Mike Rhode at the City Paper

Mike Rhode, the noted author, renaissance man, polymath, comics blogger & historian, medical historian, archivist, stalker/chauffeur and good friend, just started writing on comics for the Washington City Paper online. Rush right over en masse and crash their site please, and tell Mike hello!

Artsy Stuff

Somebody asked what my palette is for watercolor, so this is it. To illustrate this I took the scrap piece of paper I put on the right side of my drawing board to wipe off brushes, catch ink splots and doodle on. I usually use a piece of watercolor paper that's got a drawing on it I've rejected. This one has what looks like a doctor sitting in an armchair; I don't remember why I did it, but it was some old illustration job. There's a pile of these rejects in a drawer by my drawing table and some date back a ways, like to the Clinton years. The medium here is pen and ink and watercolor, and in a few bits, like that almost-elephant, was scribbled with iron gall ink, an ancient type of ink that'll eat through the page, if you're lucky.

The watercolor paint I use most often-

• Hansa Yellow Medium
• Cadmium Yellow Lemon
• Yellow Ochre
• Cadmium Red Medium
• Quinacridone Rose
• Quinacridone Coral
• Quinacridone Burnt Orange
• Burnt Sienna
• Burnt Umber
• Terra Verte
• Green Gold
• Pthalo Green
• Cerulean Blue
• Cobalt Blue
• Ultramarine Blue
• Indigo

Those are the paints that are always squeezed out on my butcher tray palette. But wait- there's more! There are likely also some blobs of

• Perinone Orange
• Pyrrol Red
• Perylene Maroon
• Cobalt Green
• Viridian
• Emerald Green
• Sepia
• Manganese Blue
• Some Kind of Black (Lamp or Ivory or Carbon)

Plus maybe a few "convenience colors", some of 'em proprietary colors like Daniel Smith's Undersea Green, which is a mix of French Ultramarine and Quinacridone Gold that just looks purty. I've got a big tackle box full of paint tubes, some I've barely touched in years and some that I go through every few months. A few are no longer made, like Manganese Blue (toxic) and Green Gold (same, I think), but there are "hues" available, which is a near identical mix. The strangest tube of watercolor paint I've got is Red Lead, which is highly toxic and hasn't been made in years as an oil paint (I've got some old tubes that've since hardened) and should never have been made as a watercolor. It was stuck on a shelf at the old Pearl Paint in Alexandria, under the label for Cadmium Red, and I bought it so no one else would. I'm not about to use it either. The history of paint and pigments has some nasty things in it (like "mummy", which I leave to your imagination) and some intensely toxic substances. The most poisonous was the original Emerald Green, which was a bright, happy green good for foliage and grass. It was a copper arsenate, i.e. arsenic, and in the 19th century it was used as a house paint and for coloring wallpaper, and would off-gas when exposed to dampness. Yikes.

The piece of scrap paper up top is Arches 140# cold press, the paper I like best overall. Finding the right kind of paper for this kind of pen & ink and watercolor work, you fall between two stools; either it takes ink cleanly or it takes watercolors beautifully, and few papers do both. The cold press, with some tooth, can be too rough for pen & ink, therefor some prefer the hot press, which takes watercolor a little too weird and blotty for my taste (it's like the paint sits too far on top of the paper, but sinks in too fast).

Since John asked about this (see comment), I'll tell you. I draw a loose rough on thinnish paper, put it on the lightbox with the watercolor paper on top, draw it in ink (repeat as necessary till satisfied. Don' t overdo it, let the paint do some of the work or you're just coloring a drawing. Bo-ring), then I stretch it. This is so it can be painted without buckling. I do it like this; soak the drawn-on wc paper under the tap, both sides till all the surface is wet (this is where the importance of waterproof ink is vital), then attach it to a board. I've got this thing called a Zip-Strip (or something like that) that consists of a plywood board the size of a quarter sheet of wc paper and four plastic clamps that hammer into place along each edge, holding the paper till dry. The more common procedure is to tape it with brown tape (the kind you have to moisten) or staple it (I've got some heavy-duty foamcore board with a resin that makes is sturdy for stapling). Then wait an hour or so till it's good and dry and paint at will. When you pry it off the board it'll still be reasonably flat, with very little warping. The most enjoyable part of the process is soaking the drawing in the sink and seeing the ink turn glossy, though sometimes it's all I can do to keep myself from pushing it down the disposal.

Here are some fun links-

• Pigments Through the Ages
• Daniel Smith Watercolors
• Kremer Pigments
• The Ink Corrosion Website
• Fish Slapping Dance

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day

Who knows why I drew this, but I'm pretty tickled I did.

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day

Blackboards are fun to paint, so if I get a chance to stick one into an illustration I jump at it. It's also easier to work some words into the drawing that way, and words are marginally easier to contend with than drawing. This might be what makes one a cartoonist; not a facility for combining art and language, but an inability to decide which one you'd rather be using.

I don't know; whatever. This was done for an academic engineering association magazine, and the article detailed the sometimes-overwhelmingness of the academic life. I've only got a passing acquaintance with academia- a coupla years at a (very good) community college without graduating and a brief stint teaching illustration at the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore as an adjunct professor (I think it's called). It was a limited course of one day a week for a month, but pretty hands-on. I ran out of things to say really quickly, and the students probably wished they'd chosen one of the other professionals to learn from. But it was fun and interesting, and I did learn that as a teacher I lack the ability to teach.

I will attempt to teach you this; my secret to painting an interesting blackboard in watercolor. The board is a loose mix of two colors that I often use for a dull yet textured green: Daniel Smith quinacridone burnt orange and Holbein terra verte. They're opposites in several ways. The burnt orange is transparent and staining and the terra verte is opaque and floats above the orange. Put some of the orange down and flood it with the terra verte and it'll granulate quite nicely, then keep messing with it till satisfied. The white lettering is Schmincke's Calligraphy Gouache, which is very heavily pigmented and dense, and applied with a long, thin lettering brush. There, who says I can't teach? For extra credit, somebody please tell me why stints are always brief.

Cheese War

Sometime in the late 90s the Washington Post ran an odd story about cheese preferences in the District of Columbia and its environs, specifically contrasting brie and Velveeta. It broke down along all kinds of ethnic and economic lines based on some kind of complex poll, and I never figured out why they did it. Except it was interesting to read, so I drew this thing. Me, I've eaten about as much Velveeta as brie, though my preference remains Havarti or Swiss. I post this for anyone's benefit who needs a cheese joke today, and especially for Mr. Chris Sparks, who's an actual cheesemonger.

Happy Birthday, Elvis

We now have 75 years of Elvis, though he left this building in "77. I've posted this like ten times, but it's all I got.

Happy Birthday, Charles Addams

Go look at what Mike and Michael have to say.

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day

This was drawn for Smithsonian Magazine to illustrate a piece on various laws. Benford's Law states that in an argument passion increases in direct proportion to paucity of information (the less you know the louder you get); Godwin's Law is that, as an argument gets longer (specifically an argument on the internet), the likelihood of comparisons to Nazis or Hitler becomes greater; Murphy's Law we all know, some of us too well.

Your Unnecessary Spot Illustration of the Day

Today (January 6th) Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves (in 1540), his fourth wife. I've got all these loose drawings lying around, like the above, and I might as well post them. I don't remember who I did this for, but there are a few more in the series with a similar theme, which might be called Royalty Misbehaving.

Happy Birthday, J.R.R.R.R.R.R.Tolkien

As today is the 118th birthday of John Rail Road Tolkien, we present this scarce item, a cartoon from around 2002. The original, which was in color, was given to our friend Ben, who got us tickets to the DC premier of the Two Towers at the fabled Uptown Theater (the last movie theater around here with a balcony). This was scanned off a copy, so it's not too high-grade.

My dad gave me The Hobbit when I was about 10 and sick in bed and I still remember reading it for the first time and having weird and intense dreams. It took me a few years to get through the Rings trilogy (or nonology, or whatever it is), and in high school I got in trouble in English class for laughing because I was reading Bored of the Rings (the teacher confiscated the book and gave it back two days later saying, jeez, that's hilarious). I didn't really reread it until the late 90s, when I heard they were making a movie (that I thought would be lousy). I've got several friends who read it every year or so, and one guy I knew years ago read it on a long cross-country motorcycle trip. That seems like the ideal way to make your way through it. Just imagine there are Black Riders on your tail, and watch those miles whiz by.

Fan Art Saturday Falls On A Saturday Every Week So Far This Year

This beautiful set of figures was sculpted by Caleb Giannini, who sent me these photos. He used Sculpey and air-drying clay, and I think he's captured them just perfectly. Thank you, Caleb, for starting off another year of Fan Art with such fine work! Take a bow!

Next up, the Uh-Oh Baby Dashboard Bobblehead, sure to make drivers everywhere more alert and aware and slightly more paranoid, leading to a nationwide decline in traffic accidents.

Things To Come

To begin the year we present the cover to the Cul de Sac Golden Treasury, A Keepsake Garland of Classics, due out this June. It'll feature extensive Author Commentary (and I'll get it finished early next week, Caty! Swear!), which will no doubt deepen and enrich the reader's Cul de Sac-reading experience and provide unique insights into the creative process, and pad the book out to a coupla thousand pages if I can gas on about the creative process long enough, and god knows I can.

For more on what this means, go here.

The Uninteresting Times

This may be a little out of date (the "local hoopster" was Michael Jordan) but the sentiment still holds. Here's to a widespread increase in uneventfulness for 2010. Not that it's too likely...

From All of Us to All of You

A very happy new year!

Christmas Continued Some More, But Just Barely

This here's from just about four years ago. I redid it a couple years ago as a series of dailies, maybe two or three, but this shows the antic confusion more succinctly. And antic confusion is my middle name.

Christmas Continued Some More

I've got all these Christmas cartoons lying around that I didn't get around to posting, so I'll take advantage of the Twelve Days of Christmas. This is an Almanac from around 2000, and it was printed in the Almanac collection (you can see the "Poor Almanac" crudely whited out by me for reproduction in the book). I like getting these Christmas newsletters, though I've never sent one out. Or even sent out a Christmas card in recent memory. So, here's this instead.

Christmas Continued

Here are two old bits appropriate for the season, which I hadn't gotten around to posting earlier because of all the #@!% Christmas stuff going on. The above is a cover for USN&WR, now no longer an actual magazine, though at one time one of my favorite clients (in short, they kept me busy every week and paid well). It's in alkyd and casein paint, with some layers of Krylon to force it to dry in time (Krylon has been the savior of many a deadline-crazed illustrator and probably the bane of the ozone layer for years; even Norman Rockwell used something like it). I haven't used that technique in years, abandoning it after I figured out watercolor well enough to fake some competency. In this case, I was trying for an Ashcan School type of painting, to make it look like a turn of the 20th century sweatshop.

The below image was for the American Diabetes Association magazine, another long-time client I haven't worked for recently. DC has associations of every description (there's even an Association of Association Executives) and all of them have or had a magazine or newsletter that used freelance illustrators. You could build a pretty good career working for them, and before I got more into purer (ha!) cartooning, I did a lot of work for them, almost as much as I did for the Post.

This is in alkyd too. Alkyds are somewhat like oils, though their texture is a little tarrier they thin with turpentine, but they use a resin instead of linseed oil as the vehicle for the pigment. They also dry faster than oil and you can use them on paper, which oil will eventual corrode. So they're well-suited for illustration work. The way I used them was this; I'd draw a rough in ink on a thin, semi-translucent layout paper called Ad Art, once made by Beinfang (but alas, no longer, I loved that paper), put another piece of Ad Art paper on top and draw a more finished (but still loose enough) final, then spray mount it on a piece of 2-ply Bristol board (it had to be pliable to fit on a drum for scanning). Then I'd put a first layer of alkyd using Winsor & Newton Liquin (a thixotropic alkyd gel medium) mixed with some warm tint, like an ochre or something, and work some details a little with colored pencil, which would somewhat liquify and mix with the Liquin. Then I'd let it dry, maybe spraying it with Krylon, and do another layer of color and another, etc, building up a bunch of glazes, which gave it a nice depth. And what did I use to put the alkyds on the paper? My favorite tool was a little wad of the spongy foam rubber they put under wall to wall carpeting; I had a giant roll of it and I'd just tear off a suitable piece. That and Q-tips. Silly as it sounds, it wasn't too different from what others have used over the years. Casein paint, a milk-based paint, would stick well to the Krylon (if it was matte Krylon) and was useful for detail work, like the red threads in the sewing machine in the image above. When it was finished I'd have a pretty snappy looking little painted art objet. But it was time-consuming and smelly and messy, none of which you want on a deadline. And when we suddenly had a baby around, I wanted something less toxic.

I'd been leery of watercolor for years as I thought they were difficult and unforgiving. So I started with them fairly slow and easy, using only a few colors, a couple of warm colors and a blue maybe. The first watercolor I did under a deadline was a little drawing of Colin Powell for the New Yorker; it had maybe 3 colors in it and looked just fine. I learned a few simple rules and tricks. All colors handle somewhat differently, especially in a medium with the immediacy of watercolor, and as you use them their personalities reveal themselves. I still don't know exactly what I'm doing, but nobody's caught on yet, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell them.

This has been your art lesson for today.

Winter Pageant

I'm posting this  just because I like it. My favorite part is the tangle of typography to show that Nara and Alice are not too well in sync, but I like the scrape of the snow shovel too. We just had 20.5 inches dumped on us in under 24 hours, so I've heard that scrape a lot without actually participating in it (my thanks to Amy and Lars and to Andy Hemmindinger, who showed up with a snow blower!). And, in case you missed it in the comments section, here's Paul's completion of the Winter Jewels ditty-

"We are Winter's jewels,
Dancing through the air,
We filter out pollution
To deposit everywhere.

Just stop what you are doing,
And admire our symmetry,
Our awesome shining whiteness and our
Hexagonality.

We muck around with traffic,
And disarrange your day,
We bring the gift of frostbite
And an exuse for kids to play

Games like "snowball down the collar,"
And "hit the passing cars."
And "decorate the snowman
With Dad's finest choice cigars."

We provide a chance to shovel:
There's no time for being bored.
Remember, Mother Nature
Doesn't like to be ignored."

Christmas Sweater Voting Now Open!

The finalists have been chosen and their photos posted! Now it's up to you, the Great Unwashed American Public, to choose a winner! Please go over to the Christmas Sweater Contest at GoComics and make your selection from the finalists, each of whom will win a Cul de Sac book signed by me (with a drawing too). But only the winner will receive the Complete Calvin & Hobbes (ooh!), which, besides being a collection of masterworks, is also the heaviest book ever to make the New York Times bestseller list.

Here's the schedule (I could've said "schedYULE' again)-

12/15 - Contest opens for submissions

12/18 - Submissions period closes at 11:59pm

12/21 - Five finalists announced, online voting begins

12/23 - Voting closes at 11:59pm

12/24 - The winner is announced!

So hurry! It's your duty as a patriot!

Saint Santa

Wouldn't this make a great all-purpose charming yet slightly offensive Christmas card? It's from a column by either Joel Achenbach, E J Dionne or Gene Weingarten, all of whom have had a column at some point in the Wash  Post Magazine that I got to illustrate. This one's probably from a Joel Achenbach piece.