Robot Comic #4

(newspaper format here.)

Everyone who makes comics seems to do things slightly differently. For me, the great unseen portion of any comic, be it a page from a graphic novel or one of these little robot comics, is the thumbnail sketch. Often these little compositional drawings really are not much bigger than my thumbnail, and often barely legible. Sometimes they even have a liveliness to them that never quite makes it into the finished work.

I used to do my thumbnail sketches on loose sheets of copy paper, but lately I’ve switched over to keeping most of my roughs and thumbs and thoughts in big sketchbooks. Those sheets of copy paper are long gone, but with the sketchbooks I can always go back and revisit the ideas when they were raw, or see pages as they might have been. For me, it’s a better way to work.

On My Desk Today: Foxes and Woolly Worms

Over the last several weeks I’ve been working on a set of illustrations for a book by Betty Hicks called The Worm Whisperer. It’s a sweet story and it’s given me the opportunity to work in pen and ink with a bit of ink wash, which I enjoy. Plus, the story features a fair amount of wildlife, which makes it particularly enjoyable to draw. Here’s a tiny peek:

Robot Comic #3

I probably should have saved that one for Valentines day. (click here for the original “newspaper” format).

For me, one of the most fascinating challenges of cartooning is capturing gesture. Done right you can transmit volumes about a character with only a few simple lines. Often in capturing a good gesture fewer lines are better, but they have to be exactly the right lines or the meaning is lost. One of the reasons I like drawing robots and creatures is that pulling human gestures out of something that resembles a tin can or a squid is sometimes more delightful and surprising than drawing the same gesture in the human figure we know so well.

From the sketchbook:

Always Bring Your Sketchbook

Here's a comic I scribbled in my current sketchbook a week or so ago, forgot about, and rediscovered today:

I’ve posted before about the importance of sketching for the artist -how, like sleep, it is a restorative activity that is sometime tempting to skimp on. But what about the artist’s sketchbook? If sketching is likened to sleeping, then your sketchbook is the bed you sleep on. Do you prefer a tattered bedroll that travels along on your adventures, or a luxurious mountain of comfortable quilts?

There’s definitely something to be said for beautiful leather-bound sketchbooks with quality art paper. They travel well, and when you pull something like that out of your bag you feel every inch the artist. But I tend to be a little precious about the pages, and a little less inclined to spontaneity. For me most of the best ideas come unexpectedly.

Lately I’e been filling up big old Strathmore series 400 sketchpads. At 8X11 inches and 100 sheets I usually feel like I can let myself go a bit, worry less about “wasting” pages and just keep the pen moving and the ideas flowing and see what pops up.

A lot of what pops up is rather silly, but sometimes the silly stuff is the best.

Robot Comic #2

Hey guess what! I drawled up another comic for you guys. Anna’s been calling this guy “Lil’ Robot.” I can’t imagine there’s not already a character out there called Lil’ Robot but I’m not going to google it. Not just yet.

One interesting exercise in writing and art is seeing how many variations you can come up with from a single theme, how many stories you can pull from a single set up, how many times you can revisit a subject before you’ve exhausted it.

I wonder how far I can go with these Lil’ Robot comics...

Robot Comic!

One of the things I’m hoping to do in 2012 is create and post more journal comics and webcomics. With that in mind, here is a little robot comic that I made late last night:

I’m also thinking more about the format of these little webcomics. The vertical/stacked layout seems to work well for posting on a blog, but it requires scrolling. This robot comic was drawn as a traditional horizontal comic strip. (click here to see the original format). And I’m curious... about how many of my readers are webcomic aficionados and, if so, what are your favorites?

Interested in purchasing the original art from this comic? Click here.

LEGENDS OF ZITA THE SPACEGIRL

THIS IS IT!

I can’t hold back any more! Here is the cover for my next graphic novel, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl:



Here’s the full wraparound (which you can click to enlarge):


I’m so excited to share this book with you guys! Unfortunately, it won’t be released until September 4th which seems like an eternity to me, but I noticed that you can already pre order it on Amazon. I wish I could just post the whole thing online but I’d get in huge trouble. We’ll just have to wait it out together.

Oh, and special thanks to the talented Colleen AF Venable for the cover design. The illustration is mine, the text layout, etc is her. Colleen writes comics about mystery solving rodents.

Sleeping Children

Over the weekend Anna refurbished and refinished a new bed for our Julia, who just turned four. It’s a good bed for a four-year-old, a bargain 1940’s bed frame from a flea market, stripped of it’s chipping black paint and coated with a cheery green. I built new slats for the bottom and Anna turned an aged futon cushion into a new mattress (pictures of said bed will be forthcoming on Anna's Blog).

Julia was thrilled with her new bed, and fell into a deep and happy sleep. I took the opportunity to slip in and do a few sketches:





Children present good opportunities for life drawing. When they are awake they are almost always on the move. This is good for learning to catch gestures quickly and with economy of line. Sleeping and reading are about the only activities in which they hold still. My kids most often sleep with a light on and relatively little tossing and turning, which gives the opportunity for slightly more detailed studies.

Links, and a Piggy

Here is a dancing pig drawn by Angelica:



And now some links:

Here is a beautiful interview with Maurice Sendak. What a great, great artist.

And here is an audio interview with writer/director Joss Whedon, who I will love forever because he gave us Firefly.

...And In With the New

For those of us worried about the character of our time and our people, slow conversion to the loveliness of things is the task at hand. So much to do, so many bad ideas, so many neglected fences and overgrown windbreaks, so much overgrazed pasture, so many used and discarded persons. Each idea needs replacing, each fence mending, each windbreak pruning, each pasture fallowing, each person restoring, but we’re in it for the long game, we need to think in terms of centuries, not years; of cathedral (re)building, not petition signing. And the long game ahead needs the conversion of our loves, our advertence to the loveliness of the real.

-from this article on website Front Porch Republic.

Happy New Year my friends. Stay tuned for art, sketches and a sneak-peek at Zita 2!