Air and Light and Time and Space

Bukowski poem as commissioned art

Process notes

Hub Comics manager and all-around creative soul Jesse Farrell commissioned me to draw a Charles Bukowski poem on 8" x 10" paper for framing as a relatively simple calligraphy gig. "Air and Light and Time and Space" is from the 1992 book The Last Night of the Earth Poems. After discovering Bukowski drawings by Robert Crumb in the research phase, I was intrigued by the notion of making it look like Crumb. The extra effort led to a more satisfying piece for the client and myself.

Design journey

I presented two designs; an EC Comics control shape around the art, and a word balloon control shape around the poem. The client had a slight preference for the word balloon design. I then made an 8" x 10" digital layout guide. Moving things around in Illustrator was way more precise than doing so on paper. I traced this onto bristol paper with the lightbox method for final art.

Lettering notes

Preserving the line breaks was a layout challenge. I didn't know how to wrap the word balloon around the empty right spacing. The simple solution in the digital layout guide seemed too cold for emulating Crumb's style.

Crumb may not need or want an Ames guide, but I sure do! Matching the font size from my digital layout guide gave me 4.0 even-space ratio. The cap height was a little higher than I'm used to, especially when lettering with a flexible Hunt 102 nib. Next time I'll try 3.5 or smaller at the two-thirds ratio.

Art journey

The body's based on 1980s Crumb drawings of Harvey Pekar. They collaborated a lot for Pekar's self-published comics anthology American Splendor. The head is inspired by Crumb's Bukowski drawings from the 1970s. I tried merging Pekar's pose with Crumb's excellent Bukowski likeness.

Harvey Pekar cartoon by R. Crumb — "How I quit collecting records ..." by Harvey Pekar, 1987. Art by Crumb.

Charles Bukowski illustration by R. Crumb — "Bop against that curtain" by Charles Bukowski, 1975. Illustration by Crumb.

panel from R. Crumb comic book story 'dumb' — Panel from the 1994 story "Dumb" by Crumb. This was my word balloon guide.

Crumb postcard to fan — Crumb's 1993 postcard saying he uses a Hunt 102 nib and Pelican drawing ink.

By the way...

Gavin Aung Than adapted "Air and Light and Time and Space" into comics on his Zen Pencils blog in 2012. HarperCollins asked him to remove it a year later, but nothing ever dies on the internet.

Dave Marshall, posting from Somerville after client delivery