Categories
Drawing

Tree Gesture Drawing in Vermont

There’s something very opposite of figure drawing in looking at a tree in two minutes . Especially when you’ve been drawing the tree off and on for forty years or so. And it must be at least a 100 or so years old.

Categories
Drawing

Hands

Hands present all the problems of drawing figures in a very small package, foreshortening becomes really subtle clue to making it come alive, then each finger reacts to light differently because of their flexibility but all the cheap drawing books say “treat em like mitts”.

Categories
Comics Drawing Jack Kirby

Jack doesn’t do “theory”

Jim Shooter has a great rant up on his web site about inking, any young artist should go read it and integrate it into their work.

Shooter’s inking rant.

It shows what made Shooter so successful his ability to analyze what works and describe it in some form. His lecture on storytelling is also wonderful, great basic primers in doing comics, but sometimes he goes a little off, like this…

“Someday, I will find the guy who invented the expression “spotting blacks,” and kill him with my shoe. Spotting blacks—scattering black areas around the panel stupidly? WHAT? There are people who should know better who advocate making an “interesting pattern,” an “abstract design” with the placement of black areas in the panel. They are insane. ”

But then I look at a picture like this.

Looking it I say, abstract design, yup, black areas scattered around the panel, yup, intereseting pattern, that too. It makes a guy wonder is Jack Kirby insane, did he know what he was doing? At first looking at this drawing I thought Jack was doing just what Shooter claimed, just spotting blacks to make the page more exciting and energetic. Like I said Shooter is really smart and analytical and knows comics…

Categories
Abstract Comics Drawing

Straight lines versus curves

It’s to easy to do representation, it’s to easy to do design and there is the point where you have to question every single line you draw, that’s drawing not doing a style.