From the Archive: Robots in Space!
Image Copyright © 2007 Josh R. Rose
In preparing to get back to drawing comics and illustrations, I have been compelled to go back through my archives and find some earlier work. This is one of my favorites, and came about when I worked at the Dallas Museum of Art. The Education Department was experimenting with some new types of activities in the learning space and wanted some to correlate with a Lichtenstein print on display.
All of the illustrations had clear acetate sheets beside them with additional images of motion lines that visitors could use to place over the drawing and "activate" elements so they appeared to be moving within the illustration (which are missing here, since this is just the "base" image).
Of the three images I designed, this was my favorite. It was closest to my own aesthetic and interests, and, to be honest, I just like drawing robots. I also attempted to mimic the Benday dot pattern Lichtenstein used in his images to suggest the color printing techniques of comic books (up until the 1990s, at least). I like the patterning – I am always one for a more "antiquated" look in my cartoons – but if I had been more proficient with Photoshop at the time, I would have separated the black lines from the color regions to make them sharper in the final image. Less importantly, distinguishing between halftone areas and non-halftone areas would have been much more in line with Lichtenstein's use of it only for the flesh-tones in his print).
To see the other version, without the halftone color layer, click HERE. Let me know what you think in the comments!
Doodling with a Robot and a Strongman
First Sketch for Dallas Comic Book Club Promo Flyer (© 2011 Josh Rose)
I took the opportunity of a few free hours this morning to start planning out a long overdue flyer for the Dallas Comic Book Club. I hope to have it wrapped up in a week or so, and it may become more expansive than this preliminary sketch.
Free Comic Book Day 2011
Ventured out to Free Comic Book Day this morning with my daughter. We went last year, rather on the spur of the moment, and she was somewhat confused and overwhelmed. So this year I built up our going over this whole week, so she was eager to go this morning. Here is a snapshot of her in the car afterward:
Not too sure about that Richie Rich reboot on the flipside of that floppy, though...
We had a fun time, although she was somewhat overwhelmed again. For those interested (read: only me and her mother, probably) she picked up the Kung-Fu Panda comic shown, a Sonic comic, and Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse sampler (I picked up a second copy of this for myself). I picked up Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee's Thor/Captain America title (which was quite fun, and for all ages), and Mike Mignola's Baltimore from Dark Horse (b/w something called Criminal Macabre).
While at the store, I also picked up two titles I have had on my wish list for a while: Ivan Brunetti's Cartooning, a slim volume of his "philosophy and practice" based on the cartooning classes he has taught for many years. I am looking forward to reading it as I venture back into cartooning this summer (fingers crossed). I also picked up Jacques Tardi's The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, a wonderfully macabre, pulp-inspired adventure series about the titular heroine fighting all manner of monsters and demons in Paris during the years before World War I. Tardi is a new discovery for me, and we are reading his noir crime story West Coast Blues in the Dallas Comic Book Club this August. Tardi has a fantastic European "clean line" style that, like Hergé's work, is a perfect combination of whimsy and action for the "antiquated" genre with which he is playing. (You can read the first twelve pages of the book on Fantagraphics' website.)
I was pleased to see the Gottfredson Mickey Mouse sampler, and am getting excited about the first of the "complete" collections by Fantagraphics to come out later this year, along with their run of Carl Barks stories. So excited am I about this that, as we entered the store, I happened upon an excerpt from Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck for one dollar and picked it up. I've heard nothing but good things about Rosa's biography of Uncle Scrooge and although I have not read this year, am looking forward to getting a taste of Rosa's take on the story. If there is one artist who, in Barks' long shadow, can handle his own on the Ducks, it's Rosa.
So, all-in-all, it was a good haul from this morning. I was reminded of how much good stuff was out there, and equally how much I had yet to read. If you have not yet made it out to your local comic shop, do so. If none of the comics I mentioned sound interesting, you can check out the full list of offerings on Free Comic Book Day's official site.
On Time (Antiquated and Personal)
Clearly I am not doing too well with this whole new website/blog endeavor. I have some ideas for posts that are more involved, but they exist currently only as line items in my to-do list (the irony of this is one of the plans is to offer synopses of art projects from my past that I have never completed, meaning I am too lazy to write about the ideas I have been too lazy to make as art over the years). Once I get some time freed up, I do plan to work on these, and (hopefully) begin producing some new comic work to share on here.
In the interim, though, I happened across this lovely cartoon while searching through some archives the other day. It is from the January 21, 1860 edition of Punch (digitally scanned online via Google Books). Unfortunately, nowhere in the almanack volume this came from do they list the artist/engraver of the image, but it does accompany a rather drolly humorous essay titled "The Advantages of Having Wet Weather in the Country." Decoupled from the essay, though, this is just a gem of a drawing. The naturalism of the upper half only enhances the ungainly shuffling walk of the needle-like legs, and the severity of the fish body sliced in half is almost too-real looking and would cause the drawing to collapse humorously if not for those legs. Anyone out there know who this artist might have been? The signatory mark at bottom left looks like a stylized "W" perhaps? I'm not well-versed in the artists working for Punch from this era, so any information is welcome.
I will probably be plowing through the Punch archives I can find scanned online for other great cartoons like this, created in the era when popular cartoons were just coming to prominence and the medium and approach was being figured out. If you are interested in perusing some Punch archives online, John Mark Ockerbloom at the Penn Libraries has assembled a great list of online sources: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=punch.
Circa 313 A.D.
Yet another in my series of proficiently artless photographs, taken with the camera on my Backflip. Came across this scene while on a dusk walk with the wife and kiddo, acting the flânuer, and felt this scene rather nicely encapsulated the end of the Roman empire -- via the crumbling rectangular columns -- with neatly stacked bricks in the foreground foreshadowing the use of brickwork in the late medieval era after the knowledge of concrete from ancient Rome was forgotten. The specter of Constantine haunts this scene, as if that Roman propensity for quick resolution and pragmatism has kicked in and he barks orders: "Roman empire is done! Move that old Imperial stuff out and make way for Christendom!" (This is, of course, woefully anachronistic, since Constantine rather proficiently balanced his sponsorship of Christianity by legalizing all mystery cults in Rome, and did not even become baptized until he lay dying.)
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