Title page for Chapter 1: The Ingurgitator. (Collage, sketch, assemblage- © 2011 Michael Hill)

Just when I thought I could make a reasonable amount of progress on my artist book/comic Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics I have encountered a few interruptions that have resulted in delays in production. There has been a good side to this, however, of the ‘working on other interesting projects’ type of interruptions kind. One project is on Anime and Manga research into particular works of Tezuka, Rintaro, Matsumoto and Miyazaki and the films Galaxy Express 999, The Dagger of Kamui, Laputa-Castle in the Sky, and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. The other involves workshops in the sosaku hanga technique of creative Japanese printmaking. Both of these activities will form part of a Japanese Cultural Festival in Suva in the South Pacific and both are subjects that I find quite stimulating. They may even provide some material for future chapters of my comic.

In terms of the production of my comic I have managed to continue pulling bits and pieces of already completed work together and have unpicked or modified other bits that I had considered to be completed. Here’s the title page design(above) for the first chapter The Ingurgitator, as it currently stands. Originally produced in colour a black and white version will appear in the comic. It consists of a combination of image-making techniques including drawing, painting, inking, printmaking and collage. The original collage and sketch, below, were made during a trip to Shanghai to attend an Animation Expo in Hangzhou in 2007.

Original image and early draft of The Ingurgitator from my Shanghai sketchbook. (Collage, sketch, assemblage- © 2007 Michael Hill)

For a visual diary record and time-line overview of this project, read the BLOTTING PAPER production reports. Issue #1:   No.1   No.2   No.3   No.4   No.5   No.6   No.7   No.8   No.9   No.10   No.11   No.12   No.13