Too Perfect

I felt like messing with a cartoon so I pulled this one out of my pile and scanned it in.

I drew it back in 1991 or 1992, I think, and the character was a shot at a single-panel comic strip entitled Grizelda Kanarpfarkle (and summarily rejected by every syndicate it was sent to). The original caption was “Morning has broken.”

It’s been my plan to create videos of some of the process I employ on a daily basis—and I promise I will do just that. But I wanted to first try showing how things happen with some photographs of the craft.

I didn’t anticipate what happened though. Which was a bit of frustration with the coloring process.

This was rendered by hand, obviously. Or, perhaps, not so obviously: I use a Wacom drawing tablet, but never for actual drawing. All that is done by hand. And it always surprises me how many people, upon seeing the pen tool in lieu of a mouse assume I’m drawing on it and onto the computer monitor.

Never.

The reason, for me anyway, is that, when I draw I’m looking directly past my fingers holding the pen and at what it is I’m drawing. Using a pen tool and tablet means looking not at my hand, but at the monitor, which means there’s a gap in the process. Other brains might have adapted to that anomaly, but mine never will.

Ever.

What you likely don’t know, can’t know, is that it’s been an embarrassing number of years since I’ve actually produce any cartoon work for a client. And I mention that only to mention this: I never did it on the computer.

Ever.

I sketched, inked, and colored it all by hand. And loved it.

Always.

So, you’ll forgive the Moody Artist for his complete disdain for what I’m posting anyway. That is, a drawing I Don’t Hate (artist never Like anything they create…the best they’ll give you is I Don’t Hate It).

See that background? Photoshop.

And all the other colors? Photoshop.

Not a big shock.

But as I laid in the color using the tools of the trade nowadays, I found a frustration I’m none too pleased with:

It looks too perfect.

I used to draw on hot pressed watercolor paper and color with a certain brand of marker. Then I’d ink the final piece using the only pen I ever liked. And I used all those tools because of how they behaved together. The watercolor paper had a certain composition that allowed the markers to bleed in just such a way I came to love. Depending on how firmly I held the marker, or turned the paper or did whatever it was I did…well…the final piece looked Good.

Not perfect.

Good.  And I’m a big believer in Things Were Never Meant To Be Perfect…Just Good.

But this…

…this just doesn’t do it for me. I’m used to a whole different process, a much more organic and basic one. One that has my feet on grass, not in shoes on asphalt, if you get my meaning.

And, trust me, I know Photoshop. I’m a master with the program and I don’t mean maybe.

But it’s that the program has algorithms designed to exude the qualities and properties of the natural materials and processes that I find myself shaking my head at. More, I realize how unimpressed I am.

At the end of the day, there is just no substitute for doing it all by hand the old fashioned way.

So. There it is. I didn’t intend to not like this. But I don’t like it.

It’s too perfect.