This Week's Sneak Peek

 Is it Monday already? Is it still only October?

I checked in on a couple of the panels at Cartoons Crossroads this weekend: one on preserving one's artwork, and another on "May You Cartoon in Interesting Times."

The latter, with KAL Kallaugher, Jen Sorensen, Eric Garcia, Pat Bagley, David Brown, and Angelo Lopez, was very interesting (except that my browser started freezing and skipping ahead a lot toward the end). I really wish I had not needed to leave before the preservation presentation was finished.

I already use acid-free paper and India ink, and I've learned never to use rubber cement, or to mix newspaper pages in with my originals. I would like to have heard or asked about such media as white-out and gesso. I'm also curious about fixatives for charcoal. I almost never use charcoal any more, but there was a time in the 1980's when I did. 

A college professor had recommended using hair spray to keep charcoal from smudging, and as far as that goes, it works just fine. A small amount of charcoal from my 1980's cartoons has rubbed off onto the back of adjacent pages, but nothing has discolored.

Yet.

The last time I used charcoal on a cartoon was in 2006 to depict the aftermath of an explosion. In case I ever want to draw another cartoon like it, I may still have a 40-year-old can of AquaNet down in the basement somewhere.

Anybody know how long that stuff lasts?