Greetings from Bizarro Studios North.
As usual, the Saturday newsletter is here to direct you to a fresh blog entry. Today’s post features some thoughts on creating art and two musical selections, along with an analysis and review of the week’s cartoons.
I just finished a batch of gags featuring marines, a golfer, clowns (again), a car dealer, and earthworms.
Looking Ahead & Looking Back
I’m hoping the end with the “collar” is the front.
In the late 1970s, I lived less than a hundred yards from my friend Jim’s record store. I did a lot of art for the shop, and this business card is probably my first effort. It’s embarrassingly sloppy, but I suppose in keeping the punk DIY aesthetic.
Eventually, Jim and I co-published a music zine (below) and ran a tiny independent record label.
Shake & Pop! was named after a Nick Lowe song, and featured early art and “design” by Your Cartoonist.
We rented an old rowhouse in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood, and the attic space was my music room. Here I am relaxing with my first feline family members, Johnson and Mosby. I didn’t work in health care and probably picked up the scrubs top at a thrift store. I no longer have that Clash poster or the Shemp badge I’m wearing in the photo.
Klaatu Barada Nikto
We were out for a walk around the neighborhood on a sunny day, and I wore one of my favorite hats. The shadow it cast made it look as if my head was a perfect sphere, so I had to snap a photo while monotonously chanting, “Greetings, people of Earth….”
It was either that or singing something by The Residents.
As always, I’m grateful to you all for your readership and support.
Please feel free to ask questions or share pipe photos in the comments section. Your contributions add a lot to the newsletter.
Cheers from your cartoonist,
Wayno
Possible questions for a future blog:
1) What were some of your part-time/full-time jobs leading up to being an illustrator/cartoonist/writer full-time, and when did you know that you could do this full-time, if ever…
And that you had a gift to make this a career?
2) Or have you always multi-tasked contracts, to this day?
3) How did you meet Dan, your partner in “crime”?
Thank you!
Shemp...