The Drink Tank 188

8/14/2019 The Drink Tank 188

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Another wonderful cover from Bri-

anna SpaceKat-Wu! Always good to have

her stuff in The Drink Tank. Its also

good to have another piece from the Man

Himself: Steve Stiles! Always a good

thing. Thats it down there.

This issue is all about art. Not just

any art, but the art of Mr. Taral Wayne,

the 2009 WorldCons Fan guest of Honor,and the reason were doing an issue full

of his stuff, winner of the 2008 Rotsler

Award. It even explains why for the rst

time since issue 99, were doing it in por-

trait instead of landscape!

The Rotsler is the highest honor a

Fan Artist can get based on a lifetime of

work. Named after Bill The Thrill Rot-

sler, famed LA-based Fan Artist who was

one of the true legends of Fandom for a

few decades, the Rotsler has been given

out to eleven magnicent artists, includ-

ing ATom, Steve Stiles, Harry Bell, Grant

Caneld, Ray Nelson, Alexis Gilliland,

Marc Shirmeister, Kurt Erichsen, Terry

Jeeves and Brad Foster. Its an amazing

group of artists.

To me, the Hugo may have more

Wow Factor, but theres nothing moreincredible than giving an award to those

who have a long body of work for that

long body of work. While other awards

may give praise for a specic period of

time, The Rotsler goes beyond that, giv-

ing a lifetimes work a once-over and

declaring the winner worthy of eternal

praise!

And heres another reason why I

love it: its named after Rotsler. I nevermet him. Dad said he did, but I

never got to. He was one of those

guys who you had a reaction to.

While I was never a fan of his car-

toons, the stuff he did that were

space pieces, reptile over-lords,

landscapes, mysterious castles,

women trapped in globes and so on

were wonderful. Those alone were

enough to settle his place in his-

tory for me, but the little cartoonsthat popped up in so many fan-

zines for so many years are an in-

credible piece of the fannish tradi-

tion. I wish I could live the kind of

life he did, but Im already behind

in getting to it!

And so, heres Taral Wayne,

the 2008 Winner of the Rotlser

Award, with commentary on the

pieces he sent my way for this trib-ute. I think youll agree that this is

evidence that he well deserved the

award, and his frank discussion of

the pieces and the world that sur-

rounds them are both enlightening

and tough, something that great

fan art and fan writing can often

be accused of.

And now, on to the show!

[email protected]


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ThinkTankMy Comments on Rotsler Award

Folio

Taral Wayne

Contents

Rotsler Letraset- Page 4

Aftermath- Page 5

Aquaphile- Page 5

Couch Potato- Page 6

Colour By Number- Page 7

Crew Mate- Page 8

Dating Game- Page 9

Decompression- Page 10

Equinocturne- Page 11

Fetish Sawyer- Page 12

Glass Pixie- Page 12

Hot Wheels- Page 13

Hucksters Room- 14

Lifting- Page 15

Sauna- Page 16

Rotsler Letraset It likely makes mostsense if I start with the infamous Rotsler

Letraset. Readers might be a little surprisedto learn that none of the replicated guresand symbols were drawn by Rotsler. Idrew one of each type myself, freehand. Iwill admit to having actual Rotsler illosas models, though I altered them as I sawt. The fake Letraset sheet was originallyprinted on a large sheet of paper, somethinglike 10 by 14, folded in half, and runthrough one issue of my last genzine NewToy.

People have generally assumed theLetraset was a tribute to the master. Itseems odd, therefore, to be a winner of theRotsler Award and have to admit that itwas no tribute. No, Im sorry, it was only aprivate joke.

I never really cared all that muchfor Rotslers art. It was clever, and oftenapropos. Rotsler certainly had a sense ofhow far to go with what he had, so he never

over-reached himself. His cartoons werenever ugly or badly constructed. They justnever excited me. It didnt seem to me,that as an exercise in pure drawing, hewasexceptional. As a cartoonist? Well,thats something different. Many extremelysuccessful cartoonists are lacklusterdraftsmen. In the eld of cartooning,

rendering isnt the point. But Im more ofrenderer than a humorist, and thats how Ilook at a drawing.

Still, fandom is full of cartoonists. Inlarge part, I picked on Rotsler becauseofhis stature in fandom. Its understandablehow he came by it. The man was supplyingfanzines with cartoons and art before I wasborn. He also hit his stride at a time infandom when his sort of minimalist drawing

was hip it was the era of Fieffer andabstract jazz covers. A further plus was thatRotsler was pretty darn easy to trace on awax stencil, something that could not besaid for, say, Hal Foster, or even Walt Kelly.

Yet fans spoke of Rotslers inimitableline. This annoyed me. I thought it lookedawfully easy to imitate, so I set out to proveit. I did so on a number of occasions,and once even presented a fake (printedin a fanzine) to Rotsler to autograph. He

did. Then he did a double-take and said,Hey, wait! Thats not mine! Some of myimitations were weaker than others, but Inally decided to settle the issue once andfor all, if only in my mind. Hence the Letraset. It not onlyproved I could copy the Master soperfectly that nobody could tell, but italso made a statement that I regarded theMasters efforts to be rather repetitive andinterchangeable.

So there. I guess the committee cantake away my plaque, but Ive already spentthe money!

If I may be serious for a moment,my apologies if my confession has actuallyangered anyone. I assume we are all fans,have broad minds that can make roomfor differing opinions, and can laugh atourselves a little.


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AftermathThe need for money makesartists do strange things.

Im not much of a fan of dark fantasy,but the book dealer, who commissionedthis piece for her catalog, was. It was aninteresting challenge regardless. Fromtime to time, creative artists like to take onsomething they dont normally do. If youve

seen much dark fantasy illustration, youknow that its mainly, well, dark. Dark insubject matter, dark in tone, but usuallydark in fact, since more black ink getssplashed about than is common with othergenres.

Keeping with tradition, I cast almosteverything in deep, dark shadow, includingmost of the zombie (or whatever it is). Theforeground roots and branches are not

all black, but heavily shaded. If you lookcarefully, you can see a couple of bookspartly submerged in the swamp water. Inthe background, among the decaying trees isthe stump of Torontos CN Tower. Crumpledin the zombies st is a copy of the dealersown catalog. How it survived Apocalypse, Ileave to your imagination.

AquaphileOne of the wonderful thingsabout Photoshop is that you can oftendispense with the inking stage. This piecebegan with a humble pencil drawing. Iskipped right over inking by boosting thecontrast digitally. If you look closely, you

can just make out the original lines underthe black parts of the mermaids body.

Once I had a foreground, I createda new layer, lled it with a blue, created agradient from top to bottom, and used theair-brush tool to paint indistinct formationsof coral on the sea bottom. Its easy almost if you know how to do it. Butof course, you never do With Photoshopyoure always learning new things.


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I believe I may have coloured the piece specically for the use ofRowrbrazzle, thecartoonists apa. (It was begun by Marc Schirmeister back around 1984, and survives still.)Now that I think of it, I wonder why I didnt shop it around after Brazzle, for some widelyavailable zine to use. Or did I? No I dont think I did. Ive only just got it through myhead that with so many digital zines, these days, colour covers cost no more than black &white. Ive only done three or four so far.

Couch PotatoCouch Potato is a commission for a furry in Germany, who imagineshimself a slobby cat guy. He e-mailed me photos of the corner of his living room, so I couldget the details right. I havent incorporated everything in the sketch at this point, onlythe main features. Some of the details that are included are those I added myself theplethora of TV, VCR, and other remotes, for instance. The bobble-head of Mojo-Jojo. Thepizza slice. Although I began this piece in 2006, Im a little embarrassed to admit Im stillinking the nished 11 by 17 drawing.


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Colour By

NumberThisdouble parodyhas an oddhistory. Those ofyou who werearound backin the 1980sremember thecommotioncaused byRichard Bergeronon the one hand;Avedon Carol, TedWhite, PatrickNielsen Hayden,etc. on the other.I wasnt involved,

but had a ring-side seat for theproceedings. WasI was makingan ambivalentcomment, orjust taking anopportunity toimitate Bergeronsstyle, when I didthis? Im not

sure. It seemedfunny at the time,though, to drawAvedon thumbingher nose, in thestyle of the personshe was thumbingit at.

Strangely,Bergeron was

delighted with it. But nobody else seemed to be. (I had expected it would likely be theother way around, or that nobodywould be happy with me.) I forget how many fanzinesI tried this cover on, but no-one would publish it. Finally, more than twenty years later,Marty Cantor said he was game, and it appeared on No Awardat long last.

I did colour this piece by hand, some years ago. This version shown, however, iscoloured by Photoshop. The original was done with colour pencils, and has a texture.While not unattractive as such, in this case the perfectly smooth colours produced byPhotoshop are more like the smoothly silk-screened colours of Bergerons Warhoon covers.I also used Photoshop to correct an unfortunate numbering mistake.


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Crew MateMy originalaim was to doa cover for PatMuellers PirateJenny. I thoughtthis t the title.For whateverreason, she nevergot around tousing it. (I canimagine severalreasons, butwhy exercisemy paranoia?)Eventually Irecycled it forMike Glyers File

770. In time Icoloured it, aswell, selling itas a print. Youcan see from thetexture that thejob was done withcolour pencils.However, whenI scanned it, thefaint tints of the

sky dropped outof the image. Irestored themwith Photoshop.

In the mid-80s I rekindledan old interest inmilitary hardware.I began buildingmodel kits again,

and had builtseveral Japanesemade kits of handguns in 1/1 scale, complete with working parts. (Plastic, working parts,not suitable for live ammunition of course.) The tank turret illustrated is from a GermanTiger I. In the holster is a snub nosed Smith & Wesson .38 with over-sized grips foraccurate shooting. I think youll recognize the ham sandwich without my help, but thestubby bottle may be a bit of a mystery unless youre a fellow Canuck. Back then we stillhad bottles with short necks. I dont know why we switched to the American long neckedbottle, unless it was just another corporate decision, to simplify production. I dont drinkbeer, mind you, but I miss our own bottles. The brand is Molsons Export. Dont ask meabout the cigarette. I dont think that type have brand names


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Dating Game I drew this just for the fun of it. When I say Im not a cartoonist,clearly I protest too much, because sometimes I do like to draw something funny. What Ind funny, however, may or may not seem so to everyone. In this case Ive played aroundwith familiar cartoon characters, putting Gadget (from Disneys Rescue Rangers) in TheDating Game. The potential dates are three other cartoon mice. Two are easily recognized Brain from Warner Bros. Pinky and the Brain, and Fievel from An American Tail. It is arare person, though, who recognizes the third mouse. Its a Walter Lantz character, usedin only oneanimated cartoon in 1959, who appeared in a small handful of comics. So dontfeel bad if you didnt put the name Space Mouse to him.

DecompressionThis appeared in an early issue of File 770, before Mike Glyer beganusing full page covers. Later, I drew a more elaborate version of this called Book Scout.In the rst one, the damaged spaceship is leaking fanzines copies of Mike Glyers ownScientifriction, Arnie Katzs **** Extra, Stu Shiffman & Larry Carmodys Rafes, TerryHughes Mota, Peter Roberts Egg, and Ian Maules Nabu. In the later drawing the fanzinesbecame books, and were being gathered from free fall by my imaginary better-half, SaaraMar. It too was published by Mike, in File 770. But I rather like the simplicity of this one.I believe I was trying to capture something of the almost elemental quality of some of the artI was seeing in fanzines back in the 70s. Art by Vaughn Bode, and Dan Steffan, to name acouple of the artists I liked.


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Equinocturnethis is a raraavis. Those ofyou who read thenovels of RobertCharles Wilsonmay not be awarethat hes thesame Bob Wilsonwho was part ofthe Toronto fanscene in the 70s.He had one shortstory publishedearly in hiscareer, that hewould probablylike to forget. It

was publishedin a 1975 issueof Analog.Naturally, oneof the otherwriters had thecover. BecauseIm a wildlyimpractical sortof guy, I decidedto x that I not

only did the artentirely withoutlines, so that itwould look like aFrank Kelly Freaspainting, I forgedhis signature aswell, and handlettered the wholething. I had a

couple of colourphotocopiesmade, andreplaced the

real covers on a couple of real copies of the February Analog. I own one, and Bob the onlyother.

Apart from Bob, myself, and a handful of visitors to my apartment, Equinocturnehas never been seen by anyone.


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Fetish SawyerWhen Cats Dont Dancerst showed on the big screen, I thoughtit was as near to the perfect animated lmas any would ever get. Im a little lessenthusiastic now than I was, but it remainsa damned good movie. It helps, too, if youlike musicals. One of the characters wasthe particularly appealing Sawyer Cat. Her

number in mid-lm, Tell Me Lies is one ofthe nicest bits of torch singing Ive heard itshould be, it was sung by Natalie King Cole.

In the lm, Sawyer is a rather primand repressed person, who feels sheslearned her lesson in life, and has stoppedreaching for the stars. Having a rather bentsense of humour, I wondered if she mighthave a more interesting personal life thanshe let on, and produced this piece with her

got up in fetish gear. It was at a time when Ihad seen so much fetish furry art, that I wasbeginning to see the appeal up to a pointanyway. Since then Ive made an effort toreturn the way I came. The otherway liesmadness.

But I still like the drawing. Onceagain, its only a pencil piece that Ive beefedup in Photoshop, coloured, and added frills.The background double is an overused trick

you see a lot of in anime fan art. I thinkpretty nearly half. I played with it a coupleof times so I know how the tricks done.Its fairly easily done, actually, which mayaccount for how it became a clich.

Glass PixieThis too, is mainly aPhotoshop artifact. The original is avery rough sketch. But if you know whatyoure doing you can take next to nothing,

and turn it into a surprisingly impressivepiece of eye-candy with a computer. I mightnot have bothered working this one up, hadit not been for a correspondent who runs awebsite with a lot of my artwork. He askedwhy I never seem to do male gures. I senthim what I could, but it was a pitifully smallassortment. I cant help nding femalegures more pleasing to draw. When Idoodled this one, I felt obliged to pass it on.Clearly, as it stood, it was in need of more


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work.I might have done it in some straightforward way, but decided it would be more

interesting to create a transparent effect. So the pixie became a mere glass bauble on a

table-top.

Hot WheelsIve kept the number of pics in this folio that include Saara Mar to aminimum. But a folio with no drawings of Saara would hardly be a genuine sample of mywork. This one shows Saara admiring my new wheels, and also another alien characternamed Tangel. Shes the short one with the tail, next to Saara.

The hot rod is my attempt to blend classic styling with the new look in hot rodding,which goes too far toward modernization for my taste. Ive retained more of the detail, andoriginal lines of the Ford 32 roadster. As well, all four wheels are tted with baby moons.As a gesture to the new century, I blended the headlights into the fenders, added a sharplysloped windshield, and a dodge Viper 490 c.i. mill. If you care about such things, you likelyknow what Im talking about.

You may guess that I like cars. I do. Sadly, Ive never owned one. But I do, at least,have a couple of hundred die-cast models of many models, from every decade. Beingable to choose a 1919 REO Touring, or a brand new Audi R8, to sit on my work table for

inspiration isnt as good as having a car I can actually drive, but it has to do.


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Hucksters Room (Worldscon 127)I wanted to include as broad an assortmentof my work as I could. Hucksters Room is one of the oldies I thought would be familiarfrom old zines. It was done at Linda Bushyagers request, for her edition of The Neo-FansGuide. It was drawn back in the days when I used gray-tones in a lot of my work, creatingtrouble for anyone who tried to print it, and usually leading to disappointment on mypart when I saw what bad mimeography, or cheap xerox, had done to the art. This pieceis no exception. The mimeographed version isnt too terribly bad, but this is what it wassupposedto look like.

Although this pretends to be the Worldcon for 2069, unfortunately there is nolikelihood that the wall-screens would be showing a debate between Isaac Asimov andArthur C. Clarke. Somebody obviously forgot to invent the terric scientic advance thatmakes lifespans of a hundred and fty, or two hundred years possible, because both Clarkeand Asimov have passed away since I drew this. And here I thought I was being clevershowing them looking really old.

Theres also an aged Heinlein in the crowd. As you know, hes gone too. Up frontis Andy Porter at his table selling Algol still and he hasnt been looking so good lately. Iwonder if I hadnt put a hex on them all.

There are lots of details you should nd interesting. Overlook nothing. Notice the

Montreal in/en 77 buttons on the corner of Andys table. And the vinyl bagged copies ofBullsheet, the MidAmeriCon newsletter, selling for $50 each. Dont miss the copy ofTheStone Pilloweither.

LiftingI drew this at the request ofBrad Foster, who wanted to produce atiny booklet of cartoons and drawingsall based on the acronym, LoCs. Hecreated a list of many possible meaningsfor the four letters. I chose LiftingOurselves Coolly Skyward. I gured

almost all the other contributions wouldbe humorous. Instead, I wanted to dosomething that was atmospheric.

In my mind I had a oating city,spread among the clouds. That provedto be too much of a chore, and franklythe detailed buildings and spires werereally not essential. Instead, I had thestring of oaters rising up toward whatmight a moon or twin planet. This muchsimplied the image as well as the job. It

might seem a little odd for me to say it,considering how much detail Ill put ina drawing, but too much is too much. Apicture should not have more in it than itneeds.

Fans of the Powerpuff Girls shouldnote the Bubbles dolly. And the fourthgure on the way up is Saara, seen from

behind and below. I couldnt resist the cameo. Brad liked the piece, I guess, because heused it for the back cover.


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SaunaI like cats. Theyreeasy to live with, and fun todraw.

Of course, no catIve lived with has beenstacked like this, or likedtaking a sauna. UntilI got this drawing into

Photoshop, it was only apencil sketch. Once again,I worked the magic of 1sand 0s darkening lines,airbrushing her lusciousgure three-dimensionally,and suggesting a steamybackground. I discoveredthat sometimes gray-tones are enough. It isnt

necessary to use a full palettejust because its there.

Chris Notes:

I have to say that

Taral has always been

around as far as my

experience of Fanzines go.

Ive seen many of his works

in many places, including

in the long run of Gallery,an art APA, that was given

to me as a part of my

archive of zines. While a

lot of the stuff in those issues did not appeal to me personally (though there was

stuff from DL Norton that I enjoyed) it was always Taral stuff I found the most out

of. Im still not sure why, but theres something there.

Taral has appeared in the Drink Tank a few times, with an extended interview

that Frank Wu did where I got to run a bunch of his art. Ive always intended to give

Taral another major show as it were in my pages, and the plan was to try right

before WorldCon, but the Rotsler showed up and that sealed it.Of the pieces he passed my way, the one that moves me the most is

Decomposition. While everything in the group is fantastic, its that piece, zines

tumbling through space and time, that really got me. I couldnt explain it. It was

one of those moments when you come across a piece that really shows you what

you love. And that was a piece I loved. The mention of Vaughn Bode, probably my

favorite comix artist, and Dan Steffan, one of the truly great Fan Artists, also

helped earn it a place in my heart.

I hope to do more of these tributes to Rotsler winners, both prior winners and

the new ones as they come out. Thats all for this special issue!

The Drink Tank 188

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