A self-indulgent comic (it's my birthday)

It wasn't really my birthday when I drew this, but it is now, so I'm posting it today.

It seems I drew myself slimmer and less hunched over than I really am. I may go back and fix that, and add halftones and corrections and stuff. I suppose this'll do for now. Thanks for indulging me.

Lectures and Classes

This is from a minicomic I used to give my students back in 1989

Cartoonist Sophia Wiedeman, writing for The Rumpus has posted a write up of a lecture I gave at Columbia University a couple of weeks ago on panel composition, as part of the ongoing New York Comics and Picture Story Symposium. It was developed from a lesson I give in my cartooning courses.

Speaking of which, tonight, Sept 4, 6:30-8:30,  I'll be presenting at the SVA continuing ed information session for the Illustration and Cartooning department. Come talk to me about my courses, which are enrolling right now.

Especially, check out
Inking Comics
and
Figure Drawing for Cartoonists

Inking Comics!

After a hiatus of several years, my popular course on Inking Comics is offered again at SVA, this time on Friday evenings. It was just added to the catalogue, so it’s only visible on the online version. Please tell your friends!

“…I took your class and found it fundamentally reoriented my approach to comics drawing. Just your summation of the PURPOSE of inking (it tells the reader how to read) turned my thinking about the page on its head. I am still digging through your class handouts on a regular basis and, on your sage advice, going to weekly life drawing sessions— the lone ink-toting artist in the room!  Tom Motley! You taught a great class that really helped me.”

–A. K. Summers, author of the graphic novel, Pregnant Butch

“Tom Motley has got a great comics mind in addition to his inking proficiency, and is an amazing resource to have. I don’t think I’d ever have developed the amount that I had without his insights when I was starting to take comics seriously.”

–Matt Lubchansky, creator of Not All Man and other hilarious strips.

More student samples and discussion can be seen here.

We’ll meet Friday evenings, 6:30-9:30 pm, Sept. 19 through Dec. 12, 2014. Course # ILC-2114-A.

And don’t forget Wednesday’s Figure Drawing for Cartoonists  and Thursday’s Cartooning Basics courses. 

Please let me know if you have questions: mot@tmotley.com

The Pieces Project

I was invited to contribute a panel to this cool international comic jam. They had me letter a version in Polish. You can see the English here. Better still, read the whole thing. It's full of gorgeous illustrations in an amazing variety of styles.

A Fun Commission

One of my students, Mary Garcia, drew this comic strip on an accordion folded paper...

...and hired me to finish the unfolded version:

Nifty, eh?

Grand Comics Festival

My center spread for Cartozia Tales #3

Come see me this Saturday, June 7, at the Grand Comics Festival, where I'll be selling issues of Cartozia Tales along with my other work.

Summer Courses at SVA

This summer 2014, T. Motley is teaching two Continuing Education courses at the School of Visual Arts. Figure Drawing for Cartoonists runs Wednesdays from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., June 4 through August 6. His Cartooning Basics course runs Thursdays from 6:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., June 5 to August 14. Each course is 10 sessions long.

He’d love to teach you essential tricks of the comicking trade.

student artwork by Earl Barrett-Holloway

Poetry Corner

You work hard. You've earned this poetry break.

From the Archive: The Drawing Stick, 1983

This is one of the first comic stories I ever completed. It was drawn with a pointed balsa wood stick dipped in very thick ink.

Not long after, a photography student I dated made this portrait setting me in one of the comic panels.

photo © Cynthia E Jones 1986

The Rumpus

I'm the subject of a substantial interview on The Rumpus.net this week. Please have a look, read about my influences and projects and stuff. Warm thanks to Andrea Tsurumi for the complimentary questions.

The Holy Grail of Forceful Cartooning

The Harvey Kurtzman exhibit last spring at the Society of Illustrators was amazing in every way, but for me the coolest thing in there was this fight sequence from Help #1. They had separated Will Elder's finished drawings from the Kurtzman marker roughs they'd been rubber cemented to, and displayed both versions together.





Marveling at these images in my drunken fog at the opening, I saw in a flash what a helpful warmup exercise they would make. Sketching freely in ink, I  try to reproduce as much as possible of the energy and vitality of Kurtzman's roughs, incorporating something of the wit and precision of Elder's finishes, while retaining the freedom to be playful and inject something of my own.

Kurtzman's

Elder's

Mine, take 1

Mine, take 2

Having toyed with this exercise for awhile, I've begun assigning it to advanced students in my figure drawing class. Speaking of which, the Illustration and Cartooning info session is coming up Tuesday evening at SVA. Come talk to me about cartooning. Cartooning is fun.

Draw Two Panels

In the months before launching Cartozia Tales, Isaac Cates invented a card game for cartoonists, Draw Two Panels, and got me playing it. One deals oneself random comic panels from an ever changing deck, and then draws new panels to make sense of the juxtapositions.

This is the starter deck I created following Isaac's rules, which include quoting from books, songs, Facebook status updates, and comics, drawing from life, doodling, and more:



Here are the strips I made so far. Some include cards drawn by Isaac, that he retired from his own deck:

The Cartozia project has distracted us both from playing this, but I hope to make time for it again. I was inspired to create a spinoff game that I'm calling The Deckless Wonder. I'll post examples from that one sometime. Cartooning games are fun.