran today. It started out as a similar image which was almost identical to a New Yorker cartoon by Sara Lautman, which you can see here.
Sara’s excellent idea.
I drew the original cartoon last week, thinking it was a funny image, with the jack-o-lantern smiling with big white teeth, but I couldn’t think of a gag. So it just sat for a few days and then I came up with the candy corn teeth and I played around with that, making various images.
Sara came up with an excellent gag. You can see my original smiling one below without any text, since I couldn’t think of anything funny. I just thought it was never done before – a smiling, big toothed jack-o-lantern.
My smiling jack
I hate when similar ideas happen regarding cartoons, which is quite often. It always looks as if one person got the idea from the other. Great minds . . .
Here are a few more of my candy corn variations without the text. There are more, too, believe it or not.
I’m glad I went with the top one. It fits in with the Halloween theme this week, perfectly.
A couple more of my candy corn ideas.
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The major hit was in Australia, where so many popular strips, including the 100 year old Ginger Meggs was dropped by hundreds of newspapers, all owned by Rupert Murdoch and Nine Entertainment – a problem and monopoly right there. By the way, Murdoch also owns the NY Post. I guess he just doesn’t like comic strips.
He is replacing them or enhancing puzzles and games in the newspapers rather than print the comics.
Ginger Meggs is printed on GoComics daily, and I like some of the others that were dropped, which, like Ginger, you can read online now.
Swamp cartoon by Gary Clark
Swamp by Gary Clark is a favorite of mine – when it would pop up online somewhere. You can read that online at swamp.com.au and Snake by Allan Salisbury can be seen here: snakecartoons.com/snake.htm.
I read the comics online at various sites – GoComics, Comics Kingdom and other websites and I think the majority of readers do that these days.
After so many years of trying to be syndicated in newspapers, I don’t think that’s where I want to be now. For one thing, I think it’s a precarious place to be to make a living. Every day you may be losing clients (and money), not gaining new ones and it seems that the readers are mostly online anyway.
But I do agree that newspapers should carry cartoons and comics pages for those that read them there. It’s part of life, it’s been part of all of our lives – everyone that is alive today has lived with comic strips and panels as part of their daily newspaper. As long as the newspapers are still printed and published, why not include them? They are pop culture, part of everyday life.
Snake cartoon by Allan Salisbury
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It was raining Saturday, so I headed to the MET Museum, which I probably would have done even if it was sunny. But since it was raining, it seemed like the whole city showed up, The lines to get in were endless. But since I trudged up there via subway and walked around in the rain a bit to get there, I stayed.
I did miss a couple of cool things which is weird because I’m usually in the right place at the right time, but in these two instances I was not where I should have been.
The first was a wedding proposal. I heard a loud applause in the next gallery and when I walked over, it saw that a guy proposed to a girl. I missed it, I only caught the applause and happiness part.
Then I walked into the Temple of Dendur area of the MET and I just missed a ballet performance, right up near the temple building.
Otherwise it was maddening with all the people there, but it was more fun than being out in the rain.
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It’s been a minute since I did a 10 With Tom interview, but I’m back. There’s a comic strip I really like and I wanted to find out about the cartoonist, Jesse Atwell, and his strip TEX.
Eight-year-old TEX was “born” on GoComics.com a year ago.
After playing with various other ideas, including a single panel cartoon, Jesse’s TEX cartoon came to be. This year the strip was nominated for the National Cartoonists Society’s cartoon of the year in the online short form comic strip category.
I love the drawing style and the coloring technique.
This cartoon is a remake of one I did in the 1980s. I found it along with my school stuff.
I’ve been cleaning out my old room at the house I grew up in and I found lots of old cartoons and stuff; things I created so long ago.
I had one cartoon called “Opal” and this witch cartoon above, is a take-off on the Opal cartoon here.
I used to draw a lot of different comic strips with different characters and themes.
I also found a big batch of rejection letters from syndicates. Not sure why I saved those, but they are interesting to read when they have little notes attached, you know, they aren’t just form letters.
I didn’t submit most of the work I did, I just drew and drew without a plan in mind. My issue was that I didn’t set a date or have a plan. I know now to set a date to submit work. Have a plan in mind, write it down, work toward that goal and then send the work in on said date. Maybe have a date to complete writing the series, then a date to draw everything out, maybe a separate time to color them and then finally the submission date.
Of course those rejection letters will come, but at least the work was submitted.
I once sold advertising for a newspaper. My boss used to say, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” But also, it goes without saying, “If you don’t submit your work, you don’t have a chance of being published.”
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My parents passed away – my Dad last September and my Mom the October before that. The house is still sitting as it was left. I’m not sure what it taking us so long to clean it out. Too many memories maybe, maybe too big of a job. There is 50 years worth of stuff in that house. 50 years this month.
I decided to start going a couple of days a week and try to make a dent. I started with my old room. I’m amazed that so much of my old art from when I was a kid and also from high school and college is still there. Not that anyone would dispose of it, but 30 years ago, Hurricane Andrew struck and the house was inundated with water. There was so much water in the house that the refrigerator was on its side. It was lifted up and thrown over! I guess maybe four feet of water or more was in the house.
The art was on the top shelf of the closet, I’m luckily it survived. Everything below that is gone now, destroyed in the flood.
There were piles and piles of large pads full of cartoons and comic strips I drew and also art from high school and college classes.
Yes, we had nude models in college for figure drawing. I guess we got used to it after the first couple of times.
It’s funny, but I remember this guy’s face from so many years ago. I know, he was naked, but it’s his face I remember. For some reason, it had a familiar look, almost like a famous person or so, so when I look at this I can almost remember him.
Here’s a more detailed figure. These nudes are from college, But one image from high school sticks out. We had to draw a pair of sneakers that were on the table and I remember doing that. I remember how happy I was with the results. I guess I’ll find that in the pile of art I now have.
Not sure who this is, but I don’t remember her being a model. Maybe it was from a book or magazine.
I saw this photo of the Obamas on my mother’s dresser. I don’t remember ever seeing it before.
When I picked it up and read it, I see she must have donated to them or his campaign or something. I was living out of the house by then so I guess I never saw this and she never mentioned it.
My mom loved the Obamas, so did my dad, I was happy to see that she kept the image along with family photos on/in the mirror like people do.
My mom gave to all sorts of charities, she always did. I’m glad to see she donated to political campaigns, too.
One sad thing about the way my parents passed away was that they left the house and didn’t come back in the end. And things are left as if they just walked out of the room.
This looks like my dad’s eyeglasses, just sitting on the side of the bed.
In the kitchen, next to the sink there is a towel and there are two spoons on it, looking as if they were washed and placed there to dry. Just like it was yesterday.
My dad used the dining room table as a desk. All of his papers are there – just as he left them. A pen sits on the pile, just as if he put it down and walked out of the room for a second.
All this reminds me of famous houses I’ve visited – the Roosevelts, Hemmingway, etc. Their personal papers and things were just sitting there, although they were probably set up and placed there. But it gives the illusion that they just walked out of the room for a second. In these cases at my parents’ house, they were really just left as I see them now.
I spoke to one of my brothers. We may start going through the house next weekend, to just start packing things up. We’ll do it as a group to make it go faster, I guess. We grew up up there. It won’t be easy.
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