This is the weekly dispatch from Bizarro Studios North, where I have been writing and drawing the Monday through Saturday Bizarro comics since 2018. My partner and friend Dan Piraro created Bizarro in the late twentieth century and continues to do the Sunday comic from Rancho Bizarro in Mexico.
Wayno
Detail and texture have a reason for existing beyond just my taste; they flatter wear and erosion. A flat block of concrete looks worse every day it exists. A carved form looks better because the patterns of erosion it undergoes outline the carving.
Brian Eno
I recently began reading A Year With Swollen Appendices: Brian Eno's Diary (1995), and finding it even more enjoyable than I'd anticipated. Eno is one of the smartest and most interesting people in the arts. He's an original thinker adept at writing about his art in an entertaining voice.
The quote above comes from one of the book's many appendices. In a letter to a friend, Eno expresses his disdain for modern buildings with solid glass exteriors. The erosion analogy resonated with me because I felt a similar antipathy toward digital art around that same time.
By the mid-1990s, I knew I'd have to start using Photoshop for my illustration and comics work, if not to draw and color the art, at least to deliver it electronically. I resisted because I hated the slick digital images I saw everywhere. That first wave of digitally created art was too sterile and "perfect" for my taste—it reminded me of certain over-rendered airbrush illustrations of the 1970s and 80s.
Eventually, I realized that an artist can use Photoshop as a tool without being controlled by it. I could draw traditionally and after scanning the art, I could resize, rearrange, clean up, and color it without eliminating evidence of the human hand.
I love seeing the natural imperfections (Eno's "detail and texture") in an enlarged scan of a drawing.
I employ a tiny fraction of Photoshop's capabilities in my comics and artwork. If the program is a giant warehouse of tools, I'm getting by with a screwdriver, a ruler, and a utility knife, and I'm usually (relatively) happy with the results. Either way, I know it's my own and not the result of soulless bots scraping and stealing the work of others.
A few weeks back, my middle brother sent me a Fred MacMurray pipe pic, and this week, the youngest of us three sent me a photo he took at an art museum.
He even included this handy information.
Today, I tip my hat to baby brother for spotting this cubist work and sending it my way.
We now present the most recent Bizarro comics, with all imperfections intact.
We kicked off the week with my latest salute to surrealist René Magritte, who inspired the Pipe of Ambiguity.
Tuesday's gag has that "ewe factor."
This was not intentionally timed to coincide with any real-life high-profile criminal proceedings, although a certain case in the news is proving to be a hell of a journey.
Here we segue from self-incrimination to an interesting sort of self-awareness.
The familiar depiction of Aladdin's lamp has always reminded me of a fancy little teapot, and I used that resemblance for a bit of visual misdirection in Friday's gag.
I dig the beat writers and the music they inspired, while also enjoying mass culture's warped reflection of the beat generation, as evidenced by this gag.
The "low ceiling" of the strip layout has an appropriately claustrophobic vibe.
Bonus Track
Tom Waits: "Underground" From the album Swordfishtrombones Island Records, 1983
Swordfishtrombones was a turning point for Waits, one of several in his long ongoing career. He began to move beyond the boozy beatnik hipster persona and more conventional style of his earlier records.
Although the albums that preceded it were rather weird in their own right, the songwriting and arranging became more experimental and idiosyncratic with this release.
More Bizarro for Your Hungry Eyes
If you like what we do and appreciate that it comes to you free of charge, we encourage you to explore any or all of the following links.
Another awesome week of cartoons! As a gardener in the throws of planting season, I am smitten with the Beetniks gag. So, so clever! I appreciate what you do. Jennifer B
Maynard G Krebs remains the #1 beet!
ReplyDeletework!?!
DeleteLong live Maynard!
DeleteAnother awesome week of cartoons! As a gardener in the throws of planting season, I am smitten with the Beetniks gag. So, so clever! I appreciate what you do. Jennifer B
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jennifer!
Delete