Adam Cadwell

I meant to post this last week, but forgotted. The excellent Adam Cadwell of Manchester Comix Collective joined me for one of my sessions at Manchester Art Gallery, then drew this. On top of being very talented, Adam also put a lot of energy into organising Drink 'n' Draw events and other stuff, as well as maintaining the site for the MCC.
Thanks Adam!

5.5 Black & White contrast version two

I've become tired of doing number 4 exercise - Foreground, Midground & Background - some kids get loads from it, but it just feels too prescriptive, with me telling them what to do over and over. Maybe if I had a group for more than a few days I'd do it, but if I'm teaching Charlie Brown style characters I should keep backgrounds on the same level -

(I've been re-reading - for the 3rd time - Scott McCloud's excellent Making Comics, and it's making me rethink a lot of things. I hope he doesn't mind me posting this excerpt - it's for educational purposes after all).

This means exercise 5, which followed on from 4 using the same drawing has to change. This newer version is very quick and seems effective so far, though probably needs backing up with reminders when asking them to produce any kind of 'finished' work.

The handout explains itself -

I hold it up and ask the person in the furthest corner if it's legible from over there, and how we might go about strengthening the image. They've all got fine and broad black felts, so I give them maybe 5 minutes to see what they can do with it.
One of the nice things is how different they all come out -




Some even use the felts to emphasise certain words in the speech bubbles, which is very smart.
We can hold these up and see how we've emboldened the simple linedrawing, making it more graphic and readable. I'll mention, while holding their work as far away as possible, how the majority of comic artists work much larger than the final reproduced size, and so need to be aware of how to use contrast in an effective way. And I'll show them -

Schulz Peanuts - this sillouetting of characters is common in newspaper strips just to vary the look of the panels

Satrapi Persepolis - it doesn't have to be super-detailed crosshatching - just simple shapes add so much clarity and life.

Or maybe it's just one detail that the artist (Charles Addams here) wants to draw our attention to. I always ask if anyone know what Addams is most famous for -

- they know the films of course but have no idea The Addams Family started out in gag cartoons so long ago. Again, black and white inkwash adds shape, weight and visual interest.


Here in a large one-panel Terry and The Pirates daily, Milton Caniff uses the large shadow to pick out the figures, as well as encompass them in a sombre mood.

Bill Knapp (in Pekar's American Splendor) skillfully recreates the particular atmosphere of driving at night with detailed hatching and large blocks of shadow.

Charles Burns has mastered the inkbrush, with Black Hole almost vibrating with it's vivid, startling images -

sometimes it feels like he's started out with a black sheet and drawn with white ink.


With lino or woodcuts like this from Masereel's silent album The City, that's essentially what happens - the white areas have been cut away from the black block, giving a very specific feeling and boldness.

And often it comes down to simple factors like expense - the difference between the cost of printing full colour, black and white, or like Clowes' Ghost World here, the addition of one extra spot colour.

I like to tell a group that full colour can often be amazing, but once you master B&W you may find that's all you need to create the visual effect you need. Manga readers seem more than happy reading stories without colour, though for some reason we seem to think kids comics need to be bright and fully coloured.

2.5 - Blind Animals

This quick and fun drawing game was inspired by Mark Stafford, and I only tried it very recently with kids and it was a great success. I've number this session 2.5 as I'm slipping it into my regular teaching sequence between 2- Draw Yourself and 3- 2 Card Characters. It's a great one for loosening up or just filling 5 minutes, but also makes an important point.

It's very simple - everyone has 10 seconds to draw a pig with their eyes closed. No peeking. The whole pig, not just the face. Use the thick black felt tips rather than pencils, as we are being bold with this. Amazingly -

-everyone's comes out looking like a pig, (even if they've all not used the requested tool). A lot of kids wouldn't have even made a mark on their paper if asked to do it looking, as they'd be hesitating, unsure or reluctant to commit to the first lines.
On the other side of the sheet, we repeat the exercise, but this time chose your own animal for everyone on your table to guess -

Remarkably everyone's drawings are identifiable again! I think the penguin artist might've peeked though.
I ask them how come everyone can draw quickly, confidently and competently - with their eyes closed? We realise that something has happened (between the brain and the hand?) that makes us simplify our animal down to it's essential distinguishing features and profile - it's essence of pigness or lionicity. We somehow draw upon every cartoony pig drawing we've ever seen - an archetypal or stereotyped pig (do animals have stereotypes? Is it unfair?). A lot of cartoon is dependant on reducing things down to an easily recognised version of something or someone - even though mice don't have ears like Mickey, teachers and chefs don't really wear those hats, and traindrivers tend not to wear neckerchiefs.
I make sure to reassure the group that I'm not asking them to draw comics blind from now on, and move smoothly onto 3- 2 Card Characters.

Cardiff

Back home now, after 3 intensive days teaching comics in the brand new gorgeous Cardiff Library. Thankyou Heather and Sam for looking after me!
4 groups from 3 secondary schools, and all of them lovely, even the ones who stole the pens, and the ones who spat over the 4th floor balcony. They produced some great work and seemed to really enjoy both the library and the sessions, which I'd spent a bit of time refining and tweaking - (it's about time I posted some more exercises, so I'll use that to outline a few improvements I've made).

Managed a little sketching in the evenings-

I've left out all the furniture and drinkers, just because I was trying to work out the elaborate stainless steel microbrewery running all over the place (Zero Degrees). Excellent beer, great pizza but completely over-designed. This is one of the lightfittings I've tackled separately -


Very nice place Cardiff, especially The Vulcan, though the car park developers seem to think it would be better as rubble under a car park - so I bought the T-shirt -


Also worthy of note - the arcades off St Mary's St, and in particular The Pen and Paper, which is not a pub, but a pen and paper shop, where I bought a couple of propelling pencils. This lead me to wonder how upset I'd be if I lost my pencil case, so I totted up the contents.

I can justify this, if anyone needs me to.

DFC final issue

Sadly today see's the final issue of The DFC landing on tear-sodden doormats across the country. Richard Bruton has written a nice piece on his blog, there's a facebook group and a Save The DFC blog too - so it's nice to know it was appreciated while it lasted.
The creators have been privately blogging at each other for sometime, and we all felt it a good idea to maintain some kind of web presence (this is language a Jim a few years ago would not have been familiar with!) - hence -

-where young and old can keep a look out for what the artists (and characters too) might be up to next.

oops

someone I don't know just emailed me and I've deleted it by mistake. Was it you? If so, please send it again!

Matt Lloyd

My terrific pal Matt Lloyd had updated his site, and it's terrific.
There's no end to this man's talents, yet he has to spend his days selling mungbeans to Brightonians. Not right.
My particular favourite, his Muddy Waters print -

Bird Table designs

Please don't steal these ideas, as I may end up having to be a bird table designer.
I'm not sure what they're made of, except for the birdbox one which is screenprinted on thin plywood before construction.
If you've got some spare time on your hands and fancy making a prototype, then we could talk business!

Scraps of paper

Newest additions to my boxes and boxes of postcards, photos, ephemera, kids doodles and newspaper cuttings -
- a Spanish butter lid. I must've put this in my pocket (making my pocket a bit buttery) because of the cow and it's crazy eyes with eyelashes that look like bushy eyebrows. It's probably just me, so sorry for wasting your valuable time with it.
And -

-from this weekend's Weekend Guardian. I'd like to shake these people by the hand, as they keep creating these perfect gags which seem to appeal directly to my own sense of humour.

Bad News

I kind of knew it was going to happen at some point sooner or later, but it's still sad and sobering to learn that Random House feel they can longer go on financing The DFC. Issue 43 will be the last (issue 40 is due this Friday). Maybe at some point in the future there will be collections of some of the featured strips, and possibly even a new comic in another shape or form, but as it stands now this abrupt cancellation cuts off many serialised stories, some of them only a few episodes in, so I feel for those creators particularly. CLC will be just 3 episodes into a planned 12 forming Season 2 - I've drawn half of these, and am sure I'll complete the set, but not at the moment.

The saddest thing is all those kids lucky enough to have just discovered it, who relish Friday mornings when the comic arrives through the door, are now left with very little other options. - Beano and Dandy 'Extreme' are fine at what they do but are all full of adverts,- Simpsons comics are well done but the whole thing seems like an advert - kids have very little left that's not a TV, film or commercial tie-in. That was one of The DFC's greatest strengths - 36 pages and no adverts. Not to mention the incredible diversity of great stories.

Some will argue it was trying to be too many things at once - attempting to entertain too large a cross section from 8yr old girls to 14yr old boys. Yes, in a more buoyant time it might have existed as 2 or 3 different titles, more specifically targetted.
I was always somewhat frustrated by the subscription model they adopted - it relied on benevolent (and fairly well-off) parents to commit £12 a month on your behalf, rather than being something you could simply purchase, with coins, from a newsagent. But then how do you launch a new title onto the shelves when the very priviledge of being in WH Smiths swallows up 35% of the cover price? Or the stability of the shelves is not as predicable as a year ago (loss of Woolworths)?

While really depressed that this brave venture hasn't been able to gather the momentum and subscriptions it deserved, I'm proud to have been amongst all the other creators, and feel grateful to the editorial team for the opportunity and their honorable treatment of those slaving away on the drawing boards and computers. My own competance has come on leaps and bounds thanks to their encouragement, enthusiasm and deadlines.

On a self-concerned level, I'm now going to be seeking out more teaching work, and looking at refreshing and diversifying the comic skills I can teach (and their applications) - for example I've done a few Continuous Professional Development sessions with teachers, demonstrating the potential for comics in the classroom - I think I'll be offering this around more formally.
The worry is that schools are going to have the budgetry cutbacks that everywhere else is experiencing, and it's my challenge now to persuade them that a visiting comic artist represents a lot more than just 'a little treat' for the class.