RICHMOND, Va. — When I spoke with Matt Gajtka on the Weekend Conversation podcast a couple weeks ago, he asked some questions about my process, which I tried my best to explain in my usual, fumbling fashion. I thought it might be of interest to expand on that a bit for this first edition of the Sketchbook!
Being a cartoonist specializing in hockey comics, and living as I do in Virginia, I’d been asked many times by my Capitals-fan friends and acquaintances, “When are you going to do a strip about the Caps?” With most of the Capitals’ history consisting of a rather pedestrian roster of near-misses and disappointments, I decided to focus in on perhaps their most defining disappointment of all: their miserable first season.
I began, as always, researching online and through old Google newspaper clippings for a deeper understanding about how bad the 1974-75 Caps actually were. I made lots of notes, and a script and a layout began to take shape. I was really happy to discover the anecdote about the players lifting the trash can in Oakland in particular … small details like that lead to great visuals:
Next up was photographic research. I had no familiarity with any of the players from that team, but unsurprisingly given the era, the hairstyles and mustaches were incredible, and a lot of fun to draw.
I figured one page would be enough to tell the story, so I set my layout and began pencilling, fine tuning as I went along. Unfortunately, I made no scans of the pencil art stage. The next step is to go in with a combination of pen and paintbrush and ink the pencilled art and do the lettering, resulting in a fine-looking page of original art.
At this point I scan the art into Photoshop, where I fix any little problems and add details, correct any spelling errors, and finally, apply the color. This was a fun strip to write and draw, and let me satisfy my DC-area pals while still getting my digs in as a Penguins fan.
In other news, there’s a kinda big hockey game coming up between the Penguins and the Flyers. I think they’re planning to play it on a football field or something? Anyway, the Stadium Series game got me thinking about Pittsburgh’s first NHL franchise. They were called the Pirates, seemingly a rite of passage for every professional franchise in town, and played in Pittsburgh from 1925 until 1930, when, a victim of the Great Depression, they moved across the state to begin playing as the Philadelphia Quakers. It seems the two cities’ hockey existences have always been intertwined, and the uniforms have always been pretty sharp.
As for the game itself, I won’t be attending, but I’ll be watching at home, hoping to see something as magical as I did that New Year’s Day in Buffalo almost a decade ago.
Thanks for reading!
