A Matter of Degree

First off my standard apology: I have been totally overwhelmed in the last week (yay!), so I'm behind on posting. But a great number of you have found the time to send me some really tremendous dog pictures. Thank you all! I am absolutely shame-faced but tremendously grateful. Make me feel even guiltier, please, and keep 'em coming.

The question I was pondering this week was how broad to make the caricature for this page. I ask myself this question quite a lot, because while some of my illustration is pretty broad (see www.seltzerstudio.com for examples), I've toned down a lot of the distortion for Part-Time Dog, and I'm a little self-conscious about it. I think the book is funnier if the drawing plays it a little straighter. Too much caricature and the story would lose its sense of verisimilitude: the big yuks would be like rim-shots, and the jokes would die on the page. But if the drawing gets too straight, I'm afraid that the story will just be too, um, weird.

It's almost as though there might be a mathematical ratio, like an inverse square law, between level of caricature, level of humor and general weirdness. If I were any good at math, I'd figure it out. Of course, if I were any good at math, I'd probably be doing something else for a living.

More soon, promise. In the meantime, keep sending in dog photos (thanks to all of those I got this week!!), write me emails, make some comments on the blog, read the story so far or check out seltzerstudio.com.

Open publication