Black, White, Grey

The Barefoot Serpent, Part 1

I had renewed the routine of stopping by Buddy’s at least once a week. His cleaning fervor was erratic. Today, his loft was cleaner than last visit when his binocular project lay about. He was still busy with his art.

I felt more at home.

He showed me three narrow panels sketched on the same page. There was plenty of white space in the gutter between the panels. And because he added a touch of shadow, the panels looked like they floated.

“I’m imitating Scott Morse. Have you read any of his stuff?”

He forgot that he had already explained his fascination with Scott Morse.

There was a bandshell, centered and in the background, with a band playing. For the three panels nothing about the bandshell changed, not even the placement of the tiny silhouetted band members. The audience, the time of the day, and the environment all around changed. It was a mountain amphitheater at dusk, a football stadium at midday, and a beach and ocean at sunrise.

Sea lions were the audience in the last panel. In Buddy’s world, no one would be awake that early. He stays up late, and never wakes early. I do both.

He had cribbed in lyrics. “Amazing Jane she lived,” for the first panel, then “on the corner of the street,” and finally, “right next to me.”

This work was a blast from the past, restyled for his new influences. “Buddy, I haven’t looked at comics in quite a while.”

“That one, it’s all about where I put the horizon,” he said. “I needed enough space to show lighting for the time of day. I needed enough foreground to show the audience. Dusk was easiest to show because of the spot lights.”

“There’s no horizon with the football stadium.”

“Should there be? But if you look, there is one where the stands start. It’s the same horizon line. The lack of long shadow shows that it’s midday.”

“Yeah.”

“Here is another one.” He thrust another page at me. This time the three panels ran vertically. There was no gutter or defined border, just repetition. The rise and fall of looming rock defined the transition from one panel to the next. There was a tiny passageway through the narrow crag.

In the first panel, a guy was walking through with a guitar slung over his back. The second was a guy with a drum strapped over his back. He looked like he was playing the drum, but of course, we couldn’t see.

The final was a guy without any instrument walking through. He had his hand thrust in the air, and was saying, “Rock on!”

I was surprised. “You know, we stopped doing that a while back. Rob lost interest, right?”

“Yeah.” Buddy moved to put the sketches away.

… continued