These days, I find myself drawing hybrid cartoons. In the past, for more than a hundred years, comic strips were designed to be black and white. The Sunday funnies were an exception, of course, but that is what made them seem like a special treat, largely, I would argue, because they were something different, not better. The vast majority of cartoons were drawn in black and white, and many were works of art. Even the grays on our printed page were–are–really patterns of black and white. If you drew cartoons or any line art for publication, you came to think that way. Today, not only is there the Web, many newspapers print comic strips in color seven days a week. Still, hard as it might be to believe, a majority of readers see their comics in a newspaper that still prints only in black and white. So, what do I mean by hybrid? In the above, Arlo and Janis are heavily silhouetted in the penultimate panel as they catch the last rays of the dying sun. In the last panel, I knew I’d be adding a color that would depict the onset of deep twilight, some shade of purple. So, I went that way instead of shading them gray as I probably would have done in the day when everything was black and white. Serving two masters, if you will. This is a complicated and interesting subject. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up, because I don’t have time to do it justice. Maybe we’ll come back to it soon.
23 responses to “Sunset in Black and White”
cool. I love hearing you talk about your work. It is good stuff (both the talk and the art)
Hey! The shopping cart doesn’t work! You can’t have an unclickable cart if you want to keep us females on board. (Just kidding of course) ~love the art talk.
The shopping cart is gone! It wasn’t supposed to be there. Yet. 🙂
Anyone else notice the “&” and the “J” in the Arlo&Janis logo appear to be kissing?
To me, at least, it wasn’t that the Sunday comics were in color that made them special, it’s that they had more room and could tell a longer story.
That’s true.
Some interesting insight into the business and art of comic strips. So many things have been changed by technology in our world over the past 20-30 years.
Are you quite finished? Yes, the shopping cart is one of those weird WordPress things that shows up on a whim, unbidden and from Heaven-knows-where. I actually got rid of it once, but it’s back.
My old foggy-ism often manifests itself in odd ways. One is my still-held belief that weekday cartoon strips should be black-and-white and that only Sunday cartoons should be in color.
I blame spelchek. And low blood sugar from not having eaten. I did have a big bowl of delicious pho tai at Pho 71 in Broken Arrow about 20 minutes later, so it was worth the wait.
I’m not too foggy anymore, but I am an old fogy when it comes to trucking. I’m very disappointed to know that my old company not only was bought by a bigger one, but that they’ve gone to (gasp!) automatic transmissions. I regard learning to double-clutch to be a right of passage, as is learning (once the trainer’s out of the way) to float gears.
I think it must still be Groundhog Day! I started scrolling down and there were 1… 2…. 3 …. 4! There were four copies of the comments on a single page?
A temporary glitch! Maybe my page cache was corrupt.
You might want to seek medical attention, David.
TR
The snow you are supposed to be experiencing is going to
be here over the weekend. And another one and then maybe one
before the month is done. The total snowfall for the month record has been
smashed, we don’t need any more. And I know those in the UP and along
the Lakes in NY are going He He He – you call that snow?
Well the snowiest months are yet to come. 🙁
Jimmy
What you do with black & white exceeds color.
That is why it is a bad idea to colorize old B&W cartoons
& movies – they were designed to be viewed in B&W!
I wouldn’t disagree. “Designed” is the key word, and it goes to the point I was trying to make. Today, if I want to depict an excess of blood (fortunately a rare occurrence in A&J), I have to decide if I’m going to ink it for the b&w version, as I would’ve in days of yore, or leave the blood white, to be made red in the colorized version. No, drawing two versions is not an option.
This is one of my pet peeves with colorizing B&W comics. It’s especially egregious with hearts. Though inked in the B&W strips, the color red is implied but the black hearts in the colorized version conveys a compleyely different state of mind.
I agree with Old Bear. Orson Welles even managed to make the sewers of Vienna look beautiful in “The Third Man.” I don’t think that would have worked in color.
I usually prefer black and white for dailies. The coloring is usually not done by the artist, but the syndicate, and is just big blocks of solid color filling the white spaces. It’s not artistic itself, and it obscures the art.
I know I’m a minority in this.
“No, drawing two versions is not an option.” —Reminds me that Walt Kelly used to draw one Pogo cartoon and then a “Bunny Rabbit” strip for the newspapers that didn’t want to print his for-them-too-political Pogo strip. For Johnson (or anyone else!) that is not an option, yes.
Jimmy, there must be a secret message in all those zeros and ones at the top of this page–and I bet I know what it says: “Internet pages are hard!” No?
DJJG, if anyone out there can read binary, and it makes any sense, please let us know. Otherwise I expect it’s the computer version of the old printer’s dingbats.
And Jimmy, I really like the strip you have posted at the top. I think that sunset series is some of your best artwork. Thank you for creating it for your fans.