Wasp Bait

I have had this idea from Jeff H for months. It took a while (and several versions over a long period of time) to get it almost right (or at least in a form that I could bring with me to the cartoonist meeting). The thumbnail that Jeff sent looked pretty good, and shows how Jeff was extending the gag to wasp puns and a wasp crowd and a lot more verbiage. I want to be true to the original so I kicked around several variations.
I finally decided that any version that I liked with a crowd would end up being a large detailed drawing. That is a good sign that, as a cartoonist, I am trying to do too much. Trying to do too much bogged the image down, became busier, and the puzzle was put on the back burner for a while.
Besides the crowd not working for me, the swarm was difficult as well. I went so far as to make a photoshop brush of a wasp. In my mind, I could shrink this to various sized, set brush controls, and have a swarm of wasps in no time. This is wrong. I really did not want to draw by hand more than 30 wasps, but the number came up to around 50 in the final image.
Even after I decided to simplify the joke verbiage, eliminated the "crowd of science" and made a swarm of 30 wasps (by hand) the gag was still over-detailed for a very small reproduction. I made one or two "close up" wasps to show my work in developing a stylized wasp. That did not work either. Big wasps look like monster wasps much more than they look like close-to-the-camera wasps.

Interesting challenge. I might come back later and try a version with the crowd. or not

The Cartoonist Northwest meeting will get to judge the simple version.

Saturday, January 16th, 2010 - 4 PM to 6 PM
Daniel Smith Art Supply
4150 First Avenue South in Seattle
Free to people reading this blog and their friends.

(and thanks Jeff, you write well)