This is the first in a series of regular reports documenting the production process and progress of the second issue of my artist book/comic Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics. In this blog the new series of reports continues on from the those posted during the construction and launch of the first chapter/issue The Ingurgitator (see linked blogged posts #1-14 below). The new chapter, A Blot on His Escutcheon, goes deeper into the establishment of the character of Doctor Comics, the environment in which he lives and some reflected moments from his life in comics. I am making progress with this and hope to have self-published it sometime next year. The book is based on my memories of a career in education in Sydney at an art college and design school, working within the disciplines of art and design in the specific areas of film, video, animation and visual communication. The subject of comics came up quite a bit, as a method of teaching storyboarding, as a word and image project and as a medium in its own right that included the study and research of it, presentation of lectures and conference papers, the staging of conferences, symposiums and exhibitions and the writing of a thesis. It has fictive passages as well as the auto-biographical elements. Printmaking is being employed again as an image-making medium including the Japanese sosaku hanga method, along with pen and ink drawing, collage and found materials.

Proposed title page for issue #2. (Pen and ink drawing and collage-© 2012 Michael Hill)

I’m currently learning to draw bones by reading the osteology chapters in anatomy books and studying the illustrations really carefully, but more of that in the next report. For a visual diary record and time-line overview of this project, see all of 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   Issue #2:  No.14   No.15   No.16   No.17   No.18   No.19   No.20   No.21   No.22   No.23   No.24   No.25   No.26   No.27   No.28   No.29