Dixon's Forum

No studying web development this week.    Getting as far as I have in creating dixonsforum.com in WordPress and Elementor took so much time unforseen, I have fallen behind on important things outside the Web.    I got kind of lost amid things like Font Families and Web Page Ancestors and Class Descendants and decided to take a break from it.

That’s the nice thing about setting your own pace:    you get to set your own pace.    None of my artpieces ever turn out exactly as I imagine them, sometimes they’re better.   They’re satisfactory compromises between my vision and my skill set, and since Dixon’s Forum is indeed a showcase for creative works, dixonsforum.com is also itself and artpiece, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.    It only has to be the best I can do.

Last week I said I didn’t yet know what this week’s activity would be.    That is a sign of overwhelmedness:    not planning.    I got to wishing I had introduced the cartoon more orderly, rather than just flinging out some random strip as part of “Unentitled”.    Click here    to see it, and here    to see its home page.    So, I decided to introduce it properly this week.

The cartoon presents a whole new set of problems — it was designed for newspaper, not Internet, pages; it only exists in hardcopy.    I have to crop it up as best I can with PDF scans, screenshots, and Microsoft Paint.    Some of the strips are actually worth sharing, though; I think you’ll enjoy them.    If I ever do figure out a way to make it look good on all the screens of the Web, I’ll prob’ly leave these early ones as they are anyway.

Diégo el Ciégo emerged on a trip to Texas with my good friend Mino, whom I had met in a welding class.    Mino worked Summers up north and Wintered in Texas.    I kept a journal of the trip.

It also happened I was in the habit of closing out personal letters with some mischievous observation and a little devil-face.     For some reason, I don’t know why, I closed out one particular letter with a little rhyme, and tried to draw my own face — with glasses and no horns.    I was inspired to try other rhymes and facial expressions, and there became Diégo el Ciégo!

It also happened that everyone in my high school Spanish class had to take a Spanish name — Mike was Miguel, Joe was José, Charlotte was Carlota, &tc.    But there was no direct translation of “Dixon”, so I got called “Diégo”, which means “Jim”.    The teacher’s name was “Schmidt-o”.

Since I wear glasses, and “ciégo” means “blind” and rhymes with “Diégo”, and the cartoon was made up of rhymes, what other name could I put on it?

So, the concept was, a man who doesn’t see too well what others see, but sees things others don’t, “behind the scenes” so-to-speak, poking fun, to make them aware.    A different way to understand the world.

I would read the newspaper every day, and observe human behavior, and find something lampoonworthy, and write a limerick on it and draw the pictures, mostly talking heads.

I called the style “Minimalist” because it’s mostly just facial expressions and hand gestures with minimal embellishments, until some musical-artistic-design movement came along and stole the name, alas!

I had a blank template to trace over, to place the lettering.    I would draw everything in pencil, erasing and revising until I got it as close to my mind’s eye images as I could, then go over them in ink, then erase the pencil out from under the ink.

When I had sufficient strips I put a manuscript together and tried to get published.    They were simple line drawings, black on white, even the Sunday strips, because my style wouldn’t allow for coloring them in.    It only occurred to me after the manuscript was multipally rejected, I could make the Sunday strips as simple line drawings with colored pens and still not fill them in, so, if I ever decide to resurrect Diégo el Ciégo, that’s how I’ll do it. 

The first strip of “Diégo el Ciégo” tells what I planned to do about all the rejections it got from the publishers.    Click here to see it.    .

Click here       for its home page. 

Next Week:   either the fifth installment of “Unentitled, or the second piece of Industrial Art.