Water is tricky to draw. First, you turn on both the hot water and the cold and then stick your hand under it. When it feels just right, you plug the drain. When enough water has run into the tub, you sit down, and inevitably you’ll feel like you’re being boiled alive. Water is also tricky to depict. I was getting better at it when this cartoon ran in 1995. The wave in the first panel doesn’t look very convincing, but the foam in the last three panels looks about right. When drawing water (with a pen), less is more. Water is about negative space, what you don’t draw. That’s the way it is for me, anyway.
Wavering
By Jimmy Johnson
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248 responses to “Wavering”
Isn’t Cheyenne in Wyoming?
So, thinking about wives being murdered while drowned in tub by husbands who make it look like a “slip and fall” accidental drowning sure looked on topic for Janis in the tub today.
We had a homicidal circle of friends/acquaintances who seemed to consider insuring their wife a good business investment.
By the way, I was surprised no one had mentioned Liberty Meadows yet.
Love, Jackie Monies
Jackie, I read it cause I like Frank and I love to see Dean get what’s coming to him. And because Frank Cho draws so well.
Poor VM, her agony is increasing
Cheyene Mt contains Norad command center and bunker in Colorado. Grew up during Cold War. Nuke proof supposedly, not rock proof appearently.
Some of the beachscape scenes JJ drew during the “Gene and Mary Lou” reconnect arc (back when she was a scared, pregnant teenage girl) were downright beautiful. Although A&J tends to be more minimalist when it comes to background, JJ shows that we can draw with the best of them when need be.
Frank Cho may draw purty women, but they are so objectified I find it a turn-off. Believe it or not, when he first started drawing “Liberty Meadows”, Brandy was much more reasonably proportioned. Now it seems every woman he draws is a refuge from the Playboy Mansion.
I used to draw Vargas type women but in more of a cartoon style than he did. His were more like fine art, mine looked more like Jessica Rabbit. Since I was using these for window displays often, cartooning and exaggerated works better than real art. Mine were done on sheets of Foamboard, which is about the size of sheet rock or plywood, so they were a little bigger than real people. And curvier, plumper butts, etc. Then they were cut out like giant paper dolls.
I did once produce a window of Japanese courtesans taking a floral design class and those were closer to being art. We took a antique print and replicated the backgrounds, furniture, rugs, everything including the clothing but in a mix of flat dimension and 3-D.
This turned out to be quite sensational and a customer came to see it in middle of night, someone had forgotten to turn on spot lites, she got a flashlight out to use and our live cat who was sleeping on the mats got up and stretched.
She said she was expecting the women to move next. I love cartooning and always have!
Sounds great, Jackie. Wish I could have seen it.
Blinky, it’s supposed to be funny, y’know. If you look at some of the drawing Frank displays in his blog, they aren’t Barbies at all
Lily, I wish fairies had been popular then, I would have loved making them with all the wings and glitter. We used mixed mediums of fabrics, paint, actual objects to make them look real. We did a circus once with trapeze artists, tight rope walkers, wild animals, clowns.
My favorite all time window display in the world was one I saw up in Tulsa after I moved here. The mannequins were rising from the masses of fall leaves as fairies or elfin folk and were totally “earth people” paved’ in leaves and mosses, just unbelievable!
Window display is an art form and often uses cartooning to catch people’s attention. I admit to doing a lot of Betty Boop and Garfield but that was what people wanted to tie in to gift items for sale. Also Beatrix Potter characters.
Love, Jackie Monies
Lily, I’m pretty sure To sail beyond the Sunset is what I’m thinking of. We are just over the Colorado line from NM on our way to Loveland, so I can’t check. Both husband and I love RAH, own all of them, and re-read periodically. We too love Oscar. That’s a great ending where he’s waiting (in Paris I think) and Rufous finally turns up so they can go adventuring again. Do you have a favorite RAH?
Jackie, I love to go to downtown Dallas with The Boss of My Life and look at their window displays. What a bunch of creative people their team must be!
NK: Starship Troopers is my fave and Glory Road a close second
I used to do award winning display windows for some of the showrooms in the Dallas Market wholesale showrooms. I also had my own showroom in Houston for awhile, also did trade show displays and taught window display for awhile. Yes, window display people are very creative as are showroom display creations because that is what sells the products to the retail stores. Then the retail stores have to display it to sell it to the public consumer.
And THAT is how I got offered a job at Mickey Mouse Land and the Walt Disney Parks in Orlando. And there is a definite connection to cartooning and the comics in all that!
Love, Jackie Monies
Jackie, I am learning to paint. The Boss Of My Life paints and draws, though not what I consider cartoons. The thing I love about her work (besides the ones she paints and draws of me!) is how creative her ideas are. Me, I am still copying things out of books and magazines.
Lily, copying anything is how anyone learns an art form. I always say you need to be able to do the same things over and over and then you can start being creative and free form when you can produce something the same consistently.
Think about Arlo and Janis. We wouldn’t like it if they looked different all the time.
Love, Jackie Monies
Good point. That is ne of the things that awe me, how she gets my face right all the time:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1375080946112354&set=a.1375080482779067.1073741827.100008313841425&type=3&theater
Happy 90th birthday (today) to President George Herbert Walker Bush…even if he did celebrate it by jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft. 🙂
Ghost,if I had been him, I would have been curled up in terror on the floor sucking my thumb.
Oh, and Lily, apparently the InterWebNet ate your face. Your above link didn’t work, at least for me.
Off the off topic: this one never fails to make me laugh
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2005/05/26
Thanks Cap’n!
Huh. Works for me. Oh, well
Yeah, men are such little boys, aren’t they?
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2005/05/25#.U5o_X_ldWa8
Another good one, from the same time period…
http://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2005/05/23#.U5o_sPldWa8
Try this one:
http://s1306.photobucket.com/user/Lilyblack1/media/LilyatRoughCreekLodge_zpsf1cdabe0.png.html
Thanks, Lily. And I assume you are the one in the blue blouse showing off your belly button and not the one in the scarlet uniform showing off your medals. 😉
I have always loved that Ludwig cartoon. I had a couple as friends who had an unneutered male Siamese who he swore he was NOT neutering until he yowled all night and the next and the next at some female. A yowling Siamese is some bad yowling.
So he overcame his objections to neutering (which all men take seriously, I know) and asked me if I would drive them to my vets’ to be operated on (the cat) All the way there he told the cat he was going for an appendectomy, over and over and over!
Same cat I was cat sitting when it ate one of my poinsettias and I had to get a bottle of milk of magnesia down to get him to throw up the poison from the plant. Did you know that a cat can spit medicine back at you, straight up in air like a fountain? We went through about quart and we STILL didn’t have it down him.
Love, Jackie Monies