Well. I believe it is called hubris. Last week I was Crufts' Best in Show. This week I am a pariah dog, scavenging on the outskirts of humanity, whimpering for the love and affection of days past and receiving none. That object of fragility, my ego, has been shattered into a gazillion shards; each shard slicing and burrowing into a heart full of woe. Ummm. Where else can I go with this? I know. I'm proper fed up, me!
From the foregoing you may have deduced that I did not get a single point for this week's effort. The entire tragic history may be seen here. Which begs the question, why? What? It's crap? I don't think there's any need to be quite so brutally frank, but yes, there is some substance in that summation. To be honest, I think the main problem rests on the fact that it is essentially a lazy cartoon. My missus immediately said, upon seeing it, that it was out of proportion. True. The perspective is - well, non-existent and its basic premise has been done before and done better. As I was drawing this week's entry, I remembered that, years ago, Mad magazine did a feature called Monstrous Cliches. I think it was drawn by Paul Coker jr. but (tellingly) I didn't go and check. From memory I could recall "Driving a Hard Bargain" and "Meeting a Crying Need", but I was pretty sure Mad didn't use Nursing a Grudge, although I may be wrong.
The other main fault with this and other more recent cartoons is that I have been doing everything from scratch on the Bamboo graphics pad. I freely admit here and now that it is not a technique with which I am entirely comfortable. Given time and effort it may become second nature, but for the time being I feel happier, initially, with paper under my hand and a pencil in my fingers. I have no problem using the pad to "ink" scanned in pencils, so I think I'll stick with that method for the time being.
On to the next task, or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as a new cartoon.
Hmm . . . interestingly, Brendan, you set the theme. There are a few points that could be raised from that one alone. However: when you set the theme, did you have an idea to start with? Perhaps a miserable looking Elephant Man-creature being breast-fed may have been as effective?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, but it could be that as you've set the theme, you're less likely to be voted for anyway? The expressions in the Skippy cartoon are excellent - I like the nurse carrying the bedpan in this one.
The subtleties of the simple drawn line are essential here. Your drawings are fairly clean - look at Honeysett/Ray Lowry/ Mike Williams for an unclean but hilarious 'scruffy' style. If the drawings are clear then the meaning needs to be too.
Your work has improved immeasurably since you accepted that being over-intellectual was a barrier to popular acceptance. Keep up the good work. Being a bit smutty is always good too.