Wednesday 19 August 2015

Dave's Sketches of People

MARGARET LISS:
A few years ago I scanned all of Dave Sim's notebooks. He had filled 36 notebooks during the years he created the monthly Cerebus series, covering issues #20 to 300, plus the other side items -- like the Epic stories, posters and prints, convention speeches etc. A total of 3,281 notebook pages detailing his creative process. I never really got the time to study the notebooks when I had them. Just did a quick look, scanned them in and sent them back to Dave as soon as possible. So this regular column is a chance for me to look through those scans and highlight some of the more interesting pages.

The second of three "quickies" as when this gets posted I'll be unpacking. I hope it is better than packing, because packing sucks. But I digress.

This week - some pages from Dave's notebook #5, which covers issues #70 to 79, so this notebook spans approximately late 1984 to middle of 1985. These pages are some of the sketches of friends and random people.

The first page, page 37, has been rotated 90 degrees as you can see by the spine of the notebook along the top of the page. I'm guessing they're tourists. The text? "You clumsy great oaf. If you've dropped my good lines in this pig-sty".

Notebook #5, page 37
My mom had that same haircut in the early 1990s. Luckily she never dressed like that.

The next sketch is of Miss Judith Bradford. She graces page 62 along with a thumbnail sketch of the cover of issue #76.

Notebook #5, page 62
Elaine is the center of page 66 where Dave signs it with his Bill Sienkiewicz signature:

Notebook #5, page 66

3 comments:

JLH said...

According to the Church & State bi-weekly note about the page with Judith Bradford on it, "Jude Unit" was supposedly Dave's "all-time favourite girlfriend" (at least back in 1990).

Jeff Seiler said...

Man, if I'd a known back in the 90s that hot girls get the hots for average-looking cartoonists, I'd a been taking drawing lessons like crazy!

Tony Dunlop said...

Correlation does not imply causation…Dave is also capable of being extraordinarily charming and funny. I'm pretty sure that's what accounts for his…ahem…"successes" (or "sins," as I suspect he'd now call them).