New Wine/Old Bottle

In a nutshell, the "daily" format--consecutive panels in a rectangular
block--was traditionally a much denser visual artform than we see
today. As newspaper readership began to falter during the '80s, ad
revenues became critical for survival. So the generous scale allotted
to the standard daily strip was cut back. The reduced format made the

more detailed strips difficult to read. There is a certain point at
which text becomes too small to read, so the balloon size had to
remain fairly close to its traditional scale while the art got reduced
to more basic elements. Through the mandate of their accounting
departments, newspapers gravitated to the modern version which
emphasizes writing over art. It is my hope that the digital age will
enable the pendulum to swing the other way.

In some recent experiments with this form I came to the realization 

that the tablet format is becoming the most common way that news is

delivered. So why not comics, too?! By having a vertical division
exactly at midpoint, one can produce a two column strip that fills

 the parameters of a standard tablet screen. Though my inked
strips are done the traditional way, I reformat them as digital art.
The trick is knowing when to use Photoshop as a finish tool, and most
difficult of all, when to leave it alone. The above first appeared at the
www.pengrenades.com site which I shared with Brian Hagen and Dan
Schubarth. This and other original inked strips are 

now available on my Etsy site.

A Brush With Death

Here's one from '05, ten years after the incident depicted--with very little artistic license.

Using A Tablet As A Lightbox

This is a departure from the usual posting of older work because this is the first piece in which I explore the potential of the tablet as a substitute for the old-fashioned light table. I use a humble Nexus 7, which only has a screen that measures 3.75" x 6". But that's enough to handle most single panel work.
  I began the strip the usual way--with a series of disjointed little doodles, intelligible to nobody but myself. A basic continuity of ideas was determined, then the continuity got broken down into basic frames. After a motive was determined for each panel, the dialog suggested itself. 
  What is new about this strip is that once I had the basic poses conceived as stick figures, I drew directly on the tablet in a bare bones program called Quill. By toggling the scale and size of the scribing tools, I was able to arrive at poses that had the maximum dramatic effect, then finesse them to a degree that would have been very tough on the drawing paper had I used a pencil and resorted to several erasures.
  The great thing about using a tablet program for doing roughs is that once you have arrived at the optimum sketch, you can tweak it to exactly the scale that you want by pinching the image. The one proviso here is that it only works with 1-ply (Strathmore 500 Bristol); also a thin piece of glass is needed to put over the tablet while the tracing is being done. Otherwise the tracing will toggle the image. Okay, there's one more annoying thing: you probably have to do this at night with all other lights off. But chances are, you're working at night already...
  This method provides a seamless way of accessing imagery from the web, too. That Diogenes portrait I did at the top is a tracing two times removed from the excellent source material that I had. And that was only one of a dozen beautiful images that I could pick and choose from!  I'm glad that I learned the traditional way, though; even this method depends on a tactile relationship with the drawing tool. I know this discovery is not for everybody. But before you reject it out of hand, I think it's worth a try.

Homestyle Bookburning

One winter afternoon in the early '50s, two of my father's sisters came to our suburban Chicago home on a rare visit. One bore a gift for me, perhaps from her son, my older cousin Billy. It was either a Tales From The Crypt or a Vault of Horror comic and featured a putrefying skull floating in a vermilion pool on its lurid cover. Though I don't remember the exact title, I remember the EC brand in one of the upper corners. Thoroughly steeped in harmless DC and Dell comics, this was the first "Entertaining Comic," let alone horror comic I'd ever seen. Screaming and hyperventilating, I threw it across the living room. One of the aunts picked the offending object off the floor and guided me to the fireplace. Joined by her sister, they stood and solemnly watched as the source of my discontent was purified in flame.
  But neither lady was around to comfort me a couple decades later when I was provoked to the same level of terror by Cousin Billy's film, The Exorcist. By then, I'd learned to hide my emotional life from the general public, thanks to a raging case of OCD.

If you ever come across the watercolor drawing of this image, please contact me immediately with the details. It is stolen property. Thanks...

justin.inknib@gmail.com

A Not-For-Profit Two Pager

This RAW piece from the early '90s was informed by my experience at the Sacramento-based California State Fair where I was the official sign painter for four years in the late '80s. The hectic job lasted through the cruel summer months, when the mercury often soared beyond 100. I was just a notch above the dicey carny folk who set up and staffed the rides and attractions. We were all itinerant tradesmen, grateful for the work.
  It sure payed better than this particular cartooning gig. I still don't even want to think about the "man hours" I put in on this labor-intensive piece. It was an experiment in constructing a double vision storyline as a premise for the resounding  punchline. I think this one was written backwards. When there's a lot of details that have to be covered in the action and narrative of a strip, starting with the last panel really helps to hone the continuity down to the essentials. Bottom line, sign painting still pays better than cartooning

Hope Springs Eternal

May your resolutions be within the realm of possibilities and not be broken by first thaw.

'Twas Ever Thus

This was done for the Signs of the Times magazine (Jan., '00 edition) when it was widely believed that all computers would shut down at the stroke of midnight on 12/31/00. 
  
This December our main  concern is that the Mayans were wrong. Let's hope humankind still has a huge chunk of existence...