Problematic: Sketchbook Drawings 2004-2012

by Jim Woodring

If you are one of the fortunate thousands who enjoy untangling the enigmatic images that fill Jim Woodring's comics and drawings, Problematic is just the book for you to put under your pillow and dream on. Woodring is a devotee of the pocket-sized Moleskine sketchbook and has filled at least one per month since 2004. Quick concept sketches, figure studies, self-challenges, finished drawings, revenge portraits and caricatures, scene tryouts... everything goes into these idea batteries. Problematic provides the adventurous viewer with a bounty of unfiltered, hand-captured glimpses of life by an artist that Publishers Weekly called "a modern master of hallucinatory cartoon fables." Lots of this material re-emerges in the form of pictures and storylines, but much of it is just too baffling to be harnessed for any practical use. Of course, these untamable notions are the best and most interesting ones; and there are plenty of them here in the 300-page brick of Problematic. Problematic is a rollicking amalgam of reportage (i.e. the man who blew his arm off), speculative anatomy, fancy women, make-a-face games, picture-puzzles, gags, riffs and burlesques. Catalog and exhibition simultaneously, Problematic is your best bet for a brief, energizing stroll in a distinctively enjoyable neighborhood.

Genres: Comics, Art

300 pages, Hardcover

First published October 24, 2012

About the author

Jim Woodring was born in Los Angeles in 1952 and enjoyed a childhood made lively by an assortment of mental an psychological quirks including paroniria, paranoia, paracusia, apparitions, hallucinations and other species of psychological and neurological malfunction among the snakes and tarantulas of the San Gabriel mountains.

He eventually grew up to bean inquisitive bearlike man who has enjoyed three exciting careers: garbage collector, merry-go-round-operator and cartoonist. A self-taught artist, his first published works documented the disorienting hell of his salad days in an “illustrated autojournal” called Jim. This work was published by Fantagraphics Books and collected in The Book of Jim in 1992.

He is best known for his wordless comics series depicting the follies of his character Frank, a generic cartoon anthropomorph whose adventures careen wildly from sweet to appalling. A decade’s worth of these stories was collected in The Frank Book in 2004. The 2010 Frank story Weathercraft won The Stranger’s Genius Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for that year. The most recent Frank book, Congress of the Animals, was released in 2011.

Woodring is also known for his anecdotal charcoal drawings (a selection which was gathered in Seeing Things in 2005), and the sculptures, vinyl figures, fabrics and gallery installations that have been made from his designs. His multimedia collaborations with the musician Bill Frisell won them a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006. He lives in Seattle with his family and residual phenomena.

-Walter Foxglove

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been waiting to get my hands on this little baby for awhile now, so I devoured it in one sitting, and will look at it a few times, I am sure. My first reading of Woodring's work was in a few volumes of his Frank books, which are wordless, strange, mad, surreal, with crazy nightmare and goofy creatures. What is about? Horror, fantasy, humor, but mainly they are wondrous dark creations from nightmares and dreams and psychedelia. I read Jim recently and so in it you get to "see" Woodring finally and get to see some of his handwritten writing, so you can get a little greater insight into his strange mind. Maybe. But when you see "him" in self-portrait, it's a little less nightmarish, it presumes a kind of intimacy, close to the artist's hand and mind and process.

In this sketchbook Woodring records what he sees on the streets, in his dreams, and wherever it is he encounters these strange creatures. "Problematic" is how he describes this project, where he doesn't censor, it's practice at sketching and it's kind of automatic fantasy work. Some of it is "problematic" in the sense that it is disturbing, like Crumb's acid/nightmare fantasies. Grotesques. Like some of Crumb's work about women and animals. Strange and strangely beautiful. Not too disturbing, in case you were wondering. Crumb is more disturbing. Johnny Ryan is more disturbing. But he means it maybe as a warning when he says "problematic." Or maybe this is what others have said to him about the stuff.

The process is interesting, as you always get from a sketchbook, I suppose. Each month for eight years Woodring filled one small moleskin journal. These are smallish sized notebooks, so what we get here are in the published book are enlargements, and moving from pencil to ink. I mean you can often see the erasures under the ink. But the process was disciplining for him, and maybe much of it is just sketching, though some of it might emerge into something more coherent. Or are obvious reject stuff, too grotesque. Coherence isn't his thing, though. Vision is. Cool stuff. A cool and amazing brain.

This is some of his stuff:

http://www.jimwoodring.com

http://jimwoodring.blogspot.com

[Eric T. Voigt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looked at it over a period of like five sessions. I would reach my limit. Such grotesqueries! Hmm, is that really not a word? I'm planning on loaning the book to my dear friend Kiel Martens Nowakowski. I sent him pictures of my favorite pages, and think he'll appreciate the rest, at his leisure.

[Steve Bal4 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into Problematic , by Jim Woodring, with little context; being completely unfamiliar with him or his work, but this book works just fine regardless, in my opinion.

If Walt Disney, Dr. Suess and Robert Crumb got together to do bath salts and work on Mad Magazine or Yellow Submarine it would probably come out like Woodring's art. Lots of wacky creatures and caricatures, wavy lines, textures, impossible possibilities, and much humour & observation in the sketchbook pencil-work herein. Some of it's gross, some of it's funny, and some of it is quite beautiful and inspiring.

Not much writing, but lots to look at. Fun stuff!

⭐⭐⭐

[John Grothaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jim Woodring does it again! Familiar themes appear in these sketches, along with new forays into uncharted territory.

[Jon Hewelt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't even know how to describe. I felt as if I were reading a religious text. Some of his drawings look almost like woodcuts. Beautiful.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly meaty art book featuring the psychedelic and surreal musings of an all time great cartoonist. In Problematic, Jim Woodring records daily encounters and filters them with the dream-like sheen found in many of his Frank stories. The title alludes to a grotesque sensation he feels in these daily musings, but it's not really as disturbing as one might imaging. Perhaps I've been appropriately weaned on his work, so what I found here is an engaging extension of his work. In the end, I am less interested in the actual process that went behind creating this sketchbook, and rather just admiring fantastical drawings from one of the most imaginative minds making comics today.

[Diego Munoz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book full of snippets from his sketchbooks. Quite a unique style in that he uses pencil first, then chooses the line with quite a thick pen. The pencil marks still show.

He is a very creative guy, the pictures are of creatures, characters, friends and sometimes scenes.

He mentioned that he chose the pictures randomly from his sketchbook, and you do he the impression That he was perhaps not so picky about which pictures to chose. Great work.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a brilliant idea: the unedited sketchbooks of artists. Well, this is brilliant because these are the unedited sketchbooks of Jim Woodring, no ordinary thinker/artist. His creatures are half-tamed/maimed beasts and very ordinary people whose inner beasts are laid bare. Man he knows posture and body form and nakedness.

Columbus Metropolitan Library, why is this not in our collection?

[Morpheus Lunae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting access to Woodring's "idea batteries" makes for an interesting and very inspiring journey. I'm astonished by the range of styles in these notebook pages of which his polished books only cover a small aspect.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

First-rate draftsmanship in these improvised, spur-of-the-moment drawings, with creatures and designs in a vegetable-baroque-art-deco style--i.e., typical Woodring themes spontaneously expressed. I hope the book does well enough to encourage Woodring to publish more of his sketchbooks.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for printed sketchbook by artists I really enjoy. Seeing Woodring's stuff in a rougher form is refreshing. In everything I have seen by him, he has used computer coloring and line clean-up. His caricature work is the most interesting.

[First Second Books]

I'm reading PROBLEMATIC, which is a sketchbook folio thingy of selected drawings from over ten years' worth of moleskine notebooks by JIM WOODRING, my favorite living cartoonist bar none. It's funny and beautiful and disturbing and enlightening, like all of Jim's work.