Continuing my POSTCARD blogging with another post profiling the design and production of the art postcards that I have been designing and printing for more than a decade. (See links to some of the previous POSTCARD posts below). On this occasion I am continuing my retrospective look back at some cards I made in the past, this time going right back to the beginning of design and production of them in 2006 and continuing into 2007. Some of my other POSTCARD posts feature batches from subsequent years. An example of these is contained in the final photo of grouped cards in this post. My postcard design project was initially inspired by a trip to Japan to study of some traditional Modernist printmaking approaches that had taken place there. My cards were produced by hand in limited edition batches with no two cards being exactly alike. Each card is unique, similar to the others but not one of an identical batch.
This production stage series of posts (IN THE STUDIO), shows some selected, assorted shots of the “making” stage, whether animation, comics, postcards, prints or paintings, in a small studio setting, with music playing in the background. I always work to music (some shots even show the music equipment and the selected CD playing for that session). These photos were taken over several years.
Welcome to the second visit to my little library collection of titles relating to comics where I hone in a small section of books on my shelves, select one title, or two or three or even more from that section, and take a closer look…and please note as I stated in the first post on this topic, the books are not shelved according to normal library rules i.e. category details…but are located by size grouping rather than specific subject grouping…however they generally all have something to do with comics, being comics or critiques of comics.
My LIBRARY posts form 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.
Remaining in Europe I am moving from Germany across to France for the second post in this series.
But this is not in France, it was a prior stopover on the way from the U.K., and a visit to the National Gallery in London to see a painting by William Hogarth, a figure who looms large in the history of comic art…that’s my hand in there gesturing to and acknowledging a work by this master of comic art. Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode, Stage 3, The Inspection, circa 1745…one of a set of 6 sequential paintings, later engraved and printed as an early form of graphic storytelling. (Photo by Louise Graber)
Next stop Paris!
At the grave of Georges Méliès. June 2019 (Photo by Louise Graber)
Now we have arrived in France, in Paris, and the first priority is the paying of respects. First, at the Pere Lachaise cemetery where we make an historical link between film and comic art, especially of a playful nature. Visiting the grave of the fantasy filmmaker Georges Méliès.
On my travels, both local and overseas, to comic art and animation events, galleries and museums I have managed to study and collect the creative work of some of my favourite artists, and sometimes have even managed to meet and converse with them. This post starts with an image from an event in Asia but the bulk of this post is set in Europe, in Germany, but it’s a catalyst to this series of blogs, a fun photo to begin with, and suggests the scale of the subject and tone of reportage. In the photo above I am at a huge event at which I made a professional conference presentation. It was called Schools From The World, and part of the Taiwan International Animation Festival, Taipei, Taiwan, May 2004. In this and future posts on this theme I shall feature some of my travels to events such as this, starting in Europe with Germany and followed by France, then moving southward to Japan and Australia and finally across the Pacific to the U.S.A. So, off to Germany to start the 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.
Some other graphics related posts in this series not dealing with comics production are the following:
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. That is now changing as the old COFFEE TABLE posts are gradually being replaced with new posts carrying the new heading FROM MY LIBRARY. The COFFEE TABLE heading will eventually discontinue and disappear. This series will take a closer look at a thematic connection involving several books from my library shelves. In particular I plan to write a series of short blog posts on aspects of comics based on books in my collection. I must admit that my collection is rather small, as libraries go, around three hundred volumes, and not a general collection but more a specific, graphic arts one largely consisting of comics, graphic novels and associated publications about comics, animation, printmaking and the graphic arts. From those fields the bulk of the volumes relate to aspects of the history and creation of comics, books about particular titles and their creators, books on cartooning and cartoonists, in addition to 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. 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, for starters, the Harvey Awards in the U.S.A. that honour outstanding work in the comics industry 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 the manga form. Manga! Yes, manga…how did that happen? It’s even on a different shelf! Sorry, I don’t know, but we will return in more detail in a future post to Harvey’s contribution to comics. I promise. For now, though, I shall discontinue the random search that lead to him because I am getting a strong message at the moment to start with manga! And so taking another leap across the library shelves, but still in the comics 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, manga being the name for 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 of manga everywhere…on buses, on trains, on the streets, lying on the pavement or left in cafes…mostly in good, near new, if recently read, condition, and generally deposited by readers seemingly happy to leave their newly purchased and read 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 and I visit it regularly…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 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 Japanese comics.
The issue of this journal, located in the large format section of my library shelves, 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) as 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.
This post concludes the collection of cartoons I contributed to U: magazine whilst working at the University of Technology, Sydney. This, plus the three previous cartoon posts, constitute an online gallery of my single panel satirical work.
As always, my thanks for the excellent advice, assistance and cartooning expertise from the wonderful Louise Graber. Other Posts of my cartoon based material include:
Continuing the profile of my art postcards here are some more recent examples from this year on various themes. These cards are hand-printed, created from a combination of drawing and printmaking in low print run editions. Once I finished a session it meant the end of that particular batch. I would not repeat the design or reprint it. Cards in an edition are all original prints, similar in design but are mono prints in as there are no exact duplicates. They fall within the standard postcard size dimensions of 10cm x 15cm or a near approximate. More information about this project is contained on the four previous POSTCARD posts (see the links below at the bottom of this post).
It’s been a long time between bowls of milk and plates of fish in my occasional series of mini-profiles of cat characters that I have created in my comics or enjoyed in others’ comics! So, in this overdue post I am focusing on the two feline characters of my own creation, Busch and Cohl, the two cats from my comic Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions Of Doctor Comics. Cohl is a cat of French origin who loves to read comics and to draw, especially with pen and ink on quality art paper. Although he favours bande dessinée, the Euro-Comics, and more Marcinelle than Bruxelle School, he has been prepared to read some manga and is beginning to find it quite appealing. Mon Dieu!
And now to the other cat in the comic, Busch, a cat of German origin who loves to eat, especially seafood, and to occasionly read comics and even to draw, with a pencil or crayon on whatever paper is to hand, even if it already has an image on it such as a newspaper or magazine page or shopping receipt. He will generally expect that drawing results in the awarding of a fish snack.
Busch can eat and Busch can dance and sometimes he goes hungry, gets seasick, goes shopping, dresses up and has tantrums.
This post continues profiling my collection of cartoons published in U: magazine or related magazines whilst working at the University of Technology, Sydney. These cartoon posts will eventually form an online gallery of my single panel satirical work.
As always, my thanks for the excellent advice, assistance and cartooning expertise from the wonderful Louise Graber. Other posts of my Cartoon based material include:
Doctor Comics 