Richard Thompson's Blog, page 23

Auction Outcome

The auction of the three Pearls Before Swine strips, a collaboration between Stephan Pastis & Bill Watterson, brings in $74,090, with Heritage Auction's generous contribution. All of it is going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.

I have some good friends.

Old & Lost Almanacs

Here are a few Almanacs that, because it was a local, DC strip or for one reason or another was too outdated, have not been seen since their original publication in the Post. Hey, I got a million of these. My objections follow each image.

Strained humor, of local interest only.

Out of date.


Of local interest only. Who's Marion Barry?


Too specific.


Outdated subject.


Too local. Plus, J.Carter Brown's dead.

 
Too local. How many times are you going to use this gag?


Too local. Also, I'd lost it.


Too weird.

Let's Raise Some Money

The Watterson / Pastis auction of artwork for Team Cul de Sac is almost at $30,000 combined for the three comic strips.
Only three days until the entire auction goes live and the clock is ticking.

444

The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum reports that on the last day of exhibition the combined Watterson/Thompson show broke the previous day's record of 350, attracting 444 cartoon-crazed fans. Including, if the photos smuggled from the event are credible, several nuns and a man in a hat. Again, we applaud their effort.

Last Two Days

As all things must end, the OSU Billy Ireland show is coming down on August 3rd, after 6 months and almost 4 million sets of eyeballs.  The carpet was replaced 8 times at a cost to the taxpayer of 17 trillion dollars, while if you laid end-to-end all the velvet rope used it would stretch from downtown Washington, DC to the Oort Cloud.*

Oort Cloud (approx.)
My deepest thanks to Jenny Robb and her staff, especially the indefatigable  Caitlin McGurk, without whom I wouldn't get to use the word "indefatigable" twice in one sentence. Ya'll done good! Thanks also to my co-exhibitor and roomie, Bill Watterson, for kindnesses too numerous to mention, like not pushing me right into the fountain at the National Gallery when I got too pompous.

Showroom new! With Caitlin McGurk.
It was fun! Let's it again!
*Fanciful and meretricious.

Thompsoniana Continued

Will there be updates as more cards become available?
Like this new one?

A Major Advance in Greeting Cards!

THOMPSONIANA GREETINGS
Are you tired of greeting cards that are too thoughtful? That announce their sensitivity trght from the get-go, leaving you no space for nuanced crudities? Well, the good people at Thompsoniana are here to help, with thousands* of card designs that are both attractive and uncommunicative.  Hey, we're up to our eyeballs in images here, there's gotta be some way to turn them into cash!



Boy, if I got that in the mail I wouldn't know what to think.  But I'd sure like to send it! Do you have anything for that hard-to-buy-for relative with a fondness for silly cosmologies?


How about friends whose brains float?


Suicidal clowns?
Something better?


A cranky, freshly-awoken Brunnhilde?


Something with a heart in it?

How about a heart with some math?



Do you have any greeting  cards which might appeal to a cat fancier who's also fond of music?
Wow, what a wide selection of cards! How about occasions? Anything for Mozart's Birthday?

How about Beethoven?

Presidents' Day?
The Forth of  July?


How about something literary?


 Do you have anything that'd be appropriate for someone who's experiencing an existential crisis?

Well,  I'm sold, even though the whole thing is repurposing existing images for some bucks! Now I can;t wait to rely on the U.S.Postal Service for all my communication needs! Say, how much are these cards going to end up costing me? They look awful fancy.
ONLY $2.95 A CARD! IS THAT CHEAP OR WHAT?
Holy cats, only $2.95  a card? I'm doing all my card shopping at Thompsoniana! Only an ungrateful fool would do otherwise!
*WELL, DOZENS.

Your Unnecessary Magazine Illustration for Today

I drew this for the New Yorker during the investigation into the Enron scandal (which today seems quaint) and it was such a crummy experience that I realized subconsciously that the bloom was off the rose and it was time to quit the illustration game. Briefly, from l. to r. there's Fastow, Lay and Skilling, the chief perpetrators.


I remember more about the drama behind the drawing. The original drawing was okay-ed, but then came back to me for revisions. They FedExed it overnight to me for Saturday delivery. I waited on the front step for the package. The FedEx truck came and did not deliver anything, but parked next door. For some reason, the driver was blaring opera. Just before he pulled away I ran down the hill and hammered on his door. It turned out that he had almost misdelivered the package and was quite upset by it (he kept saying "Oh Lordy!"). I was just glad to get the package. The changes were all minor. They said Ken Lay looked like he had a black eye so I fixed that with some gouache, and had it in the mail the next Monday.

It was going to be a full page illustration so I was disappointed when the issue came out - it had shrunk to spot size. By then I was starting not to care. The things you can do in Photoshop allow an art director to tinker endlessly with your work or force you to tinker endlessly with your work, and deadlines are mutable.

So like I said, the bloom was off the rose and it was about time to change careers. But gradually.

Mutt & Jeff

Here's an early caricature cover for the Post's National Edition to illustrate an article on Edwin Meese and George Schultz. I used to do covers for them fairly often, and this was the first, from about 1987-8. The National edition was (is?) a weekly tabloid that reprinted the week's stories, etc.; sort of like a magazine. And, for a cover like this, they'd pay the handsome sum of $200. So I was inspired. If it had been any more money, I'd've been worried.
In doing this, I filled two pads of my then-favorite paper, Bienfang Ad-Art, a translucent layout paper I liked before I started using a lightbox. At 100 sheets per pad, we're talking a serious emotional investment, probably due to inexperience and the kind of panic that hits at 4 a.m. when you've got a drawing due that day and you imagine a magazine with a blank cover  and your byline. (one guess what my reoccurring nightmare is).  My only clear memory of those two days (well, nights) is poring over works by Sorel, Steadman and other, better artists who knew what they were doing to see how to do it.
Finally, along about 4 a.m. on the second, penultimate night, something clicked. And after drawing these two bozos umpty-ump times it was probably my sanity. Suddenly, I had them both on one page. I added some colored pencil (enough to show it was supposed to be in color), Metroed down to the Post (from Gaithersburg, Md, where I then lived about 20 miles) and turned it in.
Later, this got into the Society of Illustrators' 2nd Humor show, and still later my brother was rear ended in Georgetown by Edwin Meese's limo.

more merchandising

ANNOUNCING THE BEETHOVEN SHIRT ONLY $23.95

AVAILABLE IN 20 COLORSWITH THE MAESTRO ON THE RECTO, AND HIS SIGNATURE ON THE VERSO
BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS A SHIRT THAT SCOWLS.