art – Page 37

Single panel vs comic strip

I’ve been asked why I like single panel cartoons rather than comic strips.

I like to read both, I appreciate both, but for my own projects, I prefer the single panel. They both have their pros and cons to me.

A single panel comic might seem harder in theory, as each day is a single gag that has to be funny, where a comic strip can move the story along without being a belly laugh daily because once you know the characters, you don’t have to be funny every day.

With a comic strip or even a panel with the same characters daily, I’ve found that they write themselves after awhile. Their own personalities come out and you can have a character stare out into the audience and get a laugh without even saying anything. But I get bored drawing the same characters and basic situations day after day.

While a single panel may be a bit difficult where you have to come up with different situations and gags daily, I really enjoy that. I like having different characters and different situations; different time periods -future, past, whatever. As for coming up with the gags, I don’t seem to have a problem with that, I guess it’s just how my mind works. I’ll hear something or read something and I then sort of twist it in my mind and get a comic out of it. I don’t do that to get a comic, I just think like that on a daily basis!

The comic strips take me from three to four hours to complete each strip, where a single panel can take from 45 minutes to an hour. I was told one time by a comics editor that I work too fast, he could tell that by looking at my work, not watching me work, but just by looking at the completed comics.

I like the fact that with a single panel comic, it is easily shared on social media. You don’t have to know the characters, you don’t have to know the storyline, it is just a single gag that you might enjoy and share. I’ve had single panel comics shared on social media by thousands of people and liked by thousands, where I don’t know if that would be the case with a strip unless it’s Peanuts or Pearls Before Swine or something like that.

So I hope you’ll be following Tomversation daily when I start publishing my comic starting May 4th. You can follow here online (that’s a different address than this blog, or at Instagram: instagram.com/tomversation.toons/ and Facebook: facebook.com/Tomversation.toons/

Go ahead, follow now so you won’t miss out on premier day!!

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Art, food, music, friends and of course cucumber punch at Gifford Lane

Once a year, in our little village, we have what’s called the Gifford Lane Art Stroll – it’s about art, but it’s also about food, music and friends – it’s an old fashioned block party and it’s a place where everybody knows everybody else.

I took a Freebee over, it’s a little golf cart that drives people around town, and the driver told me, “The whole town is there!” And that’s the way it’s been for 21 years. It’s one of our favorite events of the year.

Money raised through the art, food and cucumber punch – the best part of the event, goes to two local charities.

My friend Dave and his wife Trina, who started the event so long ago, open their house to visitors. The green cucumber punch is ladled out in the kitchen and people stroll out back to their tropical back yard. It’s old Florida.

A funny thing is that Dave calls out to people as they obliviously walk by, “Thank you for coming! Take all the punch you want!” If I said it, that would be sarcastic, but he means it. And that’s part of the charm of the whole thing.

Pauline Goldsmith, a fantastic artist and friend and her friend Beverly Borland.

The tree-lined Gifford Land.

My friend Theresa does lots of exotic art.

The Solar Dogs perform

Lots of art, lots of friends.

Dogs are always a part of the Art Stroll.

My friend Sheri Friedman shows off her custom painted denim.

My friend Eileen Seitz shows off her tropical paintings.

This is the original art for this year’s poster.

Liz Gibson’s painted rocks.

Liz, Louis and Lana.

It’s the event of the season.

The cucumber punch is the hit of the event.

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Another rejection letter and I’m grateful!

So it’s time to get off the pot. I need to make a move.

After 15 years, I ended my daily news blog, which chronicled our local town and I am now fully committed to posting daily comics. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the syndicates do not like Hal and High Water.

Just like Benilda threw Hal out, the syndicates seemed to have thrown the Hal comic strip out. I received rejection letters from most of them and yesterday, Andrews McMeel Syndicate sent me a letter explaining their decision, and I’ll take “no” for an answer, as for the rejections, I believe Charles Schulz received 80 of them!

Here is their response:

Thank you for your submission. I have had a chance to review your comic and, unfortunately, we are not in a position to syndicate your feature idea. Although there are some qualities to your work that I do really enjoy, I feel like there isn’t enough to your concept for us to consider running it. There are a number of other syndicates that do an excellent job and you might consider sending your work to them, too.

Best regards,
Andrews McMeel Syndication Editorial

I am happy about this as I find it tedious to draw the same characters and situations day after day. It’s like painting the same painting over and over day after day, my true love is the single panel cartoon. I’ve always been “drawn” to that.

I did explain that to the editors at Andrews McMeel and they must be wondering why I submitted a comic strip. I’m not quite sure myself. I did 30 of the strips and submitted those 30. Maybe one day I’ll post them here so you can see what they were all about.

I’m not sure what they meant by not having enough of a concept as I explained what I would do with the comic for years in the future. But again, I am happy they declined the feature as I would like to do my Tomversation comic panel, rather than a strip, on my own terms.

So here is the news: Starting May the 4th (“May the 4th be with you” day) Tomversation will start publishing daily. So far I have three venues where I will publish online:
At this website: TomFalco.com
Facebook: facebook.com/tomversation.toons
Instagram: instagram.com/tomversation.toons/

If I decide to add another venue, I’ll let you know here.

There are comics on Instagram and Facebook with millions of fans/followers. That is my goal.

Stay tooned.

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The Lake Worth Street Painting Festival

A few of us went up to Lake Worth Sunday for the Lake Worth Street Painting Festival. It was the 22nd year for this great event. The center of this little town is taken over by artists and the streets become works of art. It starts on Saturday morning and ends Sunday night. There is all this art and lots of food and music.

On Monday, the streets are open and come-what-may, cars, people, pets, they all walk on the art and by the end of the week it’s gone. Ephemeral.

More art shows filling the streets

This past weekend we had a couple of arts festivals in town. They were a lot of fun, I went all three days with different friends and family. There are a lot of art shows this time of year in Miami. We have a couple more coming up, I may go to the Street Painting Festival in Lake Worth next weekend, and then in March there is one final show, which is more of a block party. One of our favorite ones of the year.

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This is from 2008, a friend painted me at a local restaurant. I hadn’t seen this painting since back then, she gave it to me the other day. Love it.

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The rest of these photos are just some of this weekend’s art shows.

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The good people of the world are washing my car

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I have a bad habit – I don’t wash my car. Not sure why, but it’s filthy for months on end. The car wash I used to go to closed, and the guy that used to come to my home stopped coming. But still, my dirty car has always been a thing.

Recently I came downstairs and the car was washed! It was sparkling! My car isn’t new, but when it’s washed it looks like the day I bought it. I’m thinking the maintenance man for our condo building did it because before Christmas he walked me over to my car one day and asked me why it was so filthy. He wrote his name on the dirty trunk hood.

It reminds me of about 17 years ago when I first moved into the building. One of my neighbors, I can’t think of his name now, he moved out about 16 years ago, used to wash my car for me. Only I didn’t know it!

He parked right next to me. The day I moved in he was washing his car, he seemed to love to wash his car, I guess it was a form of relaxation for him.

One day, maybe a year later, he asked me, “How do you like your car? Did you notice how clean it is?” And I said, “Yes, looks good.” And he says, “Well, I washed it!”

“You did?” I asked, and I remember his exact words, “Yes. It was so filthy I couldn’t take it anymore!”

I was a bit dumbfounded and thanked him. He then told me that he had been washing it for the past year every time he washed his car which was once a week at least. He asked, “Didn’t you notice?” I said, “Yes, but I thought the rain did it!” You know, when it rained and I drove in the rain, I thought that cleaned the car!

I don’t think he cared for that response and I don’t think he washed my car again after that. So last week when I saw the car washed it reminded me of that time. I haven’t seen our maintenance man, but I want to thank him and tip him if it was him and perhaps have him do it on a regular basis.

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Boteros everywhere

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I spent last Sunday on Lincoln Road on South Beach where they have a great Fernando Botero exhibit up an down the road. It was interspersed among the monthly antique market.

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There are a lot of Boteros where I live, a couple of restaurants in my neighborhood have big Botero works outside and there is a big park called Fairchild Tropical Gardens where there are Boteros as time all throughout the acreage there. I’ve also seen Chihuly’s there, as well, spread around the park.

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It’s festival season

Art season has started in Miami. For the next few months there are lots of festivals and art shows. I attended two this weekend. Two old ones, they have both been around for years.

art1 — A scene on Ocean Drive, South Beach.

Today I was in South Beach for the Art Deco Festival and yesterday we went to the Beaux Arts Festival in Coral Gables. That festival is close to home, it’s on the University of Miami campus. I’ve been going to both festivals since I’m a kid. Yes, they’ve been around that long. It’s also Regatta season for the next six months, but I don’t really deal with that. I live on the water, but I’m not much of a boater.

art2 — Vintage cars lined Ocean Drive for Art Deco.

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I know a lot of the artists from over the years and from the neighborhood. They tend to go from festival to festival and so do I, so I guess I’ll see a lot of them this coming winter.

My favorite thing is to eat my way through the festivals. I love festival food and other great food and drinks. One of the festivals in February has an English tea room and for all three days of that festival I have tea and scones with friends. Whoever is around, I drag over with me and everyone enjoys that – English tea with scones with jelly and clotted cream! I go for three days because the festival is right in my neighborhood and it’s easy to just stay put for the weekend rather than deal with the traffic in and out of town. I’ll post pictures of that next month.

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Can a comic strip have seasons?

I’m working on my comic strip Hal and High Water, and hopefully will start publishing daily, but I have an idea that I’ve been considering. And that’s taking breaks, sort of having seasons, with breaks in between.

I know, I didn’t even start yet and I’m talking about taking a break! But listen, seriously. What I mean is, cartoonists work 365 days a year, they never stop, they never get vacations and if they do they have to build up that time by working extra hard to get a backlog of comics so that they can take time off. But what if the comic ran for a month or two or three and then there was a break, sort of like a tv show. The comic runs, ends with a cliffhanger, takes a month off, and then comes back for a new “season.”

A webcomic can do that very easily not so much a newspaper comic. But why not?

What if a newspaper comic ran for three months, then took time off and in that time another comic ran? What if three or four comics took up one space in the newspaper – sort of like the old days with tv, when a show would take the summer off and there would be a summer replacement. Years ago, that was the norm on tv and these last few years it’s been like that where there are not many reruns, other shows take up the time slot and there are usually three tv seasons now in a year.

So a newspaper comic would run a few months, maybe three months or six months, then take a break and in that three or six months another comic would run, then perhaps another comic or the original comic would come back, but they would run on some sort of schedule.

I’m thinking of doing that with Hal and High Water as a webcomic – running it for a period of time and then taking a short period of time off. Hopefully the readers will be there upon its return, but a good cliffhanger may be needed for that – sort of like a “Who shot JR?” cliffhanger.

I had written once about switching up my own comics over the year – run a panel cartoon for a few months, then a comic strip, then something else, but that would defeat the purpose of having time off. It would allow me to publish my different ideas and features over time, but it would not give me time off.

So I’m toying with the idea of taking breaks during the year – yes, even before I started publishing.

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