{File By EX} ~ Outta Here

the latest installment of File byEX titled Outta Here, narrates the events of three civil servants who retire from the Civil Service. Published in the Ottawa Citizen, File By EX is the somewhat jaded look at life in the Civil Service.
I've never met the author of these columns, and my editor will not reveal his source so like Deep Throat, mysterious copy appears under this nom-de-plume and I try to do the copy justice.
Stylistically, because it is newsprint, certain limitations are taken into account. I use ground Chinese ink sticks, sponge brushes, and more conventional store-bought inks for these pieces: the sponge brush allows me to apply the ink stick produced gray tones with 'drag' effect that simulates some tonal 'shading' but in a flat/graphic manner. The lines are done with a combination of dip-pen nibs and Chinese brushes. The influences for these pieces were Toulouse Lautrec's Moulin Rouge /Art Nouveau posters from the last century and the satirical publication Simplicissimus [the German publication which inspired the New Yorker]. Another influence for these social satirical images is Norman Rockwell. In this particular image the figure in the center is a direct homage to a Rockwell cover.