Today’s post is guest authored/presented by Chris Walsh, who is a fellow student in the Graphic Design program at Colorado Mountain College. He looks forward to obtaining his A.A.S. in May, and then he plans on starting his own business. His skills include illustration, display ads, posters, web development, and writing. The graphic design program helped him polish/develop many of these skills.
I am a second year Graphic Design student at CMC- Spring Valley, and ever since I can remember I have been into drawing caricatures and cartoons.
I started drawing comics in 2001, when a friend of mine started an alternative newspaper in Steamboat Springs called The Local. I gave him a comic I had drawn in Fort Collins for a music magazine about Humpty Dumpty depicted as a crack head. I wrote “The ?” for the title and told the publishers to just fill in the blank for for me. A few days later I got The Local and saw a comic called “The ?” within its pages, and the name stuck. From there I contributed two comics a month for over ten years.
Drawing “The ?” became an outlet for me to vent my frustrations and to express my bizarre sense of humor. I garnered a modest following over the years, and have enjoyed sharing my unique perspective. About two years ago, The Local, under different ownership, went out of business. My creativity went fully into my schoolwork, and I haven’t done more than two comics since then.
I am excited to ramp things back up, though, because a month ago, the former owner of The Local, Paulie Anderson, announced that he is launching a new paper in Steamboat Springs called The Valley Voice. He called me immediately to become a contributor, and I, of course, accepted. Interestingly, many of the original contributors also answered the call, after having been alienated by the previous owners. The Local has come full circle, and now, so has “The ?”. Readers will get a newer, more, mature (maybe) “The ?”. I will see how my new perspective as a student and young professional will color my cartoon writing. I hope you can relate, on some level, to my twisted world of “The ?”
Chris Walsh may be contacted at: Thechriswalsh@gmail.com
The Art of Visual Communication 