The Barefoot Serpent

The Barefoot Serpent, Part 2 of 2

It was great to see new work. I missed Buddy’s typical garishness. He could be garish with just black and white.

“Grey, huh? I don’t have enough words for gray. I can think of light gray, dark gray, blue gray. But you haven’t used blue much lately.”

“I liked blue about as long as I liked Abba,” Buddy said.

I said, “That was regrettable.”

“Abba is still much better than Rush,” Buddy said. “And you still like Rush.”

“There is nothing wrong with blue or with Rush.”

“Blue’s OK.”

“So is Rush,” I said. “Now you like grey and that silly fig band.”

“Marseille Figs. Ceasar’s Revenge is a great song.”

“Whatever. You just like songs with the word ‘fuck’ in the refrain,” I said. “You know, you used to erase any smudges to make the lines sharp.”

“You wanted the clean lines.”

“I liked the cleanness and precision even if the lines were marker lines as large as a crayon sometimes.”

His new sketches emphasized streaky grays and faded whites. Gone were bold white spaces and lines etched and scarred with black ink.

“Black and white, Tom. But it doesn’t work that way. I don’t think a heart can contain all that empty space. There needs to be the cool shades of grey in the middle. I had done a lot of portraits, and simple stuff, like my car, and experimented with color. Hardly used any black, or white for that matter. I tried blue. I tried red. It was all crap. Imagine me saying that. Threw it away. My best stuff was always sketchwork. Now gray is my favorite color.” Then he tossed me The Barefoot Serpent by Scott Morse.

“You have a new favorite color every month or so. Remember when you went through your cream-sickle phase. That sucked.” I flipped through the book, and said, “It is gray. I’ll read it soon.”

Buddy’s work had morphed from manga-influenced black and white to nuanced flatness. “Why this?” I asked, holding up The Barefoot Serpent.

“He draws trade winds on Hawaii. Everything is supposed to blow about. But the image is solid and hard, even in muted gray, as if there is no ability to draw motion. So much of what is wrong about Marvel style comic art besides the overdrawn comic chicks, is the drawing of motion. You just foreshorten here, provide a swoosh there, like a Nike commercial. Scott’s pictures are fixed solid, static.”

I flipped through the book again, more slowly. Scott Morse’s lines were still bold, just hidden by a dull glaze. “What about the color pages?”

“Those pages are about Akira Kurosawa. The Barefoot Serpent is Scott’s re-imagine of that story. I like the book for the art work mainly.”

——
Part 2: The Barefoot Serpent
Part 1: Back, White, Grey