Photoshopping (A Loss in Korea)

With all the crazy Kim Jong Il news coverage going on, I figured I would lighten things up with what I think is the greater loss when I think of Korea, namely Colonel Sherman T. Potter from M*A*S*H 4077th.  Here is a bit of photoshopping for you.

Although I feel I have sufficiently modified and added to the original photograph for fair use, I do want to credit  KCNA via AFP - Getty Images and Msnbc.com.

We will miss you, Colonel!

Harry Morgan, star of stage and screen, and probably most popularly remembered for his role as Col. Sherman T. Potter in the TV show M*A*S*H, died Dec. 7th, 2011.

Drawing At Work

My blog post-a-day for the 12 Days of Christmas needs some help moving along, so I have decided I am going to have to sketch at work.  Today I have no real and proper tools to use, so I stole a mini envelope and am using a crappy gel pen, but it is a start.  I will have to remember to bring in some real pens for tomorrow.  I figure I can do a series of envelopes to mail.

This is the scan.

Above, it is not quite connected.  Sure, gnomes may live in mushrooms, or maybe not, and this gnome (of sorts) only seems to be a floating head, but I was bored and experimenting, so this is what I got.  I will add a stamp and maybe some light earth toned marker tomorrow before mailing it off.  I tried scanning it on the copier at work, but I also took a picture of it with my phone.  I may need to bring in my camera as well, because I am not good with the scanner settings to accurately pick up on semi-shiny pen lines.

Photo

Working on any mail / postal / epistolary art?  E-mail me at inkpuddle@hotmail.com.

The Second Day of Christmas - It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Gorey

The Day after Christmas does not bring 2 turtle doves, instead it brings a wonderful Christmas present from the girlfriend.  I have mentioned Edward Gorey several times in the course of this blog, but did I know that Edward Gorey had a faux tarot deck!  Known as the Fantod Pack*, it is a 20-card deck featuring typical Gorey-esque art and characters, both macabre and mocking.

Pretty awesome.  I took some pictures to show the cards.

I chose to show the cards above, because in typical Gorey fashion (literally), the master of mocking macabre couldn't help but include himself in the deck.  "The Burning Head" looks like something you would actually see a tarot-like deck. It's symbolic: of what I have no idea, but I like it.

Above, I included these cards because the one makes me think of an "after" picture to Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies.  And the urn is a wonderful Gorey touch.  When Gorey places an urn indoors in the home of some wealthy eccentric, you can't help but wonder what, or who, is in it, and they make countless appearances atop pedestals and gates in cemeteries.

Again, I liked these particular cards.  Above, we see the Ecorche, or "the flayed man," but this flayed man has flare.  Just look at that stylish top hat and casual pose.  Look your best, even when you leave your dermis at home!  The flayed man is often seen in Renaissance images like those by da Vinci, showing what lies beneath the skin, namely muscle.  It is a way for artists to know how the body works, what muscles pull what bones, etc., so a life study can be more "natural" and accurate in terms of what our own physiology does mechanically when a subject strikes a pose.  (Reminds me of the "flayed man" sigil of the House Bolton of the Dreadfort - a la George R. R. Martin)  And "The Bundle" is great, because with Gorey you never know - it could be a corpse in there, sure, but it could also be an unwanted gift basket being sunk to the bottom of a lake.

Here is the accompanying book.  They reproduce the right-hand image to be the back side of all the other Fantod Pack cards.

I don't need these faux tarot cards to tell my future - I know I will enjoy looking and reading these cards for many years in the future.  Thank you, Elizabeth!  Merry Christmas!




*"The initial sales of his first four books came to only about 1500 each and he didn't stay with any one publisher very long.  Sometimes he produced his books himself under the Fantod Press imprint.  ("Fantod" is an obscure word, usually used in the plural, meaning willies or fidgets.)" (Wilkin 131).

Wilkin, Karen, ed.  Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey.  New York: Harcourt, 2001.

Ghosts - Part 2 (Delivered by Art)

Merry Christmas to all those celebrating!  I am going to try to celebrate in some way the 12 Days of Christmas, not like in the song, but like in the Christmastide tradition, ending on Twelfth Night.  So, I am going to try to post something each day for 12 days. Some days it will be a piece of original art, other times I will post a news article or link or feature art from a friend.

Speaking of art from a friend, here is a second Dickens' A Christmas Carol postcard by James Webner.

Watercolor and ink on paper, Jim Webner, 2011

I especially like the candle "i".

Ghosts (Delivered by Art)

Here is another watercolor and ink postcard from Jim Webner.

Watercolor and ink on paper, Jim Webner, 2011

I don't think I have ever discussed the various adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  My personal favorite film version is with Alastair Sim as Scrooge (1951), and this scene, where Marley comes to visit Scrooge is one that sets this particular version apart from others.  It is disturbing.  The Marley in this film version really wails like a ghost bound for eternity by the chains he forged in life.  Scrooge, trying to re-assure Marley that he was a good "man of business," is screamed at by Marley, "Business? Mankind was my business!"  I don't know if Jim is referencing this particular film version, but it is certainly what I think of when I see it.  The blue-toned wash of the ghost has a eerie chill to it, and I like how if you stare long enough at Marley, it is almost like you can see ghostly forms and faces in the parts of body.

Another Christmas Carol postcard by Jim will be posted tomorrow, so be sure to bookmark The Ink Puddle.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Sex and Comics!

Here is another video, because I am lazy, but I still want to update the blog more often.  But this it interesting.  Although this exhibit went on display a while ago, and closes in only a week or two (I am late to the game), it is intriguing.  It explores the sexual undercurrent in comics (and I presume cartoons).

I definitely recognized work featured in at least one book I own entitled Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-creator Joe Shuster.  I include a link to buy Secret Identity as well as another book from my library: The Art of Doug Sneyd (from Playboy).  Watch the video, visit the museum, draw some boobs.

Comics Stripped from Jessica Hartogs Oakley on Vimeo.

Try, Try, Try Again for The New Yorker

This post was inspired by a Philadelphian comics man and a fellow cartoonist. It is the sad fate of many cartoonists and comics artists to use a singular accomplishment as a bar of success, and this accomplishment I am referring to would be acceptance of a cartoon into The New Yorker.  Some may argue that many of the cartoons that appear in The New Yorker are sexist, classist, and sometimes downright un-funny, and I would have to agree with them.  There is this sense, like in the classic Seinfeld episode, that there is no real rhyme or reason as to what the editors think is funny.  However, for India ink artists, there is that persistent and undeniable pull towards The New Yorker, to be among the greats like Charles Addams, Edward Gorey and James Thurber, and from more recent times, R. Crumb, Adrian Tomine, and Dan Clowes (yes, I know they do covers and not cartoons.  Shut up. Fuck you.).  But who gets into The New Yorker?  Well, nobody, or at least nobody I know.  So, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into envy*. But do we give up?  Hell NO!  We keep trying.  So, in solidarity with my brethren ink-stained, starry-eyed romantics, I give you some of my own rejections, and the rejection letters (notes, really).

"Experimental Art Criticism"

I definitely tried to hit the major New Yorker themes like taking culture and wealth for granted, having a smug sense of superiority (watch for my use of smugly closed eyelids), and of course, always remaining absurdly ironic (or is it ironically absurd? I can never remember).  I also went with a two-toned gray scheme with black line.  I did these using Copic markers, but today I would probably do them with brush and gray ink out of bottle.  These are all from 2005, which means I was quite busy and industrious, and apparently I have been quite, quite lazy since then.

I wrote something about an ostrich lobbyist.  It seemed funny at the time.

Of course, if you look at enough New Yorker cartoons, you realize they don't necessarily have to be out-loud funny, or even make sense.

Auctioning off gas is still relevant today, right?

The one below still makes me laugh, because my caption was something like, "I only read books written from the perspective of a vampire," which is something I still say today, and what book came out in 2005?  Twilight!  I had no idea back then.  I was probably thinking of several other vampire books.

This one presages the downfall of Borders, wouldn't you agree?

I have been told that receiving a rejection letter with any kind of hand written anything is quite a compliment, but like an idiot, I have no idea which cartoon the initialed rejection letter went with.  I don't even know if it was for one of these.  I have left out several other examples from this post.

4 out of 5 rejection letters I have kept.  I think I threw out a couple.

Sadly, I also have pre-stamped envelopes to Bob Mankoff's attention at The New Yorker.  Postage has gone up since then, so if I use them I will have to add stamps.

Have any funny rejection stories from The New Yorker or elsewhere?  Share them with me!  Let's commiserate! On Twitter @inkpuddle or e-mail me @ inkpuddle@hotmail.com

*I allude to The Great Gatsby, that should totally get me into The New Yorker! :-)

Rapunzel (Delivered by Art)

Hey there, Puddlers!  It's another installment of "Delivered by Art."  Here is yet more art that has traveled coast-to-coast, from foggy San Francisco to stinky New Jersey through the US Postal Service, which is concerning, because how much time left does the USPS have?  If you haven't been reading up on all the layoffs and mail processing plant closures, what we know as the Snail Mail, the semi-private, semi-government agency started here in the US by Ben Franklin is in dire trouble.  How many more postcard works of art will I be able to send and receive?  It troubles me.

"Rapunzel" postcard, pen and ink on paper, by James Webner

Recently, I have been posting Fairy Tale influenced sketches on my Tumblr site http://sketches.inkpuddle.com. I have the permanent link to the site on the right hand side of this blog.  Anyway, taking a page out of The Brothers Grimm's book, Jim Webner has been doing a seven (7) postcard series on Rapunzel, or what he calls "The Most Lamentable Tragedy of Rapunzel or How Children Will Ruin Your Life Everytime."  Re-examining fairy tales* without the saccharine sweet frosting of the Disney Company slathered all over them can be quite enjoyable and an eye-opening experience.  In my own sketches, I have been returning to the source material for ideas but I also like to think about the popular conception of fairy tale and either turning that notion on its head or taking it in a new direction.  Essentially, this is a never-ending cycle shared by story tellers of all media.  There has recently been a trend to re-interpret and re-introduce elements of folk and fairy tales into popular culture with TV shows like Grimm and Once Upon a Time.  To read translations of the stories the Grimms compiled, click HERE.

I include the back of this postcard only to show that this piece of paper did, in fact, travel coast-to-coast (notice the San Francisco postmark).  Here is postcard #2.

Second "Rapunzel" postcard, pen and ink on paper

Does this sound like the story of Rapunzel you remember?  Again, try to forget any cartoon versions you saw as a kid, and once again, I refer you to the source material (the link is above).  So, check back here on Ink Puddle to see more of Jim's "Rapunzel" postcards.

Have a favorite fairy tale you remember as a kid?  Send me an e-mail, and I will try to sketch it.  inkpuddle@hotmail.com  And in the meantime, check out some of my "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and "Little Red Riding Hood" sketches at my Tumblr sketch blog.

*I am using the phrase "fairy tale" in the general sense of folk tales (usually with a cautionary or fable aspect to it) from any number of cultures from around the world.  For a more in-depth look at fairies or faeries or the fay, you can click HERE.

Another #Video post, because I am lazy.

Hey!  I've got another interview in the works as well as some fresh "Delivered by Art" but in the meantime, I am going to cheat again and post someone else's video.

I was introduced to the art of Molly Crabapple and Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School @drsketchys rather circuitously via Twitter and Yao Xiao, a NYC artist @yaoxioart with whom I did an interview [READ THE INTERVIEW].  Here is a mini-documentary of Molly Crabapple's "Week in Hell."  Enjoy!

Molly Crabapple's Week in Hell from Brainwomb on Vimeo.

As I did with The Met's Rick Riordan video, mad shout-outs to Molly and Keith Jenson of Brainwomb and Vimeo for allowing this to be embedded! Thanks!