The Original Landscape Cartoonist

Chip Sullivan spoke to students at Colorado State of his career as the first "landscape cartoonist" through the lens of comic books. He shared photos from his earlier days as a devotee of Madmen comics, which began his art education and set the framework for the rest of his career. As discussed in his lecture, story boards with individual frames are an effective tool for coaxing images out of a blank page and to record the creative process as ideas flow. Emphasis on the superiority of hand drawing is apparent in Chip's fascination with Disney & Pixar animators who still draw individual frames to capture each moment of cinematography before digital animation is utilized.

Chip encourages tuning of the biological clock in order to work efficiently when the creative mind is most active, as well as daydreaming and dream journaling to find inspiration. In his new publication, The Lanscape Imagineer, Chip explores the route of landscape architecture as a career and how some professionals have come to choose it. For Chip and many others, the manipulation of toy train sets and imagination of these small worlds played a key role.

Chip briefly discussed some of his new publications, including The Illustrated History of Landscape Architecture, Garden & Climate, The Seven Lamps of Landscape Architecture, and Cartooning the Landscape.

After the lecture, Chip signed & doodled in students' copies of his drawing textbook, Drawing the Landscape, then took a group of students on a drawing walk from the north end of Old Town.

The students and staff of Colorado State University thank Chip Sullivan for his time and enthusiasm.