art – Page 38

Sketchy vs clean when it comes to cartooning (and painting)

I read a great article by cartoonist John P. Weiss called “This is the Secret to Your Creative Success” where he talks about different cartoon styles – sketchy and clean – Krazy Kat vs Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.

He vacillates between the two. I try to do that but sort of fall in between. I want to be sketchy with my cartoons, but I end up being clean, with a bit of sketchyness in them.

The reason it hit home with me is that I’ve been thinking of doing a new style of comic – a single panel but possibly black and white and sort of rough. I still have plans for my comic strip, but this comic panel would be a once-in-a-while thing.

morningjoe

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I sort of did something like that here with Morning Joe. It’s not my usual style. It was almost drawing with my eyes closed. Even the words are sort of sketchy. This HQ Trivia cartoon is rough, too.

cross-fit-sherpa

This Cross Fit comic is so much cleaner. And this is my style that I usually go with. I want to go with even a rougher style than the Morning Joe one but I can’t find any samples because I don’t allow myself to do that.

Here is the article by John, think it’s a great read. I don’t think anyone has ever talked about this before.

Steal like an artist!

I read these two books by Austin Kleon “Steal Like an Artist” and “Show Your Work!” Austin is a writer and artist who lives in Austin, TX. Yes, Austin lives in Austin. I’m still looking for a town named Tom to move to. I know of a Tomball, Texas. I’ve been called Tombo and Tomo, never Tomball though.

They are both quick reads, one book took about half an hour to read, the other about an hour. “Steal like an Artist” basically says that there are no original ideas – everyone steals from each other. Truth be told, I have a couple of comic strips that I like, mostly the drawing styles, and I try to emulate them while designing and creating my new comic strip. I didn’t look at is as stealing, I see it more like inspiration.

In the book, Austin says, “”First you figure out what’s worth stealing, then you move on to the next thing. That’s about all there is to it.”

But isn’t Lana Del Rey having this issue with Radiohead and the “Creep” song? One of my favorites by Radiohead. Lana is being sued by Radiohead for similarities in Lana’s “Get Free” song.

Anyway, I love the Steal book, it has a lot of useful information for artists and creative people. William Ralph Inge said, “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

I’m not for this plagiarism, I am more about getting ideas and studying those who inspire you.

The second book, “Show Your Work!” is all about that – sharing your work – not just the completed piece, but show how it is created, show your concept along the way. Don’t be stingy, reach out to your fans – interact. There’s a lot in the book about social media and how it influences people and puts people together. Austin is keen on Twitter Meetups, I didn’t know that was thing anymore, but I do remember going to a few in the early days.

Austin says that a good idea is to immerse yourself into someone or that inspires you. If it is an artist, learn about them, learn everything. Then find three people that this person loved and learn about them, and so on and so on. I love this idea.

The book gives quite lot of good info on how to get your work out there and how to interact with people and fans who will move you along your way and up the ladder to success. But the object is not to dwell on money or success, that will come with time if you Show Your Work!

The Beaux Arts Festival

I went to Beaux Arts Festival of the Art on Saturday, the yearly show at the University of Miami, now in its 67th year. It’s the first arts festival of our festival season, coming up through the winter will be other yearly events.

We always see people from our town there – showing their art and strolling the festival and we eat everything in site from conch fritters to ice cream bars and everything in between.

Conch fritters.

Women and comics

There’s a new exhibit at the Library of Congress called, “How Women Broke Into the Male-Dominated World of Cartoons and Illustrations.” I would love to see this next time I’m up north.

This is Dale Messick, who created and wrote and drew the Brenda Starr comic strip. I never knew if Dale was a lady or man as I read the strip while growing up. It seems like it was geared toward women, but I think I read all the strips in the New York Daily News when I was a kid.

I love this photo, I always like to see cartoonists in their environment. It’s sort of like seeing behind the scenes of a movie set.

Smithsonian.com has the whole story of the women and cartooning here.

brenda-starr brenda-starr2 brenda-starr3
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I love my new Superman bookend

superman

Is this the coolest thing? It’s my latest acquisition, made by a guy in Israel named Ovi Niv. You can get it here, it’s only $25. It was a gift actually. Love it. superman2 superman3

I love this Cork Bow Tie, too. You can get it here. It’s made of natural sustainable cork.

It’s quite thin made of sustainable material, the bark of the cork oak regenerates within 7-9 years after harvest, and the process extends the life of the trees to over 200 years. It’s hand-made in Portugal. bowtie

How to publish Hal & High Water

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Here is Hal from my new comic strip “Hal & High Water.”

I would like to start publishing in January or February of 2018. I sent in the strip to the five major syndicates and received two rejections.

To be honest, I don’t really feel I need the syndicates to get Hal up and running. I don’t want to be confined to editors or a newspaper schedule and I notice that even on the syndicates’ websites, features don’t always have a large following. So the way to go is to self publish.

And while I intend to publish on social media, mostly Facebook and Instagram, I need a comic-based website to publish to daily. I’m debating on which one and how to go about it. I’m totally confused at this point.

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Art Miami is at an historic site this year

My love of newspapers ironically brought me to The Miami Herald, but not the current location of The Miami Herald and not because I went to visit the newspaper. It so happens that this year, some of the satellite fairs associated with Art Basel Miami are taking place in huge tents on the former Miami Herald site, right on Biscayne Bay.

The Herald moved out to a western suburb of Miami a few years ago and the old site was sold to a casino company, only we don’t have legal casino gambling in Miami, so the site just sits there – prime waterfront property. This year, the owners set up a deal for Art Miami and Context 2017, two of the satellite art fairs to take place on the empty lot.

Cement slabs were placed down and tents went up and it felt nice to visit the old site where I had visited The Miami Herald so many times over the years.

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Museum of Fine Arts Boston

museum6 — The museum is in the Northeastern University area in Boston.

I visited The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last week and it is now on my list of favorite museums, up there with MOMA in New York and the New Orleans Museum of Art, you know, museums that I will always visit when I am in those cities.

The Boston museum is huge, I got lost and it took me a half hour to find my way out! It’s the fourth largest museum in the US with over 450,000 works of art.

There is so much there that it gets overwhelming. You go from huge ancient Egyptian artifacts to French impressionists to Chinese paintings. From King Menkaura and his queen from 2472 BC to Paul Gauguin in 1897 and Renoir in 1883.

Auguste Renoir, Dance at Bougival, 1883

She is cleaning an ancient floor mosaic.

George Booth’s original art

I had seen this story on CBS Sunday Morning about George Booth, the cartoonist, so I headed to the Society of Illustrators in NYC to check out his original cartoon art.

There were a few dozen images on the walls, I do wish they had more in the way of showing his art, like having photos of him working perhaps, more on the tools he used, maybe a set up of his drawing table, etc. But still, it was quite enjoyable. I love his line work and seeing it up close really makes you appreciate it.