This is the first in what I expect will become a regular series of reports in this blog documenting the production progress of my first solo comic. The working title has now been firmed to Blotting Paper:The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics. Partly autobiographical and partly fictive it relates animation and comics based incidents and reflections from my own academic life and from that of my avatar Doctor Comics. These include attempts to carry the comics flag within art and design education from the positions of both teaching and research, sometimes with surprising results. It also contains anecdotes relating to my own longstanding interest in reading, studying and collecting comics. Following several false starts over the past year the first chapter has been written, the design finalised and the artwork is currently being undertaken and so the comic is finally being constructed in visual form. Publication is planned for September 2011 or at least that is what I would like to think. It is already looking more likely to be in November. Printmaking is playing a major role using both woodblock and linocut method plus some work in the Japanese sosaku hanga technique and some using my existing set of name stamps, chops and seals. Below are photos of the title block in proud roughly mounted manner and a selection of my stamps that might be employed.
Typographic title of comic.© 2011 Michael Hill. (Photo by Michael Hill a.k.a Doctor Comics)
I am discovering that it is a more time consumingt process to create comic art than it is to read and review someone else’s work. On the other hand, it is a wonderfully creative experience that I am enjoying immensely, one that offers the opportunity for a degree of indulgence that the discipline of research and analysis does not. Consequently I expect I shall be spending more and more time creating and less and less time critiquing comic art. I have already changed my Twitter tag from ‘critiquing and creating comics’ to ’creating and critiquing comics.’
Time to get the stamps out! (Photo by Michael Hill a.k.a Doctor Comics)
