Visiting Artist: Jim Woodring

Woodring’s speaker board by Luke Howard.

Jim Woodring is an epic cartoonist. He is best known for his wordless comics, Frank, named after the main character.

Jim Woodring during his talk at CCS.

Most recently, he published Fran (Fantagraphics, 2013), a Frank story, the sequel (and prequel?) to Congress of the Animals. All of his books, starting with Frank, Volume 1 in 1994, have been published through Fantagraphics, which must be a great working relationship since they are both located in Seattle.

The Frank character and world have inspired animators to bring the vision to life through animated shorts. Nine of these shorts were collected on the 2007 DVD release, Visions of Frank: Short Films by Japan’s Most Audacious Animators.

Woodring with his books

Woodring learned to draw “in the time-honored way” of the autodidact: getting used books about drawing and then practicing. And practicing.

Woodring and CCS fellow Liniers in what must be a fascinating conversation.

In 2011, he created a working, seven-foot dip pen. He has done demonstrations of the pen. Woodring is a great lover of the pen and ink medium, so he wanted to explore that to it’s largest depths.

Here are some notes by Sandra Bartholomew (’17).

Photos courtesy Abe Olson, abeolson.flyingdodostudio.com.