Blacksad

Blacksad, written by Juan Diaz Canales and art by Juanjo Guarnido
Published October 20, 2010

At Stumptown last year, Abe picked up Blacksad from the Darkhorse booth. The lady there gave it such praise, he couldn't resist. And it was worth him having to carry another hardback in his backpack for hours.

The art is by Juanjo Guardino, who worked at Disney in Paris for a while, and you can telll. Amazing art in the great classic-style Disney illustration. I kept thinking of 101 Dalmations because of the style and the actual setting. Subtle watercolors add to the nostalgia. The characters are all animals with people bodies (essentially).  And Disney animal faces they are. Those expressive eyes! It was a little disconcerting to see my childhood-memory style used for such adult themes, but damn it looks good.


The book actually contains three stories that follow the cat John Blacksad. His life kinda sicks, bu he does help some people. The characters are all essentially caricatures of themselves, in a good way. Seems like a method that Eisner could get behind - the animal heads are like shorthand to the type of person we are dealing with.

The only negative I had is that the women were less animal than the men. I often couldn't tell you what animal they were supposed to be. I can always tell with the men. The women also had earrings where their human ears would be instead of on their animal ears. But these are minor complaints even though they really bugged me.

Anyways, by the end, all I wanted was more. Warning, though. These guys pull no punches and really use this animal shorthand to discuss some painful topics from that era (and now unfortunately), like racism and war crimes. Like Maus, the animal metaphors are a good way to soften teh blows into more easily managed chunks.

I assumed based on the date of the publication that I shouldn't expect more. That would be too much to ask, wouldn't it? NO! There is another one that came out this July. I will definitely be grabbing it when I can.

I like it enough, I drew a little bit of fan art.

I also did some practice by copying some of the faces in the book. Seriously good stuff - I am not that good.

Nadine practice

Ah, good version of some of my COB drawings.

 There you can see the blue! That the scanner erased.

She looks a bit stoned there, I think.Ooh, you can see the blue pencil lines...

Superhero Woman

So here is a sketvh dump, a bit. Now that Abe has a job, it is harder to get him to do my bidding, so I guess I will have to scan in my own art. Though if I want good ones of my color art, he will still need to do it.

 Here is a first attempt at drawing Superhero Woman and Sidekick Dog, a pair I made up in high school or junior high. I liked the idea of super heroes, but the only ladies ones I knew, I didn't like. Wonder Woman was too scantily clad and I only knew the movie version of Batgirl. So I made up my own. It had a much more literal style. Less violence and darkness. Superhero girl was me, der, and Sidekick Dog was my dog, Patience. Their nemesis was Madame Nutmeg (or something) after my mom's cat. Not that I had anything against poor Nutmeg, but we needed a villain. I even made us outfits with blankets for capes and cut up old socks for masks. Her name wasn't Patience for nuthin'. She also had little shorts and I wore my converse. We would run around our property all dressed up. Not much because it is kind of cumbersome to run around the woods in a blanket cape and Patience did have a limit.

Here's some standard fare Sartorialist drawing. I keep trying for more cartoony style. It is difficult.

 And some practice for the story I am working on with the working title COB. This is a scan of copic markers, so all the light blue is gone, but there was some sky in the window.This is definitely at least one of Nadine's outfits for the book.

And here is Nadine all dressed up for fencing. I think I will change the skort thing up a bit. And the copic marker blue is so much darker than that. But I think I will add some gold embroidery along the blue edges of the skirt instead of black and give her gold buttons instead of black. As you can see, I also haven't decided on an eye color yet. Her hair will also be more yellow than red. Boy copics scan weird.

Corgis and stuff

Drawing dump.

So many corgis.

 Fawn unicorn thing I drew at Drink and Draw

Top two characters there are from Poirot, my newest mystery show.

 From Sartorialist.

 Another from Sartorialist.

Some Nadine practice. Not quite the right dress.

Watercolor of Nadine. Same dress. I love the hair.

Not feeling well.

Some drawings from the week. I wrote a post about commas for work that included a Batmower.

 This is actually from my head. I saw a girl sort of dressed like this the other day. Not the hat.

And I think I have a bit of food poisoning after eating out today for lunch. But it was kind of ... slow... so I played video games on my tablet while I waited. :S