Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Portland Opera “Drink and Draw and Tweet” event – where a bunch of cartoonists and bloggers are invited to attend the dress rehearsal of the latest production and record their impressions. This time we all got to see Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide. A big treat for me, since I’ve read Voltaire’s book multiple times over the course of my education.
It’s a wickedly black comedy and a great show. I had a blast and filled almost a quarter of a sketchbook with doodles! Below, for your perusal. (Or see it as a set on Flickr.)
Some of this might be starting to look familiar. I suggest you maybe reread the Prologue, if it’s been awhile. (Don’t let that five year-old art stop you! Agh, my eyes.) Also, man, bunnies just have no kind of luck in this comic, do they? I swear there’s no personal vendetta at work.
Portlanders! Please join me and everybody else who is cool at Comics Underground, next Saturday (11/17) at the Jack London bar, where the fantastic Everett Patterson and I will be doing a reading of Outfoxed. I’ll be sharing the stage with several irritatingly talented people, including my studiomate Ron Chan and friend Mike Russell! It’ll be swell.
In the meantime, I put up a series of 12 Western-themed illustrations I did for a roleplaying game this fall on my Flickr stream – I’m fond of how they turned out. Click on the preview below to visit:
The Noltes might be under just a tiny bit of stress.
Happy Halloween to all those who celebrate it! (Those of you who don’t: give it a whirl, it’s the best.) Allow me to recommend you to one of my favorite personal illustration challenges ever, Danse Macabre 2.0, in which I gave myself an excuse to draw modern people being chased by medieval demise. And to think that my mother used to worry about me.
For other Halloween cartoon delights, look no further than Emily Carroll‘s typically gorgeous latest short, Margot’s Room, whose last part should be posting this Friday.
We’re really getting somewhere now, aren’t we? Heavens have mercy. (They won’t.)
I’m a little wonky under the hood this week, so I won’t try to dredge a big blog post up out of my fuzzy brain. Enjoy the page, and I will see you all next week for more fun with the Nolte family.
Meanwhile, here is Mama Quilla, an Inca goddess – click to read a little more about her and see her full-size.
Rector Nolte is having a very, very bad day. It will probably not get any better. I never had any particular fondness in the past for drawing aggravated old dudes of post-boxer physique, but he honestly might be my favorite thing to draw. Go figure.
As my aside for this week, I thought I’d point out a nice article that Laura Hudson recently posted on ComicsAlliance. She asked nearly a dozen comics creators and editors – including at least four people I can personally confirm are awesome – to sound off about how superhero comics could do a better job at depicting female characters. I’m don’t follow many capes ‘n tights titles these days, but there are lots of good, thoughtful suggestions in there that apply to any storytelling genre. Well worth the read!
Lastly, I’ve been drawing goddesses from around the world as a warmup exercise. Here are the first two – click to find out who they are and which mythology they come from!
