Another last minute entry that squeaked under the tape. This was posted within minutes before midnight, Tuesday morning, and, upon posting, I realized 'embarrassing' was misspelled. I even reflexively started to try to repair, before realizing I was too late to make the midnight deadline, which, for Twitter, is irreversible. And so, as is often the case, I shrugged and let it go.
And then I realized that the misspelling is wholly appropriate and that, as long as I didn't let the cat out of the bag, it would likely seem to be an intentional misspelling.
Of course, in this strip that is hardly the most embarrassing detail being amplified. Look at the 'lean' on the speech bubble pointer over the Art (Eno) character. I'm sure that was copied and pasted from an earlier strip, and reversed (perhaps the original speech bubble was spoken by Guy), and in tracing I didn't step back and consider how it looked. A simple fuckup that shouts at me through a megaphone. "Tracing = Cheating" it always chides. It's as if the process of the comic is about enduring that continuing self-criticism.
And the Pharm Life frame. The text on the second pill so close the to the frame, and so easily repaired (yet, the repair was neglected). Looking over, I see that it could easily have been placed above. I can't even recall what thought process went into placing it at the bottom.
The worst problem comes in the second frame where the drawing of the figure on the right (this is taken from Black Mountain College photographer Jonathan Williams's image 'Beauty and the Beast') proved too much for me to replicate, and he increasingly fell into shadow until it was a horrifying exercise in blackface. The only solution was to cover it up with my faux-halftone, which I manipulated with GIMP's 'Curves' tool.
Appropriately (by the Art frame standard) the fake-out worked. Far redeeming all the other crap was the woman in that image, who was amazingly rendered with broad brush strokes. I've never done anything like it before, and I can't believe it came across as it did. Look at her arms! And her face! Even the vertical walls are meaty in their roughness. The cool halftone, by comparison, a nice contrast, and appropriate to the diary entry of the week: Robot-I (post-human) looks at my preconceptions of my own past, and wonders what I've got wrong. In this case, specifically, I had long thought writer Paul Metcalf had gone to Black Mountain College, and had realized that not to be the case. What else have I missed?
Georgia's senate win, securing Democratic majority for all three branches in early January, brought my (Georgia-born) mother to mind - the South re-forming both in our nation and also in my consciousness. Always question assumptions.
Another last minute entry that squeaked under the tape. This was posted within minutes before midnight, Tuesday morning, and, upon posting, I realized 'embarrassing' was misspelled. I even reflexively started to try to repair, before realizing I was too late to make the midnight deadline, which, for Twitter, is irreversible. And so, as is often the case, I shrugged and let it go.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I realized that the misspelling is wholly appropriate and that, as long as I didn't let the cat out of the bag, it would likely seem to be an intentional misspelling.
Of course, in this strip that is hardly the most embarrassing detail being amplified. Look at the 'lean' on the speech bubble pointer over the Art (Eno) character. I'm sure that was copied and pasted from an earlier strip, and reversed (perhaps the original speech bubble was spoken by Guy), and in tracing I didn't step back and consider how it looked. A simple fuckup that shouts at me through a megaphone. "Tracing = Cheating" it always chides. It's as if the process of the comic is about enduring that continuing self-criticism.
And the Pharm Life frame. The text on the second pill so close the to the frame, and so easily repaired (yet, the repair was neglected). Looking over, I see that it could easily have been placed above. I can't even recall what thought process went into placing it at the bottom.
The worst problem comes in the second frame where the drawing of the figure on the right (this is taken from Black Mountain College photographer Jonathan Williams's image 'Beauty and the Beast') proved too much for me to replicate, and he increasingly fell into shadow until it was a horrifying exercise in blackface. The only solution was to cover it up with my faux-halftone, which I manipulated with GIMP's 'Curves' tool.
Appropriately (by the Art frame standard) the fake-out worked. Far redeeming all the other crap was the woman in that image, who was amazingly rendered with broad brush strokes. I've never done anything like it before, and I can't believe it came across as it did. Look at her arms! And her face! Even the vertical walls are meaty in their roughness. The cool halftone, by comparison, a nice contrast, and appropriate to the diary entry of the week: Robot-I (post-human) looks at my preconceptions of my own past, and wonders what I've got wrong. In this case, specifically, I had long thought writer Paul Metcalf had gone to Black Mountain College, and had realized that not to be the case. What else have I missed?
Georgia's senate win, securing Democratic majority for all three branches in early January, brought my (Georgia-born) mother to mind - the South re-forming both in our nation and also in my consciousness. Always question assumptions.