J.T. QUINN FIGURED IT OUT!

For a long time I've admired Will Elder's watercolor technique in "Little Annie Fannie" but I could never figure out how he did it. Now, thanks to an animation artist named J. T. Quinn I think I understand it.
A couple of months ago I stumbled on Quinn's blog called "JT QUINN SKETCHBOOK" and there it was, Elder's Annie Fannie technique adapted to Quinn's own sketch ideas! I recognized the look instantly!
Reading on I discovered that Quinn had taken a class with Harvey Kurtzman at SVA in New York city. Kurtzman taught the class Elder's way of painting watercolors. You build the color slowly with layers of transparent washes. Eventually you get a rich, brilliant glaze then you finish by spotting the most important color areas with a little gouache. It sounds simple but I had to read about it in Quinn's blog before I could figure it out.

Quinn's a pretty good sketchbook artist. If you visit his blog you'll find the Elder section archived under August 21, 2005.

TWO KILLER JOHN CARICATURES

Here are a couple more caricatures that John did of me. When I think about the John drawings of me that I've posted up till now I'm amazed at how many ways there are to draw just one face. There's the optimistic me, the seedy me, the retarded me, the rat me, the eager me... it goes on. A number of the ways of thinking about me required John to try a different kind of line or a different design concept.

I don't post these drawings out of ego, because I'm the model. I do it so this aspect of what John does will get into the historical record and so that these techniques won't be lost. And since history is watching I'll cop to accidentally cutting off the final "D" in "dreaded."



Here's me in pantaloons and cod piece. I'm stupid-looking here so the "V" of the head in the disdain drawing is inverted so the wide part is on the bottom, as if my head is too stupid to resist gravity. I like the tiny soda under the soft, rubbery upper-lip flap. The five o'clock shadow looks like it's made of toothbrush bristles. Tiny granny glasses cover the seedy eyes and the long, thin spectacle arm extends all the way back to the hay-filled ear. Warts, of course.

I like the restraint involved in making the wart on the end of the nose tiny and understated. If it had been bigger it would have taken our attention away from the elegant, sloping line formed by the nose and forehead. This long, continuous line is the true focus of the picture.

STEVE'S MIRACULOUS CARICATURE MACHINE

I have no idea what the final layout of this post will look like. I used Blogger settings that I was
warned away from by friends but which I had to try because my curiosity about them was eating me alive. If it all looks chaotic when it's published then I offer my apologies in advance.

Anyway here's some samples from Steve Worth's amazing caricature machine, which is actually a Mac laptop with a camera built in and with Mac Photobooth software installed. This is a $1500 package but that's probably peanuts to the filthy rich artists who frequent this blog. Just get your butler to pick one up next time he goes for a caviar run.

This program is amazing. It contains dozens of virtual lenses all of which distort the face in a different way. You just move your face around infront of the camera till you find a distortion you like then you click to save it.

I learned a lot about drawing by spending less than an hour with this machine. Look at the hand pictures...I never thought of drawing hands that way till I saw these snapshots! This is a great machine but it's going to put a lot of marker and pastel caricaturists out of business. If you do caricatures for a living then consider yourself warned!

My uncertainty about the final layout makes it impossible for me to assign names to the photos. The friends skewered here are: Steve Worth, Jon Trapnel, Marlo Meekins and myself. One more thing...um...I'm not as fat as I look standing behind Jon. That's a camera distortion. Just thought I'd mention that.

Thanks a million to Steve Worth for letting me use these pictures!

HANDS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN

I love to draw hands. That's because hands have a life of their own.

Hands are pretty good at revealing what their owner really thinks. A face may listen to a boring speaker with what looks like rapt attention but way down below the hands are playing with keys or tapping on the table. Sometimes the hands are more than just magnifiers of their owner's true feelings. Sometimes they have feelings of their own. Hands may be macho, gay, happy, sad, lecherous or virginal, even if their owner possesses none of these qualities (these thoughts cry out for drawings to illustrate them. Sorry, I didn't plan this post very well). I'd love to do a short, pencil-test film of an extreme version of this idea where a guy's hands, acting completely on their own, grope the people around him and get him into trouble.

Here's a drawing where the excitable hand is frightened and clings to the face, which is only mildly disturbed. At least that's what I had in mind when I drew it. The understory about the excitable hand is sometimes for the artist only. Sometimes you want the understory to be so subtle that the audience isn't even aware of it.
Most stories don't lend themselves to this hand theory and those I board the normal way, as above. Even so, it still works for the occassional scene. I'll try to find some examples.

WOULDN'T IT BE FUN TO DESIGN A TEXTBOOK? (PART 2)

A good textbook would have to have lots of faces. Kids need to see examples of civilized, effective, kind and intelligent adults.
It's a good idea to get these pictures from fine art sources. Fine art does a good job of isolating noble qualities.

Some of these fine art faces also get across the idea of man as a rational, fundamentally decent being. What an interesting idea to propose to kids who may see only the dark side of life at home!

THE NEW REN & STIMPY DVD IS OUT!!!!

Do whatever you have to do to get this DVD! Steal purses from little old ladies, sell your children into slavery....anything! It's that good!

A lot of fans were put off by some of the gags in these cartoons and it's easy to see why. There's some gay jokes, some cruelty to animals, some gross gags...most people will find at least one thing that rubs them the wrong way in here. That's the bad news. The good news is that the remaining 99% of the content is pure bliss and, taken as a whole, the contents of this set are probably the most innovative and funny thing to happen in animation in the last half century.

For me the best cartoons in the box, the pearls of greatest price, are "Naked Beach Frenzy," "Ren Seeks Help" and "Stimpy's Pregnant." Naked Beach Frenzy is hands down one of the funniest cartoons ever made. I defy anyone to sit still during the lifeguard and Shampoo Master sequences. Ren Seeks Help is packed with tour de force acting scenes which will probably change the way animation is done forever and Stimpy's Pregnant contains what might be the greatest Mr. Horse sequence ever. And those are just the top three ! I could write all night about the great gags in the other films!

It's a digression but I can't help putting up the note John wrote to his fans on a card on the inside of the box. John is not only the greatest artist working in the industry but he's the greatest writer as well. These are beautiful words. If you read enough of what he writes you begin writing and talking that way yourself. Like everything John does the words beg to be imitated.

BTW, people who pre-paid for the set are getting their's in the mail now. I'm not sure when the discs will appear in the stores.

WOULDN'T IT BE FUN TO DESIGN A TEXTBOOK!?

You'd want to have lots of exciting images in it. You'd want pictures that provoke kids to crave adventure and seek out awe-inspiring events. Let some other book prepare kids for a life of quiet desperation and bureaucracy. This one would show the cubs what it would be like to be a lion!

Kids textbooks should be awe-inspiring! They need to contain pictures like this one of what could pass for King Kong's island. The feeling of menace is palpable! It's also a picture that's full of hope and aspiration. It seems to say, "If you have the guts to get here I'll show you wonders beyond anything you've ever imagined!"

A terrific image for a kid! Earnest and competent adults risk their lives for what they believe on the surface of a mysterious ocean far away from home!

It probably sounds like I'm trying to turn kids into soldiers or pirates. That's because I only have the bandwidth for four pictures so I'm limited to expressing a single thought here. Of course there's more to life and textbooks than what I've presented here.

There would have to be lots of maps in the book. Kids love maps especially when they're illustrated as beautifully as this one. There used to be lots of visionary, artist-conceived maps, especially in the 1910s to 1930s. Present-day maps are merely informational.

MORE "INDIANA JONES" PICTURES

Here's a few interesting pictures from my picture file. I believe this (above) is the ramparts of an old, fortified town in Hungary. I love this picture because it sucks you in and makes you want to run along the colonnade like a kid. Can't you hear the thumping of running sneakers on the wooden floor?

Why can't modern architects make spaces as interesting as this? The roof tops are fairly plain and unadorned but their placement makes them fascinating to look at. From the point of view of an observer looking over the railing the roofs form a kind of roof city, a mysterious town above the normal town, inhabited by...what? You can't stop your mind from weaving stories about it.

A cool castle. I don't know anything about it. I swear this castle just appeared in my file without me scanning it in.


Here's a covered bridge (above) in Switzerland. Notice the paintings up in the rafters. Why would anyone paint pictures in such an exposed place? The wood is thick, ships beam/ Ghepetto's workshop wood. Is there anything more beautiful than thick, weathered, structural wood? The sides seem a bit tall to me. Maybe that's to protect users from cold, icy winds that howl down the stream in the winter.

IF YOU'RE A GROTESQUE ARTIST....

IF YOU'RE A GROTESQUE ARTIST, STOP IT! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!!!!

There are a lot of grotesque artists out there. I feel sorry for them because there's no market for this stuff. At least the over-the-top grotesque artists like the guy who did the picture above can probably get published in punk or alternative magazines. What about the artists who are hybrids: half normal and half grotesque? These unfortunates are doomed. They're not drastic enough to appeal to punks and not normal enough to appeal to a mass audience. If you're one of these caught-in-the-middle types I have a valuable piece of advice for you...stop doing what you're doing! Stop it right now, this minute! Either get more drastic or get more normal! Stay where you are and you'll be eating cereal for dinner for the rest of your life!

I wish I could have illustrated this piece with drawings that are more illustrative of this middle condition. I couldn't bring myself to hold fellow cartoonists up to up to ridicule so I opted to use classic pictures instead, only I had trouble finding them. Thomas Rowlandson is a famous grotesque artist but I couldn't find really good examples of his work. The lame Rowlandson above is the best I could do.

I also tried to find examples of my own inadvertantly grotesque art. Normally my house is cluttered with this stuff but now that I need it I can't find a single drawing. By grotesque I don't mean the extreme Worm poses I've posted so far. They're just exagerrated. Believe me, I have nothing against wild or extreme cartoon drawings. By grotesque I mean drawings that are unintentionally off-putting to the audience, which lack an understanding of the principles of design and therefore have no pleasing elements to balance out the gross parts. Grotesque art of the kind I'm talking about subverts the intent of the artist which was simply to be funny.

Please don't ask me to evaluate your work. I wouldn't presume to do that! All I can offer is advice: if you even suspect that you fall into the category I'm talking about then get a designer friend to redraw some of your questionable drawings so you can see what you might be doing wrong. Pay the person if necessary. You want to keep the guts and humor of the grotesque drawing but use design to make it more appealing. Think of Rod Scribner. He managed to be appealing and drastic at the same time.

Basil Wolverton is often sited as the ultimate grotesque artist. I don't see him in that light. He knew how to use design to make the gross elements more palitable. In the drawing above he balances out the grotesque face with straight, ordered hair. He lets plenty of airspace into the face which softens it. The drastic face is integrated with the whole, sedate grey and red graphic surrounding it.

A FEW MORE WORM DRAWINGS!

A commenter said there was a big difference between the colored Sally (above) and the black and white layout drawing (below). Boy, there sure is! The color drawing feels a lot more psychological, a lot more like it's embedded in a story. The color also puts less emphasis on the armpit, which is not a bad thing.


Here's the Worm (above) preparing to apologize to the human. He's drawn three different ways here and it all still seems like the same character, at least it does to me. I'm amazed at how forgiving animation is! At other places in the story he's drawn differently than anything you see here!

Apparently the audience will accept differences like this as long as you occassionally return to a model and as long as you show differences up front, at the beginning, so people know what kind of cartoon they can expect. Model sheets should be a guide, not a pair of handcuffs.


No more Worm drawings at hand so I'll throw in another of my ghost sketches (above). I love to draw ghosts. They do commonplace things in an uncommon way.

A FEW MORE DRAWINGS!

Boy, I'm really busy right now so I have to put up something quick and easy. Here's a model of a cavegirl that I did (above), taken from the mouthchart. I love drawing women that aren't pretty. I and a handfull of others have the non-pretty field to ourselves since pretty girl art is experiencing something of a silver age right now.

Here's the same cavegirl from the back. It would have been funnier with a slight buttcrack but it was for kids TV so... The woman on the right is a sort of Don Martinish varient on the Avery woman in the famous Screwy Squirrel cartoon. It looks like this version has some cleanup problems, especially around the feet and hands. I think we corrected that in the final model, at least I hope we did.


Here's a lady with a purse floating in the air, going around in a circle and being squirted by a perfume atomizer which is also floating. The reason she's doing this is....Aargh! It would take too long to explain! I've gotta get back to work!

WHAT DO KIDS BOOKS MEAN?

Kids illustrated books used be pretty sedate, even when they delt with horrific subjects like a wolf trying to eat Red Riding Hood (above).

At some point radical utopian artists, which were all over the place in the late 1800s and early 19oos discovered illustrated kids books and transformed them. The picture of Goldilocks (above) is more about the Craftsman house than it is about the little girl. The house says, "Look at me! Wouldn't you rather live here than in some dopey tenament apartment? See what you could have if only you'd throw off your blinders and stop cow-towing to the establishment!"

The utopian theme ran through lots of kids books right up tp the 1960s when reality finally matched the revolutionary weirdness in the kids books and the utopian artists bailed out into other venues. Dr. Seuss was one of the last great utopians, though I'm not aware that he had a political agenda. The picture above is typical Seuss: water flows uphill to a Venice-like city containing narrow bridges and minarets. What imagination! Someday water may be made to flow uphill (liquid helium already does) and if it happens it might come about because the person who made it possible read Dr. Seuss.

Here's a Tenggren picture (above) of a girl walking through a beautiful, menacing forest. This too is a radical, utopian statement. It's saying, "Don't you want adventure in your life? Aren't you tired of living a life of quiet desperation? Why do you allow urban sprawl to wipe out the mysterious, primeval forests that make adventure possible. Take up arms! Man the barricades!"

Here's a Tenggren witch (above). The picture is saying, "Modern life has robbed us of the textures and characters that used to make life exciting! Tear down the modern buildings and make the world safe for witches, trolls and fairies!"

Am I reading too much into this? I don't think so. Romantic utopian movements like fascism, anarchism, and hippieism had to come from somewhere. Movements like that don't suddenly spring from nothing. A film like "Easy Rider" seems harmless and quaint to us now but it was regarded as a powerful motivator to radical utopian action in its day. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" seems harmless enough now but Lincoln is quoted as saying that it started the Civil War. When you look at a really well-done old picture you have to make an effort to imagine how it appeared to the audience it was created for. You have to imagine what motivated the artist to put so much passion into his picture. I believe utopian kids picture books were one of the powerful and uncredited shapers of the modern world.

ADVICE FROM UNCLE EDDIE'S MOTHER

MOTHER EDDIE, WHAT'S THE BEST TIME TO MARRY?

The best time to marry is.....(drumroll!)...... in your early twenties! I know this runs counter to the common wisdom which says, "Enjoy life before you settle down! When you're finally ready, maybe in your early 30s, you'll have sown your wild oats and will be ready for a mature relationship." That's silly. If you wait that long you may not have any relationship at all. Here's why.

Let me digress and say that I came to this conclusion after watching Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliette" about a half dozen times in the span of a couple of weeks. When you see it that often it becomes clear that the play is not only about love but about youth. Only young people can love so passionately. Only young people would rather die than be seperated. Only young people can see each other through rose-colored glasses, ignoring each other's flaws and emphasizing each other's assets. Only young people are adaptive enough to change themselves to fit the requirements of the person they love. At this age nature is shouting at you through a bullhorn: "Get married!" "Have kids!" "This is the time!"

If you're still unmarried by the time you're 30 then you've been around the block. You know that life will continue even if you're jilted and that there's always other fish in the sea. You have standards the other person is expected to meet and if they don't...well, there's the door. You're guarded because you've had bad experiences with love. You always withold a little of yourself so you won't be devastated if the worst happens. You still want a romantic relationship but you've unwittingly removed the foundation that would make that possible.

By the time you're forty the list of attributes that you expect a lover to have is incredibly specific. If you like cats then he better like them too, in fact he better like the specific kind of cat that you like or else. I don't see a romance here but rather a legalistic negotiation.

I believe in romance. I want to be seen through rose-colored glasses and I want to see the person I'm attached to that way. Very few of us look good in the cold light of reality. I don't think romance is possible without a total commitment, without the belief that nothing will be right if you loose the other person. Since only young people can feel this way I conclude that all great romances must begin when the couples are young.

Are there exceptions? Yes, millions of them! So many that I hesitated to write what I did. I know people who met late in life and are as happy as it's possible to be. I also know people who've divorced because they married too early. Even so, I'll stick by romance and early marriage as the standard model from which there are many legitimate and happy variations.

BTW, Let me acknowledge the happy exception represented by two recently married friends, Kr. and Shv. These guys are perfect for each other and I don't think they could be any happier, even if they were teenagers like Romeo & Juliette.