Hey, Mom!

In celebration of Mother's Day, a virtually-delivered card for our mom (previous tribute here). That's Cindy and David in the foreground, and Mark and me in the background (that is, the redheads). Now that I look at it, David looks sort of bummed out. (An intense child. But a well-adjusted adult.) 

I have a dim memory of playing a game in which we tried to ascribe animal identities to the various members of our family. It's actually sort of a dumb game, and its limitations were no more clear than in the attempt to boil down our mother's attributes to a creature. In some ways, the cat fits, in that she knows her own mind and carries herself with a certain noble reserve; in other ways, an ox, for her tremendous industry and endurance; finally, there's our standard poodle Schubert, with whom Mom shares inexhaustible devotion, a steady-eddie temperament, sharp intelligence and athletic grace. (Schubert wishes he had her vocabulary.) 

Again, a dumb game at heart: a metaphoric jumble, and a retroactive justification. Fact is, I woke up and saw this cat in my head. 

Our mother is many things, and we love her for all of them. 

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! 

Love, your offspring.

Like, Illustrated Grammar

A few weeks ago, Dan Zettwoch wrote a post that used sentence diagrams to explain illustrations and comic panels. A work of expository genius. In Dan's honor–and also to unburden my scanner of images that had been sitting on it, unprocessed, for some time–tonight I bring you the opposite. Courtesy of Reader's Digest, a series of illustrations designed to enliven the subject of grammar. They come from a set of pamphlets issued by the magazine, publications intended to aid teachers of composition on the college level. Published in 1944.

Clear, crisp expository writing is always in short supply. Truly, I applaud the effort, and would happily hand off such advice to students, who now as then who struggle to keep noun and verb in close proximity, etcetera.

Alas, the uncredited cartoonist who labored to serve the text was up against it. The dominance of text in these images is a clue to their insufficiency for abstract explanations.

But I am partial to the crime scene.

And the madcap sentence procession.

Illustrated heckling, of supposed variety. Clever, and true.

I'm not sure what this is, but I'm not persuaded by it.

Who is FC? His monogram appears in every image. Any attribution detectives out there?

The boating metaphor for the run-on sentence is a bit forced, but really, give the guy a break. Would you want this assignment?

And really, the advice is spot on. Never! Have you ever read Leviathan? Sentences that last pages. (Yes, I know, that's a fragment.) Today we have shockingly informal stream-of-consciousness chat-a-thon "texts" that pass as writing (as opposed to typed speech).

Here's a text page, to give a sense of how the pamphlet worked, and in what voice it was written. No-nonsense admonitions, leavened by visual wit. The illustrations' real job was to prevent textual glaze-over.

Re: 10j: or, alternatively, never use like as verbal junk. "I'm, like, at the mall." Or as a synonym for say or said. As in, "He was like, ..."

Long live 10j. 

Abraham Lincoln was like, "With malice toward none, with everybody like chill, I am like so ready to get this thing over with."

These pamphlets were scooped up on my behalf by the ever-alert Linda Solovic, whose estate-sale instincts are legendary. Thanks, Linda!

Totally NOT KIDDING!!!

Advertisement, Popular Mechanics, December 1954

In Pursuit of Variety

I'm working with students on one of my favorite projects in the two-semester Word and Image sequence: the cinematic narrative problem. I've discussed it in this space from time to time, because it's such an interesting teaching challenge. 80 to 100 shots, drawn with Sharpies or brush pens to keep things simple, strung like beads on a necklace to tell a clear story. Packaged and played with nothing more complex than iMovie. In a sustained post on comics and cinema a few years back, I described the sequential narrative that must proceed one action or unit of information at a time, sans narrator.

Unlike an illustration, which may present a central focus with multiple secondary foci, a filmic image must show a single [new] thing at a single time to communicate a story. We are easily overwhelmed by motion and spectacle, so the carpentry of the story telling must be rigorously simple. We must know who is doing what where, but we must learn those things one at a time...

In the last several classes, students have made progress on charting their stories one frame at a time. A welcome development, to be sure. But yesterday's session revealed a certain plodding quality to the image-making itself. "The lights are out," I whined. "I have my popcorn. I'm ready to watch a movie." But movies are dynamic; these things were highly static, more diagrammed than imagined.

And so. I grabbed a Sharpie and began to draw, to show some variety in construction. Specifically, kinds of variety. Knobs to turn. In our discussion, we identified at least four ways to vary images en route to a clear and dynamic story.

Most fundamentally, we can adjust point of view. From which perspective do we view the action? One of the prompts involves a spaceship. As it happened, we were looking at a decent number of straight-on views of two pilots (or two people standing around talking).

Well what if we move around vis-a-vis that action? My doodles show a single space pilot. (The rocket on the launching pad was a related example; what if we're looking down the fuselage, with our characters below and at a bit of a distance?)

Scale provides another opportunity to establish variety. That is, from wide shot to extreme close up is a big range.

Placement, too. If everything is centered in the frame (a bit of a problem) we miss chances to create interest, and even to heighten meaning. (That is, the runner at the far right isn't just running, he's accelerating out of the frame.) We also talked about orientation, or the angle of arrangement.

In the comics and cinema post, I cited Herge and Milt Caniff as examples; I'm returning to them here. Above, a page from Herge's King Ottokar's Sceptre adventure with Tintin, the tuft-headed young detective. The bad guys are escaping in an automobile; Tintin pursues them on a motorcycle; they slow down just a little to permit him to catch up; they brake suddenly, and he collides with the rear of the car. He's thrown over a hedge, out cold, as they speed away.

Love this shot. Er, panel.

Our point of view jumps all over the place. We're positioned to see the action in a clear and satisfying sequence which also remains interesting to us. We don't get bored.

But there's a temptation to see this as only a question of p.o.v. In fact, the page succeeds because the compositions are so good. All those issues noted above meet in the need for dynamic visual images. We had a few conversations yesterday about perpendicular relationships and perfect horizontality, in the classic second-grader earth-as-rectangular-strip-parallel-to-the-paper mode.

Above, I've made quick linear characterizations of thrust for the motorcycle chase page. Note: aside from the word balloon/boxes, there are almost no perfect horizontals. The lines are all diagonal!

As long as we're talking about diagonals, here's a nice page from Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy, a 70s revisiting of his famous manga and television vehicle. This page is perhaps a little less relevant to the problem at hand, but I include it to show the dynamism of the page.

Finally a quick look at a few Steve Canyon strips from 1948. Strictly speaking, talking of shots in comics is misleading. Panels differ from shots in two respects: one, (often, as in the chase scene above) they have variable proportions, unlike television (4x3) and movie theatre (16x9) screens. Two, they're really more like key frames, since there are missing spaces in time even when the scene is continuous. I make the point because the problem of visual variety is critical, but not quite as subject to continuity errors. For example, the silhouetted figures of the women in panel 2 yield to more even lighting in panel 3. We understand the shift as a formal device, not a light cue.

Above, a Sunday strip with a few panels of note.

The backlit silhouetted figure is a very useful device to create shape and establish mass.

Emphasis on figures alone as the compositional raw material, with elevated p.o.v. and manipulation of scale for dramatic effect. 

A single, secondary middle value can be a kick in the pants–that is, can be used to provide mass slightly less dramatic than the yes/no of the silhouette.

These last thoughts are just technical supplements to the overarching point of this post: clarity is important, but so too are athletic storytelling and compositional panache.

Images: Herge, King Ottokar's Sceptre, a Tintin adventure that takes place in an imaginary eastern European county governed by a purportedly virtuous but besieged monarchy, 1939. Osamu Tezuka, Astro Boy No. 1, by Osamu Tezuka. Mighty Atom (Astro Boy to American audiences) was created in the 1950s. The creation myth, “The Birth of Astro Boy” was a later addition by Tezuka.English edition published by Dark Horse Comics, 2002. Milton Caniff, Steve Canyon daily comic strip, February 3, 1948; Sunday strip, August 1, 1948.

Pictorial Actions Update

Slow going at Graphic Tales this year, due to other projects. Bear with me.

I am working with students on a cinematic story delivered simply through iMovie. Here are a few scans of illustrations from To Catch a Thief, a novel by David Dodge that was anthologized in Reader's Digest Condensed Books in Winter 1952. RDCB were issued quarterly beginning in 1950, and became extremely popular. They were hardback editions but printed like paperbacks, on relatively low quality paper (at least early on), with illustrations. Through the mid 50s they used pretty good illustrators on handmade color separation projects. In such cases we get a key drawing overprinted on several runs of color masses. These things have a crude energy.

The illustrations for Thief are by Denver Gillen, a second-tier illustrator who worked in a variety of contexts. Leif Peng has a post on him at Today's Inspiration. His two-color work included Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (above). I must say I prefer Gillen's Rudolph to his other deer, in the "nature illustration" highlighted at TI.

At any rate, I'm showing the illustrations for Thief to highlight two in particular, both of which are useful as cinematic snapshots of an action, in which the position of the "camera" puts us in a spot to see exactly what's necessary to follow the narrative.

Escape Example 1.

Escape Example 2. Both are somewhat complicated images, but made crystal clear through line and mass.

For more thoughts on clear narrative pictures, especially sequences of them, see Comics and Cinema, an earlier post on subject from a few years back. A primer of sorts.

Drawing the Smell of Creamed Rice

Having survived my extended crunch period, I'm settling in to do some writing. Calmer, more sustained writing than happens on a blog, but devoted to the kind of subjects that come in for consideration here at Graphic Tales.

I'm also meaning to catch up in this space, too.

Last December, I had a nice exchange with my blog-pal Klaus von Mirbach, about whom I've written before. He wrote: Some weeks ago I started some new drawings, drawings in a book... drawing outside, waiting for the bus, in the schoolyard waiting for my little daughter, hiking through the town, also drawing in our family house, so a kind of reportage drawing. There is no order behind these drawings, may be it is a kind of self therapy for me, anyway I can not give it up. (Editorial note: I have cleaned up punctuation and spelling for clarity's sake.)

The drawings were charming. I wrote back: "I am fondest of the drawings which provide a combination of environmental information and objects and/or people. What seem to be drawings in a coffee shop from December 7, a lovely little drawing of a room with two chairs, a window and a doll in a wagon from December 10 (what does the poster caption say in the upper right corner?), drawing number 3 from December 11, and, differently, the charming drawing of the fire truck from December 7. That room with the wagon and the chairs is so lovely!"

I noticed yesterday that the latter drawing (shown directly above), which I remembered very clearly, was missing from the blog. I wrote to Klaus and he kindly reposted it.

A striking thing: these drawings are only getting stronger. Now the image of the room with the doll and poster seems less forceful, as the project gathers momentum and graphic presence. (I recently noticed the same thing about the drawings I began making in 2007-08, when my turn to reportage was new. I was excited about them at the time, and now many of them seem weak.)

Other interiors.

A magical crowd of things.

A drypoint, hand printed.

But back to the drawing with the doll and wagon and poster (detail below).

Klaus answered my question about the caption thusly:

The poster caption says, I dont know if I can explain that in English. There is a Zen Buddhist Koan... 

Question: What is the core of the true doctrine, the true teaching? 

Answer: The smell of creamed rice. 

"Doctrine" is in German "lehre" and drawing this postcard I made a mistake and wrote instead of "lehre," "leere." But "leere" means "emptiness, blankness.” I had to laugh, the core is emptiness, but that’s also a meaning of the Buddhist teaching, that everything is empty. 

How wonderful is that?

More: These drawings are a trial to tell something about my life. I am still trying and searching in this direction.The drawings were all made in 15- 20 minutes. In this time the scene has changed completely. I start to draw a person, before I finish she has gone, then another person comes on the scene and gets in the drawing. And so on. The drawing is no photo, it is made in time; but at least for me it is exactly what happened. 

Really, I just want to get out of the way and show these drawings.

Pancake ingredients.

Pancake-making supplies, plus more ingredients.

Rooflines.

In our December correspondence I wrote the following, which for me remains the headline of this work: You have remembered what makes childhood beautiful, but you have integrated knowledge into your point of view. Not easy; a gift of temperament! 

Thank you, Klaus. 

Book Signing Tonight in New York

If you're in New York tonight and you're free between 6:00 and 8:00, consider coming by the School of the Visual Arts where I'm going to be signing copies of Spartan Holiday Nos. 1 and 2.

The details are here.

Note that an RSVP is required, as security concerns require the door guard to have names of those attending. Email us at mail@spartanholiday.com.

Image: Spartan Holiday No.2, back cover. The handlettered text quotes the first two lines of a Du Shenyan poem. Du was a Tang dynasty poet (born 646 CE).

ON A WALK IN THE EARLY SPRING

HARMONIZING A POEM BY MY FRIEND LU

STATIONED AT CHANGZHOU

Only to wanderers can come 

Ever new the shock of beauty, 

Of white cloud and red cloud dawning from the sea, 

Of spring in the wild-plum and river-willow.... 

I watch a yellow oriole dart in the warm air, 

And a green water- plant reflected by the sun. 

Suddenly an old song fills 

My heart with home, my eyes with tears.