The blog of Richard Thompson, caricaturist, creator of "Cul de Sac," and winner of the 2011 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Drawing A Mostly Accurate Map

Before I drew this I went back to a Cul de Sac from April 18th 2004. Here's the first panel-


Which was also used in the first syndicated Sunday strip-


Then, because I wanted to research the roots of this image as an excuse to put off starting work on the thing, I looked at the Tower of Babel by Breugel-


Which is especially interesting because it's under construction and it's got little clouds around it. Then, in the interests of further procrastination, I looked up Mont St. Michel, which is the coolest place around-




There's also the city from that Creepy Classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-




And Minas Tirith!-




By now several weeks had elapsed, so it was time to do a rough-



That's in brown Pitt marker. Then I had to do something larger and more detailed-




This is about 11 by 17 and it's where I sketched in most of the ideas, about half of which were left out because they weren't any good. But I like this in some ways more than the final. I like the ghosts of lines and stuff that's obscured and the way it shows the process. Then I did another, simpler rough that I won't show because it's boring. But here's a detail from the final-




And now, because I don't know what else to add, here's a drawing from an old Joel Achenbach column in the Post Magazine. It's my dream house if only because it's got a great porch-


9 comments:

Unknown said...

Delightful AND educational. Thank you for the rough with the comment about portable classrooms -- now I get the "trailer park" reference. Eventually I'll make sense of the Tower of Babel connection and realize that Alice is Prometheus in drag.

chris said...

Thank you for showing the process. Very fun! It is a beautiful piece of art.

richardcthompson said...

Paul, yeah, that bit about portable classrooms was supposed to be labeled "Trailer Park" on the final, but I wrote "RV Park" instead. I don't know why.

Thanks, Cheese!

chris said...

I thought RV park was referring to the kids that are always roaming from one trailer to another... My 2nd and 3rd and some high school years were like that... Now I roam the WWW Trailer Park......

Mike Rhode said...

Sometimes it's not pretty to see how cartoonists think...

chris said...

or...how they eat!

arcticcircle said...

Have you been to Mont St. Michel? I think you capture its weirdness perfectly. What a strange place to live (the world inside your head, not Mont St. Michel...)

rama hughes said...

this is exactly the sort of thing that makes COMICSTRIPDVD collectors drool.

rama hughes said...

i posted about this on illustration friday by the way. i hope that's okay. with your permission, i would also like to print the pictures for me students too?