Original Art Sundays (Friday) No. 263: Sharp Invitations: Curt, p.19

New page has been done for a week or so. Finally have a minute to post.
 Our heroine (me) has been seeing both Delia and Sara, while seeing Curt. One night:

Yeah, I was busted, as we used to say. I really did feel that small! Not my shining hour. It's to my credit that both these women still talk to me and consider me a friend.
The Curt story is coming to a crucial point in a page or two.
The original draft of this story was 11 pages. We are near the halfway point of this part of the narrative, but the action picks up substantially very soon.
Technical notes: the top tier needs a caption to establish place and time, which I just now realized. The design device of the arc used to give weight to the second and third tiers works, but I would rather vary it a bit. I like the spinning head in the next to last panel a lot!
Materials are the usual:
Canson Bristol
Tech Markers No, 1, 3, 6 and 7
Lead holders with hard and soft leads
Magie Rub eraser
Dr. Martin's Walnut Black Ink
FW Acrylic White
No. 2 Elita Sable Brush
Synthetic brushes No. 4, 8 and 10
Tight Spot angled brush for corrections.
Next: either the next narrative page or a little treat.

Original Art Sundays (Tuesday) No. 236: The Last Sharp Invitiation (Curt), p. 1

A bit late posting this week, due to exhaustion. But we are back in the saddle again!
I've decided to jump to one of the last stories in the book and then double back to the rest. This is a very important story (not that the rest aren't), and I want to develop it farther than it made it in the rough draft.

This page should set the tone for this story. I happened on this piece in an old sketchbook, and immediately realized that it was the perfect splash for this story.
This story brings many of the problems encountered by some (certainly not all) trans women in relationship into focus. The key, as you'll see as the story evolves, is self-worth, deciding we deserve decent love.
This page is rendered in pencil, with minimal clean-up. In talking with my comic teaching peer Dr. Ursula Murray Husted at SpringCon last week, I was pleasantly surprised at how much she liked my tighter pencil pages. While my inking skills are constantly improving (and more so when I work on a regular schedule!), I've always obtained great satisfaction from good tight pencils, or as in the original Sharp Invitation story, pencils with Conte' crayon. The problem is that I like working on Bristol board, and it lacks sufficient tooth to get the textures I like in resolved pencils. As such, I suspect the final version of this story will be a pastiche of pencils and inks. The very last page of it will be a B & W photograph- good old 35MM film!
The gentleness of this image serves as marked contrast to what follows, and is typical of my idealizing people with whom I'm in relationship (nobody else does that, right?).
My summer schedule being lighter, I have more time to develop this work before my next deadline, the fall faculty show. I'm wrestling with doing a more complete printed version for that show as well. Since I'm lettering digitally, I also have to resolve some presentation issues. Possibilities include originals presented next to printed pages, or printing original-sized copies and posting those. There's something disingenuous about posting printouts in shows, though I did it at Intermedia Arts and nobody said boo.
Another issue that came up in printing the draft version was that the images fit to the InDesign pages were VERY tight to the border! I'll have to tweak that before going back to press, even for a short run of one or two.
But the immediate goal remains a more realized version of this story. I also have another of those one-page quickies in the hopper, one I just thought of earlier today.
Next: more Curt.

Original Art Sundays No. 179: An Unexamined Life

Wow, more than a month away. This new job really kicks my butt -working overnights as a caregiver for AIDS patients.
I have completed the aforementioned Surrealist Cowgirls short, but it turned out to be two pages, not four. I will be able to scan later this week.
As a placeholder, here's an editorial page I did for TransSisters Magazine, just under 20 years ago!
The emotions are a bit raw in this one. I was still mending from that abusive relationship I've mentioned in the past.
In general, I rather like this page. It was done oversize and was a bit of an experiment. The editor asked me stick to humorous material after this one, but as a direct result of this page, I also became staff cartoonist for the other major political transgender zine of the 90s, TNT News.

The craft on this one is all over the place. I particularly like the last image of the second tier, but the one before it is aesthetically painful. The lettering is wildly uneven. At this point, it was still more about getting the work - any work - out there than about any measure of craft, though I was too stubborn to accept that at the time.
I'll post some catch-up images later this week!

Original Art Sundays No. 124: Tranny Towers, Ch. 26

Once more into the breach with the next chapter!

Another tearsheet scan. This one definitely needs to be rescanned from the original art. There are dropouts in the bar in the bottom left panel, and the big text in the center tier is actually 50% gray outlined in black.
Plot notes: this is the point where the Agnes Nixon axiom comes into play. The strip is fundamentally a soap opera, and Nixon, who created some of the best (including the sorely missed Ryan's Hope), once noted that soap opera plotting consists  of people doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
There's also some wish fulfillment here. This is how part of me wishes I would have behaved in a similar situation. Though it accomplishes nothing, telling off someone who's humiliated you in that singular way (not having the courage to let you know what's going on and making you find out the hard way) does have a bitter satisfaction, however Pyrrhic and short-lived the victory.
Simply put, it's one of those times when you REALLY want to tell someone off, though you know it will do no good at all, just for your own pride.
Swipe file notes: the title is properly credited to Howard Cruse, whose gentle wit inspires me. The masthead text is copied freehand from a book of Art Deco typefaces (a Dover book, I think). The line "dishonorable and gutless" comes from the powerful film Cutter's Way.
Next: Chapter 27, the street fight.

Original Art Sundays No. 121: A Private Myth, p. 24

Finally.
I've been wrestling with this page for a month now.
Here's why. Take a look at the page rough.

Working up the rough, I was never happy with the first panel. I wanted the page to move through a lot of action very quickly, beginning with the moment to which this has been building.
I tried the slap from several angles and was happy with none. It just didn't work!
Her reaction was never quite powerful enough, there was no indication of the emotions of the aggressor. It was all too static.
But I didn't realize that.
I got hung up on getting the physical dynamics of the slap right.
I like looking to other artists and comic creators for suggestion and inspiration. It's an excuse to use my collection as a swipe file.
But there are very few slaps in comics, much to my surprise.
I looked at some 40s crime stuff, my copy of Romance Without Tears, and some superhero stuff. Lots of slugfests, even some planets being tossed about, but not slaps.
In frustration, I started re-reading Strangers in Paradise to take my mind off the problem.
And there it was.
But I still couldn't make it quite work.
That's when I  realized, as my Dad used to say, I was putting the ac-CENT on the wrong syl-LA-ble.
The crucial thing wasn't the technical accuracy of the slap, but the slap itself.
It's a big moment, and I had it crammed into a corner.
So worrying less about detail, I turned the Bristol over and drew the final.

Better. Not perfect, but better.
The energy comes through, and the poses and expressions are, if not spot on, plausible. As David Chelsea observed in his book on perspective in comic art, it gives a sense of where things are, physically and emotionally.
This was an emotionally difficult page, but since it's been almost two decades since I endured something similar, it was a tad easier this time than it was as a story element in an earlier Tranny Towers strip.
This is also the first full splash page I've used in this story. Since it's such a key moment, I think that's apropos.
My classes end Tuesday night, my final grades are due at the Records office next Monday. I have  a bit more time to work on my storytelling, though the deadline for the next volume of the Comic Encyclopedia looms large.
Long and short, new art next week.
And as I tell my students, thank you for your time and indulgence.

Original Art Sundays no. 120: oddment: photography

Well, the next page of A Private Myth is done. No time to scan today, but will be spending the day at work tomorrow and will make time then.  So next week we're good to go.
Every time this issue comes up, I wrestle with the practicality of a home scanner. It's more a space consideration than anything else.
Meanwhile, I'd like to share a photograph from The Old Days. You know, film.

This is the man I almost married (there but for the grace of the Deity and all that), standing by a stone bison near an insurance office down by the Walker Art Center. All are gone now for various reasons. I do miss the bison.
The sun washes it out, but he's wearing an Omaha the Cat Dancer button.
While I originally took this for the subject matter, I find the variety of textures compelling. The composition is a little on the nose, but it serves.
I find the wide variety of angles in this seemingly simple composition fascinating.  The textures are equally intriguing in a subtle way. Stone, glass, carved stone, varying fabrics, leather, hair, skin, branches- this thing is all about the texture.
I resisted the temptation to try to correct this image. I find more is lost than gained in that process at times, especially when working with varied textures. Not to say it can't be done, but there's something to say for letting the original speak for itself.
Again, despite having worked with some high end equipment and taught digital photography several times, I still find the nuances of film and laboratory much more satisfying than digital.  But times change, and our choices remain to adapt or to die aesthetically.
Next: the next page of A Private Myth, for real, on Sunday, May 6, the first day of the last week of class.

Original Art Sundays #53: A Dialogue with Harvey Pekar

Well, I shot myself in the foot by not properly saving the scan of the work I was planning on posting today.
However, as I was contemplating Hara Kari, I realized that from these setbacks we glean giant strides forward (to quote the great 80s film Real Genius).
A few week ago, Harvey Pekar died. I was lucky enough to chat with him once, and while I'm sure he would never recall me, my memories of him are vivid and positive.
This happened the same day my most recent relationship ended quite abruptly and unexpectedly. She spontaneously decided (in the middle of a month) that she had to live in another state, a thousand miles away, in three days. To say I was hurt and angry is like calling the Chicago Fire a weenie roast.
It didn't end well. Does it ever, really?
Her reasons are her own. Suffice to say I didn't agree and I've had more harmonious partings, though I hope that time heals that as well.
Shaken by Harvey's death and the unexpected turn in my personal life, I spent part of the following day re-reading my (ahem) complete collection of American Splendor.
I found this story. Not my favorite Harvey story (that's An Everyday Horror Story, from issue #5), but quite on point.
I chose to make a short video of it. For a soundtrack, I used R. Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders, as he and Harvey were friends and worked together often.
Timing and pacing this was an interesting experience. I wanted the text to be on-screen long enough to be legible, but not so long as to be tedious. Also, a series of static images can be less than exciting, so I used bits of motion and some image repetitions to shake it up just a bit.
I'm content with the result.
Full screen viewing recommended for reading ease!