Hey, I've uploaded a bunch of drawings I've done over the years and made comments on each, giving insight to their origins. Have a look! Hope you enjoy them!!
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Some of my favourite Clarence strips were the Culinary Caribou ones. For some reason the title had a certain 'flavour' to it (pardon the bun...er, pun). I like to draw the same scene several times, including checkered tablecloths. Sprinkled in amongst the drawings are a few tasty comments, including a reference for Rashers and Rounders, which I think I mentioned in a previous strip!
This could well be the first time 'Frankum' has been mentioned in a comic strip...correct me if I'm wrong. Toutons have many names, a few of which I've mentioned here but the doughiest panel is no.7...The baby teething bread! I know for a fact that this is true. I once approached Purity Factories to see if they wanted to get an ad done with CTCC doing just this, however, sad to say they were too short sighted to see the appeal and humour of this. The final panel of course references the 'Cod Moratorium' that was forced on Newfoundland and Labrador by the Federal Government in Ottawa. This was necessary because the Feds had taken most of the licences and sold them to foreign countries until those said countries had decimated the codstocks. Tough luck, Newfs. To this day a person from NL is forbidden by law to reap the harvest of the seas as our forefathers did for 500 years, forbidden to get a meal for the table. We should have given the whole works of the yahoos in Ottawa the boots from the get go. But of course that's just an opinion... I can safely say that if never had to work again, and my health stayed with me, I still never would get bored. The same can be said about just about everybody in Newfoundland and Labrador! We have so many things to do that can while away a few moments...or while away a lifetime! One thing for sure is that we NL'ers know how to keep ourselves occupied. Whether it be playing cards, shovelling snow, at the grass, tinkering with motors, fiddling with instruments, cooking, writing, arts and crafts...whoo! the list does not end. The strip above touches on some of the obvious pastimes...and no, I did not heave a rock through any windows as a youth...a small baseball bat, yes, but that's another story!
Spoiler Alert! Panel 8 has two candidates for the 'dad jokes' file! Har de har har.
I can pretty much say with certainty that this strip (CTCC) is the first and probably only strip that you will ever see a female caribou with a male's name playing an electric guitar in the woods...certainty. Also the first strip to name "Ethno' Blues MOR, primitive reed, electro synth" as a music form (actually it may now be common but back in the day, there wasn't anything like it)! Panel 6 is a direct result of personal experiences...and to this day I have fun on the ivories. I can't play worth a clink, but fun, fun, fun! I have no idea if 'Fashionista' is spelled properly, or if it is even a real word. This is my strip, my world, my choice! The theme of fashion could spawn its own strip let alone one month's worth. There's just so much to comment on. The panels above represent some of the things that came to mind years ago. As it turns out, trigger mitts, snow boots and long johns are still pretty popular these days. Perhaps its time to do an updated version of 'Fashion with Clarence'!
Now I've got Clarence back with her herd and I remember wondering what it might be like if the animals were learning about us, so I had Clarence stick around and become a 'guru' type for her friends in the forest.
I've managed to explain away the reason moose are getting hit out on the highways, yet rarely does it happen with caribou (and managed to make up another 'Dad' joke)! Of course hunting season had to be brought up, hence the 'blaze orange' reference...and the hippocracy of religion vs vice! In those days I was making my own home brew (now days I leave that to the experts...mine was good, but a lot of shagging around for a few minutes drinking)...and I was also learning the guitar. See how I was blending life and fiction? I wasn't clever enough to do otherwise lol. OK. As the title suggests, the years for Clarence continue to roll! I was still living in Vancouver in those days and must have felt a twinge of homesickness. There's no place like home for the holidays for sure! In my mind it would have taken a miracle (or Santa Claus) to get me home - which did not happen by the way - so I remained in the city...and probably had a great time anyways. I'm easy like that.
The big story in this commentary is panel 3. The Blue Jays were in the run for the World Series of Baseball back then, as they are now [2015]. In fact, they face elimination tonight. Let's hope they can squeeze a couple more wins in Kansas. Let's go Blue Jays, let's play ball!! (I'm not a huge fan of any sport, but thanks to my BIL I can watch baseball and know what's happening...and I love to see a team other than american going for the series. There's something arrogant about a 'World' series that is only played by one country in my mind. Indeed! The kitchen is the most important room in any home. In some societies it is the ONLY room in the home, where all the inhabitants eat, drink and sleep around the cooking area!
Now, I know someone out there is already thinking that the washroom is the most important room...well, I disagree. One can always poop and pee outdoors. Ah, you say, one can also cook outdoors but again I disagree...that's BBQing...the subject of a previous strip. In nearly every Newfoundland home the kitchen is large enough to contain all the family members...and a good few of the neighbours and friends as well, if not the entire community! That joke in panel 2 'silly' is what my kids would call 'dad humour' and it is! Panel four's 'adornments' is actual moose crap varnished with liquid plastic and yes, I have seen these hanging on people's walls. Panel six is one I remember from my own childhood mixing of paste from flour and water (Labrador City didn't have many Hobby Shops in the early sixties). The next panel is also true to life. We still have family meetings around the supper table, a time to let all our concerns see the light of day. No matter what else you can say about kitchens they truly are THE room, even more so than the bedroom, just a different kind of cooking (besides those activities can be done in the kitchen as well)...oops. This was a family strip! EAhhhh...the Regatta. This province has many regattas but none so admired and vilified than the Royal St. John's Regatta! You kind of either hate it or love it. At one time early in my life I was in camp one, then at the time of this drawing I was in camp two (having been married into a long standing family tradition). Actually it's not that I hated the Regatta, I just did not 'follow' it. Some years I would go and hang out in the beer tent and other years not go at all. I just didn't have the 'Bug'. Later, as I socialized in the circles that loved the races I found what people get from the regatta. It's a family time and a lot of fun, made more interesting by discussions with people who actually know what's going on in the event. it's a time of reunions and scoffs, parties and cuffs and general merriment. I learned to appreciate the whole thing. Every panel is taken directly from life at that moment.
I didn't mention the poor fellow doing the T-Shirt designs for the rowers...he was me. I was hawking my wares one time outside the Boathouse and was very rudely and ignorantly ordered to leave the area...seems I was too 'Low Class' for the snoots in charge. Lol. I had the last laugh. I was designing shirts for the teams themselves, more than the public. So, as I was unceremoniously removed from the area around the Boathouse, there were rowers all over the place wearing my artwork and humour! Take that assholes. Well! This one is kind of self explanatory, having sprung from the twofold effects of buying a new 'Barby' and meeting a Downhomer deadline (the latter being something I still struggle to do on time). Panel 3 is the root of the angst I have with BBQ's. Not so much that the units are built in China, or where ever, but that the 'drawings' that accompany the unit are terrible! I make my living drawing things and I can assure you that most pictorial instructions that come from the orient have never been influenced by a designer! Absolute trash. The remaining panels are commentary on the social aspect of gathering to feed one another charred foods and consuming copious amounts of alcohol. I suppose the final panel must have been my inner self yearning for the simpler days of lazing by a pond, cooking up a bit of 'grub'.
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AuthorSnowden Walters Archives
July 2020
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