The Melancholic Wife and her Perpetrating Husband Episode 1

Written by Sadhbh Lawlor

Splitting Borders No.309, a storm of firsts.

I've just posted Splitting Borders No. 309 over on our web-comic page and it's illustrated by our first guest artist David B Cooper. It's also our first all colour strip, the only previous appearance of colour being No. 59, that one red coat. And the first appearance of two new characters Isaac and Newton.

David did a great job, really bringing his strong sense of humour and pacing with wonderful characterisations of Isaac and Newton. David draws a web-comic called Perpendicular Universe, which we own a book of, he also animates The Brave and Handsome Squad and you can keep up with all of his arty ways on http://www.pucomic.com/davidbcooper/. We first met him at MCM Dublin last April where he made our first convention behind a table much, much easier with his experience and ready wit. All hail David!

I'll finish by telling you that Isaac and Newton were actually two newts of ours that have now sadly passed on. You wouldn't exactly call them the most interactive of pets but they had a certain charm that we've never forgotten. I miss them to this day and am chuffed to see them back in comic form, I don't think I'd have been able to draw their first appearance myself, probably would have been far too precious, so I am grateful to David for handling their introduction. I did draw some studies to help myself and David out.

Well I hope you enjoyed No.309, it's special to me for many reasons.

Warm-up sketches

Some weird and wonderful warm-ups I've been doing recently. I don't always remember to loosen up in this way so I'm going to start posting as a way to keep at them.

Splitting Borders

Wow, I'm feeling a bit embarrassed. Why, you may ask? Only because there's now been over 200 posts of Splitting Borders the web-comic and I'm only now getting around to mentioning it here on this blog. So I'll move swiftly on to talking about it.

Myself and Sadhbh began Splitting Borders on the 10th of April last year and we've posted nearly every week since then, Monday to Friday, which has currently added up to 214 strips. There have been monkeys and cats; cooking fails and wins; wardrobe malfunctions; and honouring of people and places. Most of all, for me, there has been massive learning about collaboration, being open to inspiration and trusting my own creativity. So in the spirit of more learning I thought that I would post some behind the scenes stuff from making the strip and give a small commentary, hopefully boosting my ability to speak eloquently about the work that I do.

So I pick a strip at random and I come up with.....No.153.

And luckily I have pencils scanned in for this one.

 

This strip was the last in a mini series of observational triptychs which were a bit of a happy accident. When we are approaching a landmark number like number's 100 or 150, which was just a few strips before this one, we like to try and, well, mark them by drawing a strip which honours the achievement. This can be a heavy task conceptually and emotionally. 

And I think there is a build-up in the lead up to these landmarks which can result in a natural low afterwards that can affect the succeeding strips. Like in No.101, where we took a tongue in cheek approach to the fear of having no ideas left. I feel that this low can open us up to inspiration. If we can remember not to push too hard, then I think it leaves space for our initial intentions and goals for the web-comic to come in to support us.

One of those goals for me was to become better at drawing and one way I know of doing that is through observation which I think this strip celebrates. I now know how to draw scarves, drapery, detailing, and body posture in a way I didn't know before drawing this strip. And on another level I got a glimpse of some of the complexities that Sadhbh has to face as a woman trying to negotiate the minefield that can be choosing what and/or how to wear her clothes, the pressure of appearance that goes with being a woman in our society, that I don't have to face, in the same way, as a man. I looked at these everyday and not so everyday items in a new way, looked at them for the sake of looking at them and recording them and that to me feels worthwhile and will stand to me in ways I can't predict.

Collider Panel at Dublin Comic Con 2013

This Saturday and Sunday the 10th and 11th of August, the first Dublin Comic Con is taking place and I've been invited by Beactive Media to take part in a panel promoting their upcoming Collider movie release. I was involved with the Collider project in 2011 as an artist on the comic tie-ins and that's what I'll be talking about. The project was personally and professionally challenging and interesting so I hopefully won't be stuck for words. This will be my first time participating on a panel at a convention so I'm excited and a little nervous at the same time. The panel is scheduled to take place on the Sunday at 1200.

http://www.beactivemedia.com/2013/08/irish-comic-book-turn-feature-film/

An Artistic Response

I attended a march protesting against austerity in Dublin on Saturday the 9^th and the night before me and my partner decided that we would make our own placards to carry with us. We researched imagery and dived into fuller information concerning the protests both in Ireland and abroad and these were the two images that we came up with.

The first is what I chose to compose. A jaded looking face with his mouth taped over representing for me the challenge of finding your own voice in these large issues and how I can both censor my voice through disowning my power and feel censored by larger institutions attempting to take away my power.

The second image was chosen by my partner Sadhbh. It is of a smiling face, a person who can choose how to be, how to feel. It is composed to represent that choice and that, in the face of overwhelming problems, there is a well inside of us that responds to positive action and not to the type of action that the austerity measures represent.

I was pleased with how they turned out and a little self conscious to be out marching on the streets holding up my own work as a statement. They received a good bit of attention and I was even asked to speak to a documentary crew, which was both fun and scary. I managed it as best I could though and didn't feel completely ridiculous afterwards and apparently I have a great voice for recording. New string to add to my bow, I guess.

My friend who dresses up as a bat

I was nine years old when I first met Batman.

We've been friends ever since.

My own little worlds.

Yesterdays post has put me in a reminiscing mood. In writing a little about Turtles and Transformers, I remember the cartoons that hooked me as a kid.

Not just the above mentioned but also He-Man (By the power of Grayskull!), Mask (Crusaders, working all the time!), Defenders of the Earth (Defenders!), Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (I still have no idea what it was about), Voltron (a first love), (Thunder-Thunder-Thunder) ThunderCats, and can I remember it all without googling; Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf, Strength of the Bear, Speed of the Puma…BraveStarr.

I still have my Tex Hex action figure, which reminds me of all the toys I had and still have. Then my mind starts to overflow in a tidal wave of memories like pitting He-Man against a troop of GI-Joes (GO JOE!) in an oversized Action Man tank and…….wait. What am I doing? Where am I? This isn’t 1987?

I was talking about the cartoons, yes, not the toys. I’ll have to come back to them at a later date, definitely. I’m putting my Boglin down now.

For me cartoons weren’t just a reason to get up early on Saturday mornings or most other mornings for that matter. They were also a window into a world of imagination and creativity. In each of these half hour episodes were contained a fully realised world, some more fully realised than others admittedly, but worlds that had been created and maintained as separate, satellites to the real world. Satellite worlds in which unnumbered stories could be told about heroes and villains, robots and aliens, people and places. Limited only, I believed at the time, by the breadth of your imagination. But most of all these worlds were not made by an alien or super-being; they were made by people, just like me. Well adults, and even though I could believe at the time that some of these adults were aliens, I did know that one day, in a galaxy, far, far away, I would be an adult too. I’ve been striving to create my own world ever since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-wKXHbjeVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJMrxuYzDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Lalfph7I0

Robotic Crotch Lasers

I have been ‘good’ at drawing from an early age, for as long as I can remember really. What this meant, for me, was that I could put down on paper a cartoon robot that closely resembled the one living in my brain, suggestive crotch laser and all (yes I drew a robot that had what I intended to be a short tail laser but, not quite having a handle on the rules of perspective at the age of nine, said laser looked like mechanical genitalia and yes it did appear in a school yearbook, I blame the editor).

I could copy my favourite Transformers (Optimus Prime, Dinobots, and Ravage) though I did prefer to create my own characters. I remember there was a kid in my class in primary school who could draw really cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stuff and I was so jealous because I’d try to draw them but I’d get distracted and draw something else that popped into my head. Yes I know it’s probably better that I drew my own creations but, let me tell you, he was the popular artist guy for at least a year solid and sometimes you just want to draw really cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Raphael, mostly). Bitter? Me? No.

Most importantly though, for me, was that I could look at something; an apple, a leaf, a model aeroplane; and I could draw an accurate representation of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I was a child prodigy capable of drawing photorealistic pencil studies of anything my gaze surveyed. No, thanks to the lottery of genetics, I found I had a natural talent for drawing from life. I have rested on the laurels of this talent at various times during my artistic progression but I have found that I’m happier and prouder of myself when I push myself to grow this seed that is my talent and challenge and strengthen it with hard work.

What follows is a reconstruction and does not necessarily represent the actual crotch laser drawing. Can you spot it?

The Next Step

It’s been a challenge to start posting regularly again, there are the stresses and strains and wants and needs of life calling and pulling in different directions. But there’s also a hesitancy in me, that has nothing to do with outside influences, which is all my own.

I feel it’s in part down to the break I took from working. I’ve spent the last year focusing on looking after myself and it can be an isolating experience at times as there is a self-involvement that needs to take place in order to admit that; ‘Hey, I’m sick, I need to go easy on myself a bit!’

As well though, and this is coming up for me now because I’m getting back to work and I’m wondering; am I ready to commit to working for other people now? Will I wait another week or do I just send out the emails today? But on top of all these questions is the knowledge that I don’t want to work in the same way I was working before my break. This doesn’t apply to stylistically or creatively really. For me they grow and change organically. I’m talking more about attitude, more about how I approach the doing, the strategising. I was ‘working’ a lot and not getting a lot of work done. Early mornings, late nights and a lot of creative blocks to the point where I think my drawings look pained in themselves, constipated characters.

So here I am again, about to set out to work for the company in England, the agent who wants that finished book, the cool independent project that speaks to my soul, and the little voice in my head that says 5 more minutes, 5 more minutes. And I look at these sketches and doodles and I try to remember to treasure the freedom, the invention, and the brave individual expression that they can represent.

A Doodle Retrospective Part Three

Back to my doodle scraps today. I think of them as messy musings on texture, action and character, I think of them as a lot of different things it seems. Projections of my brain onto a page. The first image has some more spiky haired poses with some facial hair scribbles and a hairy troll like creature with a staff. I remember I was reading the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant at the time and this was inspired by the hairy troll-like creatures in it whose name I can’t remember right now.

Then we have ‘The Helmet’, I’m not sure where he came from or to which recess of my brain he has gone to since but I do remember wondering if his wearing a fancy helmet was enough to warrant a superhero career or just gave him the power to access any construction site in the world. I’m not sure if the guy on the right was meant to be his mild-mannered alter-ego, let’s say yes.

I really like the lines of action through the figure on the left. I love the shape of the face mask too. He makes me think of a vicious ballet dancer and reminds me of Vega from Street Fighter II, probably my favourite character from the game to look at but not my favourite to play with. I’d have to argue that out with myself and if I got started this post would probably go on forever so I’ll leave it for another time (Ryu, yeah maybe, but what about Sagat, Balrog had his pugilist charms and Dhalsim was fun, stop, stop).

Lots of body poses on these pages, they remind me of the importance of the body in communicating emotion and mood. The stance of a character, be it the tilt of a head or even the flick of a finger, all help to express what is happening in a characters paper and ink mind.

Brown Paper Bag Drawing No.8

The return of the Brown Paper Bag Drawing! All this posting of my doodles has inspired me to take up the brown paper canvas again. They originally started because the shop I used to work in had brown paper bags, which made an ideal canvas on the bus home when I had forgotten a notebook.

This one I call Captain Coalface (alliteration is a wonderful thing). The idea for him came to me last night as I was dumping the ash from our fireplace. The words ‘coal dust’ came in to mind for no apparent reason and I was struck by the thought of how enigmatic they sound. Now it may have been the dust from the ash blocking the oxygen from my brain but just ponder it for a moment. Coal Dust. It conjures a mysterious, dark, character to my mind. Which Captain Coalface is not. And the reason is because my thoughts then turned to the wonderful comic Dial H written by China Mieville. 

If you haven’t read it, it contains a telephone-like device which the protagonists dial to become a superhero. The heroes they can become are totally random with names like; Tree Knight, Cuttlefist, The Planktonian and Daffodil Host (who entrances his enemies in a poetic reverie and has a bunch of daffodils for a head). So my thoughts turned to the slightly odd, slightly campy Captain Coalface with his Pick of Justice to mine out the truth and Coal Grenades to blast the rockface of criminality.

A Doodle Retrospective Part Two

Posting these scribblings for myself helps me to look at them in a new way. I generally leave them living on a shelf somewhere and while searching for something completely unrelated, I can’t resist pulling them out for a look and end up forgetting what I was doing.

First comes nostalgia as they take me back to the where and the when they were set down. Then inspiration and curiosity arrive as I wonder if I could expand on some of the ideas.

And then amusement hits me in the belly as I question what I was thinking when I was drawing some of the stranger doodles and if I’ll have to hand back my artistic license.

I do hesitate to post them though because sometimes I don’t view them as ‘good’ art or display worthy or ‘look at the amazing things I can do with a pencil/pen/crayon/stick of blackened wood’ art. In short art that displays my best side. But then I remember a book I read, ‘Letters to a Young Artist’ by Julia Cameron, an imagined dialogue between an old writer and a young artist. One of the letters is about the importance of making ‘Bad’ art or just art for its own sake, and I am able to get over myself.

So, what do I learn from these scratchings, well:

-I still prefer black biro though red has made a showing (controversial).

-Pointy hair was in.

-As was scowling.

-My girlfriend likes to annotate some of my drawings for humorous effect. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-To-A-Young-Artist/dp/1844135594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355419512&sr=8-1