The Power of Double-Negative Thinking

Cartooning Basics Starts June 7

One of the dirty little secrets about comics is that they're more fun to make than they are to read (however fun they are to read). Sure, doing them involves a lot of hard work -- hard play, really-- but the comic story is the most democratically available medium I've found for getting ideas, feelings, and opinions down on paper and packaged into a form that can entertain and touch other people. Simple drawings and simple writing extended over multiple frames can achieve a big effect.

If you know someone in the NYC area who's curious about trying their hand at cartooning, please encourage them to try my Cartooning Basics course this summer at SVA. In 10 weeks we'll undertake the journey from the blank page to the printed piece, noting along the way the basic principles that inform every major creative problem the cartoonist faces-- drawing characters that move and seem alive; making them perform in stories and settings that make sense, hold our attention, and amuse us; rendering the images in ink for inexpensive publication; printing and assembling booklets to offer for sale and to use as calling cards & gifts; and more besides. It's great fun and the rewards are many. Please spread the word.

Here's some work created in class.

And here are examples of what my students have gone on to do:

Adventures of Pyramid
The Squid
Please Listen To Me
Andrea Tsurumi
Versequential
Pregnant Butch
Bar Scrawl
How Do I Nook?

From the Archive: Fisheye, 1984

I've resolved to start posting some of my old, unread work from over the decades. This one, from 1984, was printed on a set of buttons to be worn on a jacket. I had ideas for several sequels but never got around to drawing them because, you know, buttons is a really stupid way to circulate a comic strip. This is one of a handful of sets in existence. The others are undoubtedly littering landfills somewhere.

New Spinoff Blogs

It's been kind of a long time since I posted any of my doodles here. It's not that I have too few but that there are too many. I've finally created a special blog just for my doodles, which I'm updating at least twice a day:

http://yourdailydoodle.tumblr.com/


And I just started a companion blog for my sketches:

http://yourdailysketch.tumblr.com/

Check them often. Follow them. Reblog 'em.
I find that a fun way to view the pictures is to select the archive and then choose any that grab your attention. The doodle blog already has a respectable flood of striking images:

http://yourdailydoodle.tumblr.com/archive

Anticomic