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.