Candide: the Ever-Unfinished Version

Candide is almost too illustratable. I used to know what I'm talking about, I knew the book inside-out (no great accomplishment, it's about 100 pages), I'd read 3 or 4 biographies of Voltaire (he never said, "I disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it." and was a bit of a war-profiteer. Still, he had guts.) I coulda told you what provoked him into writing Candide (Alexander Pope and an earthquake in Lisbon I think, but then, nobody ever asked me). Candide, encountered at the right time in life, is a bit like Vonnegut or Heller in the unearned wisdom department; the world's a crappy place, and mom, stop using that new detergent on my laundry, it smells funny.

Maybe I'm just being cranky in the presence of so much of my of juvenilia. I was  inspired to try illustrating it from the age of about 20, when I first read Candide (by accident; in a Pogo book I was also reading, Porky the Porcupine is identified in the notes as the swamp's Alceste and I thought, hey, I gotta read that. But I got Candide confused somehow with The Misanthrope, a play by Neil Simon).

Candide is a comic strip in prose; a fast-paced picaresque yarn and a bitter satire of religion and society written when that sort of thing was dangerous. It was almost dashed off (the changes in tenses make it somehow even funnier and more immediate). Those familiar with the Bernstein musical (me! ooh, me!) know that it is not Voltaire's Candide, despite the smashing tunes. It's Candide with a happier ending. When you hear that Bernstein, who was writing West Side Story concurrently swapped out some songs ("One hand, one heart" was first in Candide) you're impressed at his virtuosity. But such emotions are foreign to Voltaire's Candide. Productions of   Bernstein's operetta tend to emphasize the crazy funhouse side, using puppets, masks and other inventive theatrical effects lavishly. My brother's theater, Arena Stage, put a on about 18 years ago and I remember it as full of trapdoors, magic tricks and suchlike coups de theater.

Maybe that's what makes Candide so alluring to illustrators; it's so much damn fun. And artists as diverse as Paul Klee and Rockwell Kent have responded, with varying degrees of success (I like Klee's more than Kent's). So, 20-year-old me, what's your take on Candide?  

I was deep in my Ronald Searle phase. I'd recently discovered him and was emulating all his tropes and techniques without, of course, understanding them. Pat Oliphant said that everyone goes through a Searle stage; the trick was in pulling out once you'd learned what you needed to.

It's a very decorative style, and that limits what can be done with it. Although I remember it as liberating; what you can do with ink. But the drawings weren't right. It needed something  smaller and faster.

This comes from 1986. I know because it says,"this is my favorite drawing of 1986" below it. I guess it was a slow year. It's certainly small and fast. I like the lettering and the scratchiness especially in comparison with the smooth flow of the lines in the preceding drawings.

 I've posted this before but here it's in context. I think it's the most (only?) successful Candide illustration so far. I love the cross-hatching, stolen, if I recall, from Brad Holland, and I like the character of Dr. Pangloss.

I last tried to illustrate Candide about two years ago. The only result was a pile of torn up drawings.That's the problem with Candide; it's unillustratable.

better times

My old friend John Montrie, who commissioned this for a proposed card game years ago, just lost his wife Paula. I came across the image while looking for something else.

I'm not sure why I'm posting it except as a reminder of better times.

Auction Outcome

The auction of the three Pearls Before Swine strips, a collaboration between Stephan Pastis & Bill Watterson, brings in $74,090, with Heritage Auction's generous contribution. All of it is going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.

I have some good friends.

Old & Lost Almanacs

Here are a few Almanacs that, because it was a local, DC strip or for one reason or another was too outdated, have not been seen since their original publication in the Post. Hey, I got a million of these. My objections follow each image.

Strained humor, of local interest only.

Out of date.

Of local interest only. Who's Marion Barry?

Too specific.

Outdated subject.

Too local. Plus, J.Carter Brown's dead.

 
Too local. How many times are you going to use this gag?

Too local. Also, I'd lost it.

Too weird.

Let's Raise Some Money

The Watterson / Pastis auction of artwork for Team Cul de Sac is almost at $30,000 combined for the three comic strips.

Only three days until the entire auction goes live and the clock is ticking.

444

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum reports that on the last day of exhibition the combined Watterson/Thompson show broke the previous day's record of 350, attracting 444 cartoon-crazed fans. Including, if the photos smuggled from the event are credible, several nuns and a man in a hat. Again, we applaud their effort.

Last Two Days

As all things must end, the OSU Billy Ireland show is coming down on August 3rd, after 6 months and almost 4 million sets of eyeballs.  The carpet was replaced 8 times at a cost to the taxpayer of 17 trillion dollars, while if you laid end-to-end all the velvet rope used it would stretch from downtown Washington, DC to the Oort Cloud.*

Oort Cloud (approx.)

My deepest thanks to Jenny Robb and her staff, especially the indefatigable  Caitlin McGurk, without whom I wouldn't get to use the word "indefatigable" twice in one sentence. Ya'll done good! Thanks also to my co-exhibitor and roomie, Bill Watterson, for kindnesses too numerous to mention, like not pushing me right into the fountain at the National Gallery when I got too pompous.

Showroom new! With Caitlin McGurk.

It was fun! Let's it again!

*Fanciful and meretricious.

Thompsoniana Continued

Will there be updates as more cards become available?

Like this new one?

A Major Advance in Greeting Cards!

THOMPSONIANA GREETINGS

Are you tired of greeting cards that are too thoughtful? That announce their sensitivity trght from the get-go, leaving you no space for nuanced crudities? Well, the good people at Thompsoniana are here to help, with thousands* of card designs that are both attractive and uncommunicative.  Hey, we're up to our eyeballs in images here, there's gotta be some way to turn them into cash!

Boy, if I got that in the mail I wouldn't know what to think.  But I'd sure like to send it! Do you have anything for that hard-to-buy-for relative with a fondness for silly cosmologies?

How about friends whose brains float?

Suicidal clowns?

Something better?

A cranky, freshly-awoken Brunnhilde?

• 

Something with a heart in it?

How about a heart with some math?

Do you have any greeting  cards which might appeal to a cat fancier who's also fond of music?

Wow, what a wide selection of cards! How about occasions? Anything for Mozart's Birthday?

How about Beethoven?

Presidents' Day?

The Forth of  July?

How about something literary?

 Do you have anything that'd be appropriate for someone who's experiencing an existential crisis?

Well,  I'm sold, even though the whole thing is repurposing existing images for some bucks! Now I can't wait to rely on the U.S. Postal Service for all my communication needs! Say, how much are these cards going to end up costing me? They look awful fancy.

ONLY $2.95 A CARD! IS THAT CHEAP OR WHAT?

Holy cats, only $2.95  a card? I'm doing all my card shopping at Thompsoniana! Only an ungrateful fool would do otherwise!

*WELL, DOZENS.

Your Unnecessary Magazine Illustration for Today

I drew this for the New Yorker during the investigation into the Enron scandal (which today seems quaint) and it was such a crummy experience that I realized subconsciously, inchoately*, that the bloom was off the rose and it was time to quit the illustration game. Briefly, from l. to r. there's Fastow, Lay and Skilling, the chief perpetrators.

I remember more about the drama behind the drawing. The sketch was okayed, but then came back to me for revisions. They FedExed it overnight to me for Saturday delivery. I waited on the front step for the package. The FedEx truck came and did not deliver anything, but parked next door. The driver was blaring opera (why do I remember that?). Just before he pulled away I ran down the hill and hammered on his door. It turned out that he had almost misdelivered the package and was quite upset by it (he kept saying "Oh Lordy!" like it was a major crime). I was just glad to get the package. The changes were all minor. They said Ken Lay looked like he had a black eye so I fixed that with some gouache (I actually rather like fixing boo-boos; it appeals to my fussy side), and had it in the mail the next Monday.

It was going to be a full page illustration so I was disappointed when the issue came out - it had shrunk to spot size. By then I was starting not to care. The things you can do in Photoshop allow an editor or art director to tinker endlessly with your work or force you to tinker endlessly with your work, and deadlines are mutable.

So like I said, the bloom was off the rose and it was about time to change careers. But gradually. Gimme, like, 4 or 5 years.

*"Inchoately" is a $25 word.

Mutt & Jeff

Here's an early caricature cover for the Post's National Edition to illustrate an article on Edwin Meese and George Schultz. I used to do covers for them fairly often, and this was the first, from about 1987-8. The National edition was (is?) a weekly tabloid that reprinted the week's stories, etc.; sort of like a magazine. And, for a cover like this, they'd pay the handsome sum of $200. So I was inspired. If it had been any more money, I'd've been worried.

In doing this, I filled two pads of my then-favorite paper, Bienfang Ad-Art, a translucent layout paper I liked before I started using a lightbox. At 100 sheets per pad, we're talking a serious emotional investment, probably due to inexperience and the kind of panic that hits at 4 a.m. when you've got a drawing due that day and you imagine a magazine with a blank cover  and your byline. (one guess what my reoccurring nightmare is).  My only clear memory of those two days (well, nights) is poring over works by Sorel, Steadman and other, better artists who knew what they were doing to see how to do it.

Finally, along about 4 a.m. on the second, penultimate night, something clicked. And after drawing these two bozos umpty-ump times it was probably my sanity. Suddenly, I had them both on one page. I added some colored pencil (enough to show it was supposed to be in color), Metroed down to the Post (from Gaithersburg, Md, where I then lived about 20 miles) and turned it in.

Later, this got into the Society of Illustrators' 2nd Humor show, and still later my brother was rear ended in Georgetown by Edwin Meese's limo.

more merchandising

ANNOUNCING

THE BEETHOVEN SHIRT

ONLY $23.95

AVAILABLE IN 20 COLORS

WITH THE MAESTRO ON THE RECTO, 

AND HIS SIGNATURE ON THE VERSO

BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS A SHIRT THAT SCOWLS.

Art in Illustration

Here's an issue I've never seen addressed anywhere, so it's either too tough or it's nonexistent.  I mean, of course, using Art in illustration. I've made known my theories of Art for quite  some time. With maddening deliberation, I remove my pince-nez and quote myself (picture Edward Van Sloan in Lugosi's Dracula), "Comics is a bastard medium (embarrassed laughter).  Image marries Language, then tires of his nonstop chatter, dumps him, and runs off with  Commerce. Then, a couple years later, Image realizes she's stuck in a double-wide with this lummox and a bastard child (cries of "Here now!" and "There's a good fellow!") Commerce's heavy drinking and uncertain paycheck force Image to work at an unsavory dog track and loses her looks. (cries of, "Resign!") So Commerce runs off with Telemarketing (pandemonium and gunfire), And that, gentlemen, is my answer to the question - Are Comics Art? Which, sadly has nothing to do with the subject at hand. Let's have a photo of Edward Van Sloan with a link.

No, I mean when you draw stuff that's already been drawn, like this-

Or this-

Or even this-

But not this-

Your Unnecessary Magazine Illustration for Today

I know, this is really a sneaky way to get an illo for the  Art of Whatsis, pad this blog and waste everyone's time repurposing old, stale art. Yeah, so? Watcha gonna do about it, four-eyes?

I don't remember what magazine this was done for, only that I turned it in to Bono Mitchell. Some screed against smoking would be my guess. I do recall that it was, "they're all smoking." And that I did it very quickly. Probably because it's just out-and-out ugly, and nothing fires up a cartoonist's muse as the Ugly.   

 I used oil on paper, which is not recommended for longevity, but I used Liquin, a thixotropic, resin-based medium that took the place of linseed oil. I worked in my normal mantra for this technique, dabbing half-heartedly at it with the foam rubber padding they use under carpets (this is true). 

The rest must wait till the Art of Carpet Sample.

.

Small things

Here's another teaser quote from that impatiently-awaited, incipient best-seller the Art of Whosis (as  seen on TV!*), But this time I include some actual text, taken from an actual PDF of the actual book, to sweeten the deal! Once again the part of "BW" is played by Bill Watterson while I assay the rôll of "RT" (we did funny accents),

This is what I was trying to get at in the previous post about the specific vs. the general. A comic strip is the ideal medium to bear small ideas (no jokes, please), especially one with little kids in it. I'll show you; here's a strip from the Post Magazine that's not in the Complete Cul de Sac because I forgot about it, even though it's one of my favorites; I gave it to my brother for Christmas. He kindly lent it back for use in the Art book. 

That's taken from a true, well I hate to call it a "story"; it's barely an anecdote. But both of us remembered it, that one inch gap between iron and shirt that made the animatronic maid's efforts so stupidly poignant. Woodie's windows were an important part of Christmastime for us as it was for many in the DC area, so I knew this would resonate back when CdS was a local strip.

Here's perhaps the height, or nadir, of smallness. For a week Dill followed that bug. You can't get much punier. Yet in  the last year of CdS, I tried some microscopic gags, all to make producing  the strip easier.

This is a rough for Stacy Curtis to ink. A week of repeating the same scene led to this-

 

In short, the constant search for Ways to Do Things Faster, the Shortcuts to Fill the Page, make smallness ideal.  Look at one of my favorites-

There's so little movement in it that I used the same rough for 8 panels! Alice is the only movement, and she's just fidgeting around. And the smallness is carried through the dialog; casual chitchat that goes nowhere. I'm almost embarrassed to've constructed a whole strip around this.

But that's my other point; that a comic can be made up out  of the mist desultory, small, nothing  banter imaginable and successfully present a legitimate funny, universal idea. And there's a chance you'll make your deadline.

* THAT PART ABOUT IT BEING ON TV ISN'T TRUE.