Holy Intersecting Ellipses!

This has gone too far. The kid’s dad refused to refill my water bowl. Again. Even when I arfed very clearly and brought it over to him in my teeth, he did nothing.

So I just got up and refilled the damn thing myself. I bored my eyes into his head the whole time while I lapped it up.

Loser.

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A couple of quick pieces of info:

1) If you have a blog and you want comments, mention either Batman or Venn Diagrams. I got more emails on last week’s entry, which had, let’s face it, only the most tangential relationship to either Batman or Venn Diagrams, than I have to any other entry in months. Evidentally there is a large Venn-Diagram/Batman-obsessed audience out there, which presents a remarkably weird yet apparently under-served market opportunity. Exceptionally daring capitalists, go for it!

2) I have also gotten quite a lot of queries about my gallery show. The good folks at TAMA have decided that the recent business environment isn’t quite suitable for any openings, and who can argue with that? Thus we’ve agreed to postpone the show for now, but we’ll revisit the idea down the line.

3) Which leaves me now one PR stunt short. Here’s an idea for another one: Anyone interested in a dog drawing party? I’m a pretty fast hand with a brush, and while I can’t see getting dogs to sit still for me, I’m pretty sure a digital camera and my trusty laptop could solve that problem. All I’d need is a venue, a stool, a couple of dozen dogs, a couple of bottles of ink, a couple of bottles of bourbon, and a couple of bottles of aspirin. Anyone interested in

helping me organize this?

This week’s dog is a particularly affecting Chihuahua, courtesy Jessica Wicken of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Must run – I’m off to draw Spider-Man and Captain America battling the Pythagorean Theorem. Spidey will be wrestling a hairy hypotenuse.

More soon! 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. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.

Out of Order

I’ve been pretty good with this book so far, you know. I started on page one, went on to page two, proceeded to page 3, etcetera etcetera.

I never do this. If you were to somehow flip through my sketchbooks, you’d find that I always start drawing somewhere around, oh page seven, then I skip around some, then I draw a lot, I mean a LOT, of pictures of Batman. Which is why I don’t like it when people flip through my sketchbooks.

But like I said, with this book I’ve been very disciplined -- until this week, when I skipped ahead a couple of

pages. It’s not a great big discontinuity, but I’ve always carefully followed my script, which has made a point of interspersing story with pure gag, like the page above.

There’s not a great big reason for the jump. What happened is that I penciled a couple of pages in order to speed up my work, and then I decided to ink this one first, because I had a brand new bottle of ink and it looked like so much fun to do.

And I had this great dog to draw with it! For everybody who has sent it dog pictures so far, I want to explain that the way I pick which one to use is totally arbitrary. I look for a dog who looks like his or her image would complement the story. And this week I had this wonderful image of a moodily lit daschund! If you think about it, the number of people who have daschunds intersected with the number of people that think that taking moodily lit pictures of them would be a good idea intersected with the number of people who have sent me photos is a really, really small number, and also a very strange Venn diagram. So I offer especial thanks to Laura Marmo and her lovely dog Tippy.

Next week, I’ll backtrack a little to go back to the story, give some news about the gallery show, and avoid talking about Batman. 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. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.

Return of the Return of the Not-Even-Remotely Daily Dog

So about a month ago, after a layoff for the holidays, I was raring to get back to regularly semi-regular postings. I was keen eyed, quick witted and sweet smelling. I was enthusiastic, energetic and copacetic. In short, I was the very model of a modern graphic novelist.

So what, you ask, happened? A waning of enthusiasm, a bolt of remorse, a dearth of dogs?

None of the above. Basically, I got sick. Not deathly ill, just sick enough that for about a week I couldn’t do much except the bare minimum of work and the absolute maximum of sleep. Yet somehow during that week, I acquired two new clients and a half dozen new projects. Since then, I’ve been working my larger-than-average tuchus (a word that Microsoft Word, in its Gentile heart, does not recognize) off trying to make enough time to get back to this soul–satisfying-but-as-of-yet-not-mortgage-paying project. But now I am back with the whole dog posting thing.

So why just a dog and no story in this email? Well, this week’s segment contains a mildly objectionable word that may offend SPAM filters for the faint of heart, so to read it, you’ll have to click on the link down below. (I don’t really want a big buildup here; the word in question is Occidental for “tuchus.”) But it is quite a dog, isn’t it? This week’s dog is the steadfast Sam the Man, sent in by Jerry and Lenore Katz.

More soon, promise. (Really!) In the meantime, keep sending in dog photos, write me emails, make some comments on the blog, read the story so far or check out seltzerstudio.com. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.

Return of the Recently-Not-So-at-All-So-Daily Dog

Went to a party in Williamsburg. I’m not much of a party guy, but tonight, everybody was fascinating. Made a lot of friends. Got my tummy rubbed for half an hour. Drooled a little.

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Here's the thing about sending out newsletters (or whatever this missive is): no one wants to get them from about mid-December to at least the first of January. At least, that was the impression I got after I send out the last Not-So-Daily Dog in mid-December, which was roundly bah, humbugged.

So out of deference to the holidays, I held off. Then in deference to any lingering hangovers (and are there any other kinds?) I held off. And out of deference to sloth on my part, I held off. In fact, I've held off until sending out this new one until this very morning, which is the most mind-numbingly obvious sentence that I have typed in nearly a month. Oh Part-Time Dog, how I have missed you!

A little rough getting back into the drawing, but I was aided by the inspiration given to me by Lucy, a havanese sent in by Jeeyun Lee.

More soon, promise. (Really!) 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. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.

It means "potato pancake," if you're confused

It occurs to me that this is the first- and probably last-ever Hanukah Not-So-Daily Dog entry. For that reason, the dominant color of this page is that of a well-cooked latke. I would ask you just to go ahead and swallow that story in the spirit of the holiday, but the spirit of the holiday would actually require you to foment a violent rebellion while getting weirdly sentimental over a particularly fuel-efficient lamp. So forget the spirit of the holiday, but happy Hanukah, regardless!

This panel took me forever, probably because I’ve been busy juggling six other projects, including the new pieces for the gallery show, which, yes, I promise to post on my site as soon as I get the chance, but who has the time to do that when I can’t even, as you may have noticed, figure out how to end this God-forsaken sentence.

Having now extricated myself from that final clause, let me gratefully acknowledge this week’s dog, based on a photo sent in by the lovely Scarlett Rigby. By the way, while all of the dog’s I’ve received photos for are unquestionably the greatest, truest, most loyal dogs in all of canine history, Scarlett’s photos were really exceptional pieces of photography, and I hope that I’ve done them justice.

That’s it for now. Happy Hanukah again, and also Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, Joyous Kwanzaa, etc.! 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. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.

Portratis, Four-Legged and Two

Did Hegel have a dog? If he did, did he demean him and smack him on the nose with a rolled-up manuscript? I bet he did. He seems like that kind of a guy.

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It's official: TAMA Gallery in Tribeca will be hosting a one-man show of my work, opening on December 16. The show will focus on Part-Time Dog, and will feature dog pictures, original artwork and limited prints from the book, but will also include several other original works exhibited for the first time ever.

I am now officially in a frenzy of finishing pieces, arranging for printing and framing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Please come and enjoy the artwork and quite possibly the spectacle of my complete hysterical paralysis! You won't forget it!

This means the art contest will end before the show. All people who are receiving this email who don't unsubscribe before December 1 are eligible to win a piece of artwork. Two winners will win a piece of original art, and the grand prize winner will win a choice of a piece of original art or an original commission based on the characters (or dogs) featured in the book. The winners will be announced at the opening.

This week’s dog is Jetta Belle, a husky/shephard mix sent in by JoAnn & Louis Marrerro. Lovely dog, and I figured the German half of Jetta went well with Hegel. As well, I suppose, as anything goes with Hegel.

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. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.

De-Faced

There was a really cute girl in the park yesterday and she came over to coo at the kid. “Arf,” I said. The kids’ mom mumbled, “He’s being my boy’s dog.”

“Confidentially,” I told her,“I’m a talking dog.”

That girl couldn’t get out of there fast enough. The kid’s mom looked mortified. But I don’t get it: who wouldn’t be impressed with a talking dog?

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I once had a drawing instructor who told me that anytime you cropped a woman's head out of a drawing, it was a sign of incipient misogyny. I really couldn't argue the case at the time, because I was 13 and she had used two very hard words. I apologized reflexively - a practice that has served me well - but after a brief pause for consideration of two and a half decades, I believe I'd like to change my plea to not guilty.

Sometimes figures just spill off of the page as you draw them. Sometimes gesture trumps everything else. And sometimes drawing the face is beside the point, as is the case in this week's drawing.

Obviously the woman rushing away thinks our hero is some kind of weirdo. This might make for a funny picture, but I think funnier is the fact that our hero is genuinely confused by her reaction, an idea underscored by the mother's embarrassment. (The kid looks confused too, but that's just the way some kids look. If they're not giggling, crying or about to cry, they look confused. Some adults too, come to think of it.)

In any case, throw in the “this guy is a weirdo” face into this already ongepotchtik arrangement and it's like topping the joke with a rimshot. At least that's how I figured it. If anyone disagrees strongly, I'll apologize reflexively.

This week's dog is a lovely Havanese, appropriately named Cuba, sent in by Bob, who runs DPFamily, a New York-based social networking site for dogs. For info, send a line to cuba@chelseacommons.com. Thanks, Bob!

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. By the way, to see the Studio's portfolio in the same great format as Part-Time Dog, just click here.