Visual Thinking

The best cartooning is efficient visual storytelling - it is as much a matter of writing as it is of drawing. In this book, noted cartoonist and illustrator Ivan Brunetti presents fifteen distinct lessons on the art of cartooning, guiding his readers through wittily written passages on cartooning terminology, techniques, tools, and theory. Supplemented by Brunetti’s own drawings, prepared specially for this book, these lessons move the reader from spontaneous drawings to single-panel strips and complicated multipage stories. Through simple, creative exercises and assignments, Brunetti offers an unintimidating approach to a complex art form. He looks at the rhythms of storytelling, the challenges of character design, and the formal elements of comics while composing pages in his own iconic style and experimenting with a variety of tools, media, and approaches. By following the author’s sophisticated and engaging perspective on the art of cartooning, aspiring cartoonists of all ages will hone their craft, create their personal style, and discover their own visual language.

I went to Munich earlier this week to film a video for http://www.text100.com/. They wrote the script, I drew the pictures and Ralf Luethy took care of the filming itself and all the technical setup in his backyard studio in Schwabing.

That was my first proper video shoot with a big camera, lighting and editing. Loads of fun and a good working atmosphere made up for that odyssey I went through to get to Munich…

Here are a couple of pics I took during the day, I’ll let you know as soon as the video is online, Ralf is editing it these days.

“We took the ideas of our followers on facebook and twitter and drew their suggestions as they were requested.”

Conversation Portrait by Flash Rosenberg ~ Artist-in-Residence, LIVE from the New York Public Library ~ ideas drawn as they are discussed in real time ~

John Gall: “First class each semester I hand the students a questionnaire. One of the questions asks the students to draw, from memory, the cover of their favorite book of all time.”

more at johngall.blogspot.com

Geoff McFetridge has always been a great inspiration for me and I just found this website he did while browsing skateboards decks a friend of mine wants to buy for her boyfriend. The usual ways of the interwebs :)

McFetridge wrote a very nice piece about how you look at a thing makes you change your attitude towards it. Drawing, skating, surfing, building tree houses, amongst others.

Contour drawing changed the way I drew. In college it was taught to me as a method developed, in part, by artist, Egon Schiele. It’s a way of drawing where you look at what’s in front of you and not what you’re drawing. You also draw the shapes you see without picking up your pencil or erasing. The goal was to represent the form in line and not in shading or any sort of interpretation of depth… just a line in the clearest most objective way possible.

The result of my first attempts were wonky drawings that looked like a pile of string. But inside each drawing, there were parts that were just right. An eyebrow or hand that ended-up like something I didn’t intend to draw initially. For me this was revelatory. A break from hashed-out lines, shading, hatching and erasing. It revealed the hollowness of what drawing had become to me. Doing a drawing that looked like it was done by someone who didn’t know how to draw was invigorating.
It was a paradigm shift.

Drawing was the first of a lifetime of solitary pursuits. Drawing was also an introduction to ideas of improvisation and chance. Because I wasn’t a naturally talented drawer, there were often challenges that would push me forward to improve and go deeper into an understanding of what I was doing. I found that in these solitary pursuits, changed-improvement came out of advancing and honing my perception of the world. Mental tenacity took president over technical perfection. In the beginning, I saw this in drawing and skiing.
Then, there was skateboarding.

I came to skating through the curb. The curb was everything. My world of skating was microcosmic. My attitude was; if I could walk to a ramp, rad, or bum a ride to a bank to skate, fine, but pick me up at my local curb spot because I’ll be busy doing nosepickers. Me and my friends spent time inventing, repeating and falling into new tricks. We could go a year without seeing a mag, or even other skaters.

That is the root of what skating meant to me… invention. Things changed over time, but skating was always there, in the trunk of the car with a pair of shoes and some Rectors. Unfortunately it was getting a little stale.

I was introduced to surfing once I moved to Southern California. I was never interested in surfing. I was not interested in getting wet and I had a hard time understanding it’s relationship to skateboarding. Skateboarding was about getting concussions in parking garages, surfing was neon, being handsome, jockish, sock-less and shirtless.

My attitude towards surfing changed due to a friend. He conspired and lied to me. He made me think surfing was done on longboards with single fins shaped by craftsmen. It was about drinking tea and history. The first surf movie I ever saw was, “Morning of the Earth.” I was happily in the dark to the reality of contemporary surfing. The boards we wanted were available and Australia was providing a steady stream of bootlegged vintage video inspirations.

All this made me look at skating completely differently. If I can enjoy the glide, why can’t I simply enjoy the roll? Damn-it if them Zboys (or is it Boyz?) weren’t right when they said “…this wave is going-off 24 hrs a day 7 days a week!” That curb WAS going-off all day.

Surfing reminded me that the joy of sport does not have to be about performance. I may want to do head dips, but it isn’t going to ruin my day If I don’t.

The Solitary Arts is about triggering the paradigm shift, about looking beyond the definitions of what skateboarding is, and what a skateboard is. Skateboarding is moments between tricks, its different boards for different skate spots. Sometimes it’s trick-less. Sometimes, it’s riding wheels that are not so hard and loud that you can’t hear yourself think. It can be silent no-tap ollies and carving in a way you can only do with soft wheels. It’s about a quiver.

We have no intention of creating boards for “getting beers” – these boards are for skating. These boards are aperitif’s, digestif’s and palette cleansers. They are in your carry-on bag, under your table at Cafe de Flore and shredding Bronson ditch (and Zones & Wallows! – yKc).

I jokingly call the things I build for my daughter “Improvisational Architecture”. For example; I wanted to build her a tree house in a cherry tree and I didn’t want to hammer any nails into the tree. If I had planned earlier, the measuring and complexity of cuts would have taken only a few days, instead I had to build and cut as I went. A tree house, built as the tree grows. It looks like it was built by a hobo, but it is plenty strong and looks rad.

We need to cobble together what skating means to us. The same goes for bicycling, skiing, surfing, paddling, climbing, painting, pottery, design, and cartooning. We have to separate what we know about the things we love and what we have been told. Puritan versions of culture are the product of marketeers and lowest common denominators. Have a good time doing the worst drawing you ever did and a day without ollies.
It can do you good.

The German word for ink eraser is “Tintenkiller”, which literally means ink killer. That’s subtle German humour for you right there.

Back in the days at school when I wrote with fountain pens, the killer was the superduperübertool right next to the ruler. Having been a type nerd early on, a dash in the wrong place or a misshaped b could basically ruin my day. I think I spent half of my time at school with writing neat headlines.

Killer was my reliable friend for making things look good when I messed up. I must have gone through dozens of them over the years. These days you got the delete button, but in the analogue age it was either killer or tipp-ex.

Now, in 2010, pen company Pilot came up with something called Frixion Evolve, an ink pen that you can erase. I evolved from type nerd to pen nerd (which means I have a natural inclination towards these kind of things) and Tintenkiller evolved to Frixion.

Pilot did a clever thing: together with Jürgen Krieger they made a gorgeous little animation for that pen, showing exactly how you can use it creatively. And to finish the story on a German note - they added yodling as a soundtrack for the drawing.

Enjoy!

“Aidan is five years old and was diagnosed with leukemia in September. To keep up his spirits during his stay at the hosptial, and to help pay medical bills, Aidan draws monsters and sells them on Etsy.”