Try It All

I heard of Spider House by F. Van Wyck Mason because the Oxford English Dictionary says the first usage of the phrase “cold as a witch’s tit” appears on page 210 of this book:

Quote: 1932 Van Wyck Mason, Spider House p. 210 It’s cold as a witch’s tit outside.

I had been trying to find out where this phrase came from, and Cecil Adams’ The Straight Dope listed the OED reference and goes on to say: “Van Wyck Mason was a writer of mysteries, at a time when colorful metaphors were common. There is a strong possibility that he invented the phrase himself.” So I started looking into the book and Van Wyck Mason, its author.

Fortunately my local college library has the original 1932 edition of Spider House. As a special treat this copy was originally owned by Merle Norman whose famous line of cosmetics is known around the country.

The story is about a man named Ezra Boonton who made a fortune on Wall Street taking money from poor good-hearted people. He became known as The Spider of the Street and is now retired and living in fear for his life in a specially built house in New Brunswick, NJ, where he has blockaded himself on the 2nd floor with a guard and security systems to protect him from being murdered. On a particular cold November night he has asked State Trooper Captain Janos Catlin to visit him because he is in “a momentary danger” of his life. At the house are his butler/guard Kelly, his nurses Dora DelRay and Hans Gruber, his brother Juan Boonton, and Dr. Lewes his physician. Two more troopers join Captain Catlin to provide extra security. Then, in this secure house, first the butler appears to shoot himself while cleaning his gun and then it seems a gun with a silencer is used to kill Ezra Boonton, but the murder weapon cannot be found. All that can be determined is that several people heard a low hum and there is a smell of burnt hair.

This is quite an elaborate mystery with lots of excitement and intrigue. Van Wyck Mason’s writing suffers from racial and ethnic caricatures that, while acceptable in the 1930s, make this book hard to read now. As for the famous phrase in the book, “It’s cold as a witch’s tit outside,” that would outlive the author’s fame, it was one of seven similes for how cold it was that Mason used in this book. The others being:

Cold as an Arctic gale (p.74),

Cold as all hell (p.107),

Cold as human greed (p.107),

Cold as a grave stone (p.210)

Cold as a witch’s tit (p. 210),

Colder'n a loan shark’s smile (p.214), and

Cold as a Pharoah’s heart (p.272).

Wow, King’s first glyph is so cool. I wonder how he came up with that design. It kind of looks like a very simplistic Titan, or even…

Oh. It’s the light glyph. Of course.

And the circle is right in the middle of the figure’s ‘chest’, because Luz’s true light is her metaphorical heart!

The question was phrased a little strangely, and I don't want to embarrass the person by posting exactly what was said, but I'll answer it and hope this clears everything up.

I do almost all of my drawing by hand. No, I don't trace in Photoshop. Not a judgment on those who do, but I come from a generation of artists who did not use Poser programs or other digital tools. We learned to draw using a technique called the Sight Size method. I know a lot of people assume everyone - including the old masters - traced everything using optical tools, but while it is true some people did, it is just as true that most didn't, and you can draw with great accuracy if you learned how to draw the old fashioned way.

Sight Size breaks everything down into its barest components of geometric shapes and you build from there. Once you learn it, you never forget, and it applies to everything you will ever draw.

I learned it using a set of Famous Artist Course books my mom had since she was a kid, and they are still the gold standard. They're often on ebay. If I were you, I'd buy them.

I actually find using figure reference really annoying because I like exaggerations and modifications from reality in my final work.

This page from Neil Gaiman's Chivalry was drawn and painted without figure reference of any kind.

I don't know why people assume I trace all the time. If you were to try to use photographs to replicate these figures, you would find they are slightly off. There is no tracing here.

This is not to say I never use reference. This page, for example, was referenced from a photo of my mother. Isn't she pretty.

But this page of Sir Galaad was drawn and painted without reference.

He's pretty, too.

If he were real, I'm sure a lot of people would be very happy about it. But he's not. And had I reference, the art would have gone a lot faster. I had a time trying to nail this face that is very alive in my head but doesn't really exist.

Back in the ancient days, all cartoonists had to learn to draw and paint extemporaneously because reference was limited and digital tools didn't exist. While some high end artists had photography studios and professional models with costume and sets on hand, small fry like me were limited to what was in the house or available at my small local library, which was no bigger than a few rooms of my current house.

Artists kept extensive "morgue files" or "swipe files" which were collected from magazine clippings and photographs so we would have as much of what we might need on hand for quick reference. These ephemera collections could get unwieldy. I have thousands of photographs I've simply never sorted. I finally dumped most of my files this past year.

Have I ever traced anything? Of course, especially if I have to re-use a shot or setting over and over. Making extra work for myself is just silly. It's my job to make pictures, not to perform magical feats, like copying one shot after another over and over without making a mistake.

However, for almost 15 years of my career, I refused to copy or trace anything, and did not even own a lightbox. On the one hand, that forced me to learn to carefully examine what I saw. On the other hand, it was a stupid hill on which many deadlines died.

Only after I realized many professional artists had lightboxes and overhead projectors did I finally break down and get one.

The one thing I use my lightbox for more than anything is for tracing my thumbnail sketches to the final drawing paper. Instead of trying to capture the liveliness of the original sketch by copying what I see - only bigger - I blow the thumbnail up to the size I want the final art to be, then I trace over the thumbnail using a lightbox onto the final drawing paper.

Here's a look at thumbnails from the graphic novel Neil Gaiman's Snow, Glass, Apples.

I enlarged these on my computer to fit onto 11"x14" paper, and traced the thumbs before finishing the art which was drawn in pen and ink and colored in Photoshop.

While I obviously made some changes, the essence of the thumbs is there in the final work. Tracing my thumbs retains some of the looseness of the original sketches, which is often lost otherwise.

So, there is a valid purpose to tracing at times, though in my opinion, too much tracing can weaken drawing ability, substitute for developing skills, and make the work kind of stiff.

If you want to, I'm not your judge. But it's weird to me that people think I must be faking my skills in some way.

Ironically, the word cartoon comes from the Italian word cartone, which is a large heavy sheet of paper - also, the origin of the word carton.

Preparatory sketches were made on this paper which was then transferred to the final work surface via either tracing or by stamping little holes in the paper through which dust was sprinkled, recreating the contours of the drawing for the artist to follow.

IMPORTANT PSA

Please share for UK residents!

The public alert will go off on Sunday 23rd April at 3PM (15:00) BST.

Maybe they sleep like camels…

or cats…

or…. uh… snakes?

About the beard

Spring Onion and the Silver Bullet Blitz is 67k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643344/chapters/17401666

The Hunter and the Demon (series) by WinterOcelot is 91k. https://archiveofourown.org/series/628904

Redemption from Resemblance by Demon_Apostle is 150k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/8233972/chapters/18870022

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors by vandoodle is 75k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7509139/chapters/17070001

Here There Be Dragons by Frostysaurusrekt is 123k. https://archiveofourown.org/series/561917

Dangerous Territory by interrobang is 46k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/8744131/chapters/20046139

Knock the Ice from My Bones by vickjawn is 73k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/10632402/chapters/23521002

Lone Wolf (series) by AsheRyder is 66k. https://archiveofourown.org/series/586498

A Losing Combination by manic_intent is 42k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276855/chapters/16524235

One Long River by SugarMaddy is 165k. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307597/chapters/25304055

If you don’t hate other ships:

Out in the Big Wide Woods by LegendaryBard is 196k, reaper76 https://archiveofourown.org/works/8312551/chapters/19035583

My family has an annual tradition of telling the story in a creative way so here it is, told through memes:

And this girl's mom comes in, hears what we're playing and gets all MAD and UPSET. She says that if we play act something, it's because we want it to happen. So her daughter must WANT HER TO DIE.

First off lady, we were 6 year year olds, so take it down several notches. We barely had a concept of mortality for fucks sake. She made us feel so guilty and ashamed, because she was taking our game personally.

Now I have a 5 year old. And sometimes she looks at me and says "pretend you're dead, and I have to -" Whatever it is. Some adult task she's assigned herself.

And it's just so transparently obvious that she's practicing the idea of having to do things on her own. Which is exactly what 5 year olds are supposed to do. I actually find it very flattering that the only way she can envision me not being available to help her is to be literally deceased. Otherwise, obviously, she wouldn't have to do scary hard things alone.

It's a natural coping mechanism. She's self-soothing about what would happen if I wasn't there by play-acting independence in a perfectly safe environment. She's also practicing skills she needs, and making up excuses for practicing them on her own, without taking on the responsibility of being able to do them by herself all the time yet.

Humans mentally rehearse bad this in their brains all the time. We can do that by ruminating- going over worries over and over again, which tends to lead to anxiety and helplessness and depression. Or we can do it with a sense of play- by recognizing that the fiction is fiction and we can dip our toe into these experiences and expose ourselves to bad things without actually being injured.