Four Panel Cartoon without Words
Here’s something I want to try more, drawing cartoons without words. I drew these four panels two months ago, and remembered it after my brother promised to send me some Owly for my birthday.
I wanted to avoid titles, but they suggested themselves too easily.
- God Discovers Symbolism
- Buddhism Arrives in the West
- Santa Takes a Holiday (Satan Does Not)
- Guardian Angel of Pure Vanilla Cones
I started with the last and worked to the first panel. Sketched the idea in pencil and inked it with some brush-pens of various grey tones. As I said, the titles came last. The images were purely creative juxtapositions which seeped up from my subconscious mind.
If I do more of these I’ll gather them under the banner Semi-isms.
Green, Red, Blue
I compare and contrast three sketches along with the process of drawing them.
posted: July 28, 2006
On Starting and Stopping
The ubiquitous note card. These days I keep stacks in four different places: by the desk, by the drawing table, by the bed and in my book bag. Off and on for 15 years I’ve used them, particularly when I start drawing more each day and need to shift away from little notebooks with their thin, lined pages. Note cards can be written on, drawn upon, shuffled around and discarded. And with note cards lying around in easy reach, drawing and writing become guilty little habits, like smoking and drinking.
Last week I realized how nice a dark charcoal pencil works with note cards. Its best quality is its strong dark line. Unfortunately, that line smudges too easily for permanent work, so I tend to stay away from it, even if I’m sketching. But with note cards, I know I’ll misplace many of them.
I drew these three sketches in the last few hours. I started from a semi-random blob drawn with a colored marker and then worked over the color with dark charcoal and a china white pencil. They make an interesting sequence, moving from simple to complicated sketches, from iconic to abstract subjects. And in a way, the latter drawings are more realistic because they don’t force an interpretation. The green lizard in the first drawing will likely be a green lizard to anyone who looks at it, despite its having a fox’s tail.
I spent more time on each consecutive drawing. I could focus more intently on the drawing with each new beginning, but also I found I needed the extra time to make something interesting of the sketch. With each drawing I had to work more before I could say, “This one is finished.” With the red sketch, I came to a point where I thought, “Okay, I’ve got this asymmetrical symmetry, the suggestion of eyes. Maybe it’s a face seen from the inside out?” I could have worked on it more, but then I might have overworked the sketch and lost what little it had.
Also, starting each drawing became easier. Although I spent less time drawing the green sketch, I took two long breaks in between. Then, a couple hours later I drew the red sketch with only a short break to refill my glass. I began the blue sketch immediately after finishing the red, and never stopped even though it took longer than the other two combined.
My new mantra is: Art Is Brief, Life Is Long. But actually, only sometimes is art brief, other times it’s briefer.
A Meditation on Art
In my sketchbook, I find my favorite pages have nothing on them. No thing, at least, distinguishable as a thing. They’re meditations on line, texture, shape and balance. Handling the tools and gauging their capabilities.
I also found a poem recently, written last year in a fit of sleep deprivation. A haibun, which is haiku with accompanying text, written from the perspective of a word traveling through a semiotic landscape. Almost entirely abstract and nonsensical. What I liked most from this experiment were the haiku, better than any other I’ve written. I think because I was focusing on words rather than “haiku moments.” Rather than glue words to some experience, I’m gluing words to each other.
brick lay flat
brighter and torn
from under
As with the drawings, these are not quite meaningless blobs. A mind can’t help but form edges and folds, can’t quite escape three-dimensional space. It draws on a lifetime of experience, rather than a moment.
a palm strand
yellowing, untwisted
cattail lines
At some level, it’s helpful to embrace the limitations of a thing. So with art. It cannot truly replicate an experience or communicate it with any accuracy, but it is itself an experience. The words themselves, or the lines themselves, have their own meanings and in their interplay make their own music for the moment.
string weathered
silver tone clattered
cylinders
