Bone Dog Single-Panel

Here's the third single-panel from my Ivan Brunetti homework (see my last post). It features my character, Bone Dog (as usual, click to make bigger).

For those of you who don't know, Bone Dog is my comic about a skeleton dog who lives in a dump with his rat friend, Sergio. Garbage eating is involved (just look here).

This comic was drawn with a nib pen. The image needs to be cleaned up; I'm sorry. I didn't get a change to run it through Photoshop. I promised I'd post it today, so here it is, smudges and all.

More Single-Panel Homework

More single-panel comics based on homework from Ivan Brunetti's Cartooning book. Nothing fancy here. The homework was to just draw three single-panel comics (the third one is done, but I'm going to hold it until Monday).

Am I happy with these? Meh. They're OK.

I did them both over Thanksgiving weekend. This top one came from all the retro television I watched while were staying at my in-laws house in St. Louis. It's a bit dark for my taste. I mean, I generally a much more upbeat person than this.



This second one is based on something that actually happened to my wife while I was drawing the first comic(Quick disclaimer: This is NOT what my wife looks like. I just need to say that to avoid the "That's what you think I look like?" conversation). We were in a coffee house near my in-laws place and the woman next to us asked my wife if she could borrow her computer's power cord. She had the same type of computer, but it turns out a much, much newer model. The look of revulsion on the woman's face was priceless. And a little terrifying.

Anyway, these are both pretty rough, and if I really liked these, I might actually re-draw them. It was good practice, none the less.

Wednesday with Ivan: Single-Panel Exercise

As I mentioned previously, I'm working through this book. I just started week 2, which is about single-panel cartoons.

The single-panel cartoons below are the culmination of the first two exercises in week two. The first exercise involves writing several sentences or phrases based on writing prompts provided by the author. The next exercise is drawing several pictures again based on specific prompts (something scary, something sad, etc...).

Then you take the phrases and pair them with the pictures to see what works together. Here are some of mine.





I don't know that any of these really knocked me out or made me laugh, but that's probably not the point. Mr. Brunetti says in this exercise, "Surprising, even unintended, things happen when we combine words and pictures."

I like reading single-panel comics, but I've never felt compelled to do them before now. I've already started trying more (to be seen soon-ish)

If you want to see some really good single-panel cartoons, you can check this guy out. He's a friend of a friend and he's pretty funny.

88 Doodles

As I previously mentioned, I've been working through Ivan Brunetti's book on Cartooning. In coming weeks, I'll post my work here for you to see. I was thinking of calling this series "Wednesdays with Ivan" or some such silliness.

Anyway, don't expect me to post every single exercise that is in the book. First off, all the exercises teach something, but I don't think they necessarily produce great art (at least not at first). Secondly, if your interested in learning what Brunetti has to teach, go out and buy the damn book.

This exercise is supposed to be "zen" practice in drawing. It starts with drawing 100 squares in your notebook. My sketchbook is 8 1/2 x 11, so I found it easier to just make 88 one-inch squares (I owe Ivan 12 doodles). Then doodle in each square but don't take more than five seconds per drawing.

Sounds easy, right?

No. This shit was hard. It's hard just thinking of subjects! Brunetti suggests "persons, places, occupations, concepts, emotions, etc.." but man, that mental well runs dry shockingly fast.

What's way harder is keeping each sketch to under five seconds. I was rarely able to do that. If you spend only five seconds on 88 squares this should take less than 10 minutes. I think this took me over an hour (I worked on it several minutes a day over about four days).

I think the point of the exercise (along with others in the first chapter) is to try to get to the symbolic heart of an image. How little can you draw of something and still have it readable as that thing?

I like most of the drawings, but the whole sheet reminds me of those "fun" pictures on Facebook that people post and tag the drawings with their friends names (You know the ones I'm talking about)). Feel free to use this one in that manner if you're that type of person.

Difficulty level aside, I think this exercise was really liberating. I think I get caught up in making everything so perfect and (to the best of my meager ability) realistic. It amazing to think that you can make an image more readable by making it more abstract, not less.

I'm definitely going to do this again and time myself to see if I can keep each one under five seconds for each. I might make a list of subjects beforehand so I'm not wasting time thinking about what to draw.