In Eric Burns’ generously complimentary Best Practices Websnark, he comments on how maintaining a buffer and working ahead is a best practice. (He also names me “king of Best Practices,” rendering my adverb-adjective combination “generously complimentary” an understatement fit for the Papacy of understatements, but let’s not mince words)

In the commentary below the blog some very legitimate questions are raised about working ahead. Can cartoonists who work ahead be spontaneous? Can they interact with their audiences? Can they be as off-the-cuff funny as JIT (Just In Time) cartoonists? Is the Best Practice of maintaining a buffer at fault for making syndicate comics so uniformly stale?

I don’t seek to answer those questions here — I’m just pointing out that they get raised, and they’re valid. I’ve been woolgathering on the subject ever since the snark aired.

This morning I realized why, for me at least, the buffer is so important for the QUALITY of the strip, as opposed to the sheer QUANTITY required for unbroken daily updates over the course of four years.

Yesterday sucked, buffer-wise. I got two strips pencilled and inked, and I WANTED to get seven. I got stuck on what should have been an easy row, but the pencilling just wouldn’t flow. I mean, I could have scratched some faces out and inked them, and had the deadline been a critical one I would have. Depressed about my failure to deliver the goods (to me, not to you… you GOT your goods last night) I went to bed hoping the morning would bring a fresh look at things.

Well, it did. I sat down this morning and a fresh look at the script resulted in pencil work that was funnier and better story-wise than anything I could have forced out yesterday. Sure, I still WISH I’d been able to do this yesterday, and I’ve got my work cut out for me TODAY if I’m going to meet my goal for buffer-building this week, but I haven’t allowed that goal to compromise the quality of the strip.

If I were pencilling, inking, coloring, and uploading one strip per day, every day, then on the days when I’m uninspired, unfunny, and non-productive, you’d get crap instead of Schlock (an ironic turn of phrase, I know). And now, I’ve got stuff to get back to. A stack of scripts awaits my freshly-perspectificated (no, it’s not a word. Sue me) pencils.

–Howard

One of the reasons I sit next to my daughter in Art Class is to keep her focused. She’s been in this class for almost a year now, and went through a rough patch where she was making trouble instead of making art, and it’s good to see her off that particular patch and making art again.

One side-effect of sitting in a room full of 10-year-olds is that I get to listen to them converse. Mostly I remain silent, smiling to myself as I remember the kinds of inanity that sprung from MY lips 27 years ago. One conversation, though, required my commentary:

Apparently a few of the kids have a friend/acquaintance at school who has undergone chemotherapy, and has lost all her hair. One of the boys was insensitive enough to remark rather honestly (I thought) “she looks kind of silly with no hair.” The girl sitting across from him started working him over with a fairly inexpert version of the “you need to be more sensitive about how others look when they can’t control how they look” lecture.

I interrupted her without looking up from my artwork: “people with no hair DO look kind of silly.”

I didn’t say anything else, and I never looked up. The kids giggled, apparently amused and bemused at the thought that a person with a particular trait could make fun of that trait, and with completely deadpan delivery, no less, and the conversation veered off in other directions.

Hopefully they learn to do it themselves — being able to laugh at yourself allows you not so much to deflect scorn and criticism as to negate its effect altogether. Cruel little 10-year-olds stop making fun of you when they find out that A) you’re better at it than they are, and B) it doesn’t bother you. I hope their bald friend learns it too. She’s got a tougher row to hoe than most. Being a bald, fifth-grade girl… I shudder at the thought.

–Howard

The Hermitage School of Art (yes, “Hermitage“, not “Heritage“) is run out of a woman’s home. It’s a very nice home, with three large upstairs rooms running three different classes simultaneously. Victoria, the headmistress/schoolmarm/whatever employs maybe half a dozen assistants, most of whom manage the beginners’ classes. Victoria and one or two of her more senior assistants rove all the classrooms, offering advice of all kinds — “watch the negative space here,” “grab white for this highlight,” etc.

Most of a student’s time is spent working on a piece, and the instruction, such as it is, is very practical in nature. The school limits itself to teaching the realistic reproduction of reference photos with pastels, acrylics, or watercolors, and the walls are adorned with some pretty impressive pieces by Victoria and some of her advanced pupils. The use of reference pictures allows the instructors to “see” what the students are seeing, and enables them to accurately advise on how to achieve a particular effect.

Ultimately, I’m there to tweak my mad c0lor1ng sk1llz. Intellectually, I know that a human face seen illuminated from one side positively BOILS with colors — reds, whites, purples, blues, reflected colors from the background, and so forth. Practically, when I sit down to color my Schlock, I seldom take the trouble to do more than pick a single fundamental color and flood-fill. Lately I’ve been doing deeper shading on Sundays (I’m pleased with the last two Sunday comics, here and here) but even then I’m timid with the color range. Rarely do I stray out more than “halfway” up or down Photoshop’s color bar for a given fundamental shade, and I never nudge the colors sideways, introducing other shades from reflected light.

I’m not saying I WILL do this once I’ve learned how. I’m just saying I want to learn to be able to, so that the crap you see in the comic is crappy because I CHOSE for it to be crappy, rather than because I can’t do any better.

The comic isn’t called “Schlock Mercenary” for nothing, folks.

–Howard

Art Class was fun today. I took a photo of Sandra, gridded it, and then put a matching grid on some art board. Then I sketched into the big grid, using the small one as a reference.

It’s basic stuff. I’ve done it before. Mostly this was the “busy-work” part of my schooling, because what I’m really interested in learning is how to color things. Next week I’ll take pastels to the board, and color it to look like Sandra.

I sat next to Kiki in class, in the room with four or five 10-year-old art students. I don’t have a problem with that — most of the adults were in the other room, but by sitting next to my daughter I get to sponge off her supplies. No way can we afford to buy me a brick of pastels and pastel pencils, no sir. Anyway, I spent the first 40 minutes of the hour prepping: scaring up materials, drawing the grid on transparency over the original photo, scaling the grid up onto the board, checking the landmark points… all the fundamental stuff that you need to do when you’re working from a reference picture. Oh, and I took five minutes out to do a quick cartooning demonstration for the kids (at the headmistress’ request, no less) — it was the “Kaff Tagon, Karl Tagon, Captain Kerchak” demo I did at Fandemonium and Linucon.

Well, with 20 minutes left in class, I was FINALLY ready to start DRAWING. It was fun, because I can go FAST. All those precise grid-measurements, the straight-edging, all that tedium, it all existed to make the DRAWING part go faster and better, and it worked. Just 15 minutes later I had a sketch that was ready for pastels. This impressed the room full of ten-year-olds, which was a disturbingly effective boost for my fragile ego. Granted, it also impressed the instructor, but she didn’t use those fifth-grade exclamations and go all wide-eyed. She just said “wow, that was quick.”

So next week I get to actually play with colors. It’s been 20 years since I used opaque colors, and the process is going to feel backwards. I’m told you start with your darkest shades, and then build lighter and lighter. With markers, which are translucent colors, and with which I’m much more familiar, you start with your lightest shades, and color down into the dark areas last. And both of those are nothing like Photoshop, which is my friend.

“Man, the Undo Buffer on these pastels SUCKS. Is there any way for me to revert to my last save?”

–Howard