Geek Show Ink

I did a little bit of debating on who I should start this series of posts with. On the one hand the earliest artist who influenced me and I tried copying would be the cartoonist from the Sunday Comics (Charles Schultz, Berkeley Breathed and Jim Davis being the ones who come to mind), but at the sametime those where just the scratching of a little kid…

In the end I figured I would go with the other hand… That would be the artist that made me really want to draw as a teenager. To create art that was more then just trying to master drawing another cartoonist characters.

As a teen I think the art that really grabbed me the most and made me want to start to draw was that of Edward Gorey. I was a big Sherlock Holmes freak in Junior and Senior High school and that meant that I would watch MYSTERY on PBS when ever they did one of their Holmes stories. For those not familiar MYSTERY opened with a animated segment of art created by Gorey.

The thing that attracted me to Gorey was the fact that his work was black and white. For some reason I have always been drawn to B&W work more then color. I also loved the grim gritty feel that always seemed to be present in his works. It seemed to always have a mysterious air to it.

Right before he died 2000 I picked up one of these signed print of Goreys. I have never bothered to look for it on EBAY in fear of finding out what it goes for and being tempted to part with it…

I have never tried to pull Gorey’s B&W ink style into my own work, but I do have a pulp detective story that I would like to tell someday and a hybrid of gorey’s ink style and my cartoons might be perfect for it!