This is the fourth post documenting the production of my creative fish prints. I made these using woodblock printmaking techniques for use use in my experimental animated film Toxic Fish (see photos below).The fish represented in this sequence is the Kohada. Its static shape on the woodblock contrasts with the flooding of coloured toxins. These represent commercial pollution that is spread around the fish and eventually poisons it. There are variations in the volume of ink applied to the block and the choice of hue. These produced a range of similar outcomes when edited in sequence. This contributed to the creation of the illusion of movement. Film screenings: Animation Festival, Esphino, Portugal (see certificate at bottom of post),…Art Gallery of NSW and the Big Day Out rock festival.
Welcome to another post on books about comics art…where I hone in on a small section of my shelves…select a few titles…and take a closer look…and as I have previously stated, the books are not shelved according to normal library rules…but by size rather than subject…however, they generally all have something to do with animation or comics art.
My COMICS ART posts form part of my graphic based material…this includes the fields of drawing, painting, printmaking and cartooning…including artwork for my comic and graphic novel BLOTTING PAPER: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics.
Continuing my posts profiling the design and creation of art postcards that I have been making and printing. On this occasion I am looking at assorted batches that I have made in the past…going right back to the earliest designs in 2006 and some subsequent batches from the following few years.
This post features assorted photos of the production stage of my art projects…whether on postcards, prints, paintings or comics…produced by hand in a small studio…whilst listening to music (some photos show a glimpse of the music machine and the disc being played)…taken over the past few years.
On my travels to comics art and animation events around the world…I have studied the creative work of many notable artists. Sometimes I have even managed to meet and converse with them. This post starts with an image from an event in Asia then moves to Europe, in Germany. It’s a catalyst for a series of blogs with a fun photo to begin…the Taiwan International Animation Festival, Taipei, Taiwan, May 2004. In future posts I shall feature some of my travels to events such as this…starting in Europe with Germany and followed by France, Japan and Australia and finally U.S.A. So, off to Germany we go to start my journey!
My TRAVELS posts form part of my graphic based material that includes…painting, printmaking, cartooning and scrapbooking including artwork for my comic and graphic novel BLOTTING PAPER.
NEWS…CONFIRMING THE COMPLETION OF MY COMIC, NOW GRAPHIC NOVEL…BLOTTING PAPER! I have completed the final stage of the writing and editing of my comic…or should I say…graphic novel…as what began as a single origin publication has ended up in half a dozen units! Now all six chapters will be compiled into the graphic novel format. This includes the previous three separate comics that made up The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi No.1No.2and No.3 that were not initially intended to form part of the BLOTTING PAPER comic. The title remains Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics. All six chapters will be made available on my Blog. Below are some photos from the original launch back in 2012 at Hondarake Full Of Books bookshop in Sydney. Eight years later the work is essentially complete. Here is a photo from the original launch.
I have started the process of reflecting on some aspects related to my thinking about comics. Here is an initial basic formula I have put together…in developing an overall appreciation of the thinking of the philosophical aspects of comics.
Welcome to an initial visit to my library with a new format! It’s been a long time since my library posts on this blog appeared under the title COFFEE TABLE. The old COFFEE TABLE posts are gradually being replaced with new posts carrying the heading RESEARCHING COMICS ART. The COFFEE TABLE heading will discontinue. This new series will examine thematic connections in books that I have bought, borrowed or loaned from libraries. There will be short blog posts on aspects of comics art based on books that I have read. I must admit that my own collection is rather small, as far as libraries go…less than three hundred volumes, and not a general collection but more a specific, comics and graphic arts one…and somewhat randomly acquired…largely consisting of comics, graphic novels and associated publications about comics art, animation, printmaking and graphic arts in general. From those fields the bulk of the volumes relate to aspects of the history and creation of comics art…books about particular titles and their creators…books on cartooning and cartoonists as well as actual copies of comics and graphic novels.
This small section of ten books on one of my shelves is simply a starting point…for a series of proposed blog posts, some specific, some general, about my collection of books on comics art. As previously stated, the majority of the books in my collection are on the subject of comics. They have that in common and to start this series…I have randomly selected the volume about Harvey Kurtzman, third book from the Left in the photo above. Who is Harvey Kurtzman? Well, the Harvey Awards in the U.S.A. that honour outstanding work in comics art…are named after him due to his contribution to North American comics and cartooning…that included his cartooning contribution to MAD MAGAZINE.
Having said that and introduced Harvey I am now having second thoughts about starting with his work. Although this is an excellent book selected at random…and Harvey Kurtzman is an outstanding figure in comics history…whose work ranged from war comics to Playboy Magazine cartoon strips, I am suddenly distracted by thoughts of manga. Manga! Yes, manga…how did that happen? It’s even on a different shelf! I don’t know, but I shall follow this momentary distraction. and return to Harvey’s contribution to comics in a future post. So, taking another leap across the library shelves…but still in the comics art domain, I’m landing here, in a different place with other books. In doing so we are switching from New York (home of Harvey Kurtzman) to Osaka (home of Osamu Tezuka)…and moving from comics to manga, the generic name of Japanese comics, and to our second book from the shelves. At least the manga book is by an American author, Frederik L. Schodt, so some consolation for the Kurtzman title from Kitchen and Buhle.
I got excited about manga during my first visit to Japan on a research trip back in 1987. There seemed to be copies everywhere…on buses, on trains, on the streets, lying on the pavement or left in cafes and laundromats…mostly in excellent, near new, if recently read, condition,…and generally deposited by readers seemingly happy to leave their copy for other readers, or so it seemed,…although I never actually witnessed anyone performing this act of generous abandonment. However, I was a frequent beneficiary of this practice by comics comrades. The book above, was not found in this manner, however, but was purchased. I bought it from the Kinokuniya bookstore at Umeda Station, Osaka. It was my first visit to that store. Decades later one opened in my home city of Sydney, Australia. I visit it frequently…but back to Osaka in 1987 that purchase became my first book on Japanese comics. It was in English…well the text was…but all of the illustrations and graphics were in Japanese, in manga form! It also contained a foreword by legendary Japanese comics and animation genius Osamu Tezuka. The book was written by a notable American comics studies authority Frederik L. Schodt, whom I met and learned from a few years later at a comics forum at Sydney University. This book does what its title declares in providing a broad introduction to manga and the world of Japanese comics. Liberally illustrated with a wide range of graphic styles and genres it’s a good starting point for understanding manga.
The issue of this journal by the notable American magazine on comics, The Comics Journal…was published almost 20 years after the Schodt book(above). It features a profile of five masters of the manga medium…Hino, Maruo, Ono, Tezuka and Tsuge in its cover story. This updates and deepens the general knowledge on manga in English,…available at the time of Schodt’s writing(1983) as well as providing large format graphic illustrations of the manga form.
I even started learning the Japanese language through this magazine MANGAJIN…that made extensive use of manga style graphics and layout…in its visual communication design and cartooning as a method of teaching the Nihongo language to English readers and students.
This post forms part of my graphic based material…that includes the fields of painting, printmaking and cartooning…including artwork for my comic and graphic novel…BLOTTING PAPER: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics plus my scholarly research and study of the comics medium.
It has taken me some time to finish wrapping up production of this title but things are finally taking shape. The latest development in my comics creation and production scheduling is that two of my titles will now be merged. These two titles are my most recent project working title…The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi and my longer, earlier work Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics. The former, that took the form of some of a sequel to the previous title,…now becomes an additional chapter…actually the final chapter of the Blotting Paper graphic novel. My initial thoughts were to make it a stand-alone comic…despite it having some connections to the main title by virtue of sharing some of the same characters…however, I have now opted for closure of the production period…and time to wrap it all up in one bundle. This means that The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi will cease being a proposed stand alone comic title…and instead become a chapter title of Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics. Despite this manga merging, their blog posts that were completed with the different title of The Kappabashi Cat Nos. 1, 2 and 3…will remain as existing blog posts, retaining their original title and date and history, and accessibility on this site. Sorry about the changes but I hope that has clarified matters.
The above image shows a rough cover design of the proposed comic The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi…that is now being merged with Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics as Chapter 6…the final chapter of the intended 300 page graphic novel. Although the Doctor Comics character does not appear in this chapter one of his cats, Cohl, does. Living in the Kappabashi area of Tokyo…Cohl learns the Japanese form of woodblock printmaking called sosaku hanga. This is the same method that Doc had employed…and demonstrated to his cats at their home in Sydney whilst making a series of creative prints. This edit wraps things up in terms of the story. In this final chapter Cohl becomes, as the title of that chapter infers, The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi.Wherever he was at this time, I am certain that Doc would have been impressed and offered his enthusiastic support.
Above, a page from Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics showing Doc at work making woodblock prints…an act that Cohl would have observed on several occasions back in Sydney when Doc and the cats lived together…and that would have possibly inspired Cohl to take up printmaking on his arrival in Japan.
Yet another page from The Cat Cooking Comics In Kappabashi…now Chapter 6 of Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics…showing Cohl’s artistic development with his manga mixing…his printmaking and his creative layout of prints…with panels and pages from the randomly found manga during his travels in Tokyo.
I hope these edits will bring these separate units together under the one title of…Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics. It seems the best solution at the moment.
Continuing my blogging with another post profiling the design and production of my art postcards. This time I am showing the process stage…rather than the finished outcome that has been shown in preceding POSTCARD posts. Generally the postcards are given multiple layers of graphic treatment,…whether through painting or printmaking or a combination of the two. In this post I have displayed two examples of the first stage of printmaking,…and two with a second layer, from a series of cards of different editions over the years. These images have been taken from the design and printing of the base layer or layers of the image…prior to adding overlays, colour, embellishment and logos. The photos show the first, or first two layers of a printmaking run…establishing the base layer, or two base layers (one base layer plus one overlay). Within a print run the initial layer will be the first of more layers…perhaps two, three, four or more, that will follow.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect at this stage of the printmaking to discern…is the noting of differences in the design of the cards of the same edition. Although the completed print run of cards will carry the same title…no two cards will be exactly alike due to variations in the printed layers. This makes me a renegade printmaker. In my work there are no exact duplicates…and in that sense, all of the cards may technically referred to as monoprints i.e. not identical despite the whole batch carrying the same title. At the end of the print run following the addition of more layers…this difference will remain discernible, possibly even more so. All of the finished cards despite minor differences from each other, will share the same nomenclature and date of production.
Here is another set of postcards following the design and printing of the base layer. The variation and difference in appearance of these cards, from the same batch and print run, is already discernible.
This batch has had two passes across the print table…the base layer followed by a second coating or overlay…as can be seen in the photograph. The two layers of ink that can be perceived are a base layer in blue-black…and a second that has been overlaid with a bluish-purple tint. The ink-stained wooden block used for printing the layers is located at the bottom right of the photograph. In the printmaking process the block is inked and the blank cards laid face down on it…then pressed into/against the ink, then left, wet side up, to dry.
This batch displays a range in base layer design, almost as if it has been altered during the run. This can happen but in this case…there are three distinct base designs in play using a similar tone and hue of ink. That has resulted in three separate series of postcards. Note the musical accompaniment to the printmaking process, David Bowie’s LOW on this occasion. I like to stand right up close to the speakers. I find listening to music whilst working is both calming and inspiring.
Finally, here is a set of printed postcards with a lot of variation in the base layer of the cards…both in terms of pattern shape and intensity. Despite their differences the cards in this set will be regarded as “a series”…and carry the same batch title.
NOTE: These photos were taken over a period of several years…and document the establishment of a work methodology that I follow in my practice…with one or two subsequent improvements. I thought it would be interesting to show how my procedure developed. I am considering doing further posts on other aspects of the design, production and printing my art postcards.
Doctor Comics 