The Creative Works of Jo Burt - Mint Sauce
Comics are complex things to illustrate. You need the ability to be able to tell a concise story within a few small frames, but the floodgates are open to making it as detailed or as abstract as possible. With thousands the world over being created every year for a variety of different uses, it falls down to the featured artist to be able to create something in their own distinct style. One such example of the more abstract side of things is Mint Sauce, by Illustrator Jo Burt.
The original Mint Sauce comic strip.
Mint Sauce was first featured in since-defunct ‘Bicycle Action’ magazine back in 1988, before finding a new home a year later in UK mainstay ‘Mountain Biking UK’ Magazine, but I remember first seeing it around the mid 2000’s when me and a few school friends became obsessed with Mountain Biking in all its forms (I still have the scars to prove it all over my shins). The Mint Sauce comic strip always sat at the back of the magazine on the final page, and often posed a quick thought provoking element to riding, alongside beautifully illustrated frames. The main story follows Mishun H Sugworth (a sheep) and his farmyard themed crew through the trials and tribulations of riding in the world, tackling tricky terrain and pondering on life’s great mysteries. It’s now been through hundreds of renditions, and still remains a mainstay of the printed magazine, in an era where print is unfortunately a dying species.
Jo’s style is super interesting for someone who month after month has to draw the same characters within different circumstances. He’ll used a combination of both pen and ink for the solid linework throughout and the main blocks of colour are made with acrylic paint. As characters, Mint and his crew have both over and undersized bodily features, which makes for some interesting posing by the time you’ve popped a full face helmet on and added stylised versions of real life downhill bikes you’d find within the pages of the mag.
The scenes he creates are amazingly well composed, and vary from frame to frame to keep the story interesting throughout. POV’s can range from wide landscape shots where you’ll see a beautifully painted countryside environment, to close-up crops of the faces of the main protagonists. Some frames are so well painted for something that will eventually only be thumbnail sized it’s almost insane how much detail he’s managed to factor in. Each one could easily stand alone as it’s own piece of large scale artwork.
It’s hard to explain the feelings I get personally from looking at them, but it’s the same feeling inside I get when I resonate with someone’s artwork and feel inspired just by looking at it. I think even now I’ve got a couple Mint Sauce stickers on my vintage Cannondale almost 20 years after I first applied them, so looking at them now I think there’s also a nostalgic element to it as I can remember trying to draw them myself as a teen.
Take a look at this excellent video Bike Radar shot a few years back that takes you through Jo’s process from start to finish, there’s an incredible amount of work that goes into each strip.
