My brilliant career at DC Comics where I somehow thought I could do super heroes and abstraction and capture the energy I love in comics. I never could figure out why the editors hated me so much when I was young, but looking at this I get that I simply gave them no reference for what I was doing, they couldn’t see Frazetta, or Kirby or Neal Adams or whatever they thought the house style was. Looking at it now I’m stunned I ever worked in comics at all.
So I have a style, as Chaykin says “I draw like I’m from another planet”, Stephen DeStefano says “I don’t draw like anyone else”. what I’m looking for is a way to codify my drawing develop a set of patterns in creating the work that allows me to develop the drawing in a way that I’m interested in that isn’t just re-working Jack and reworking Matisse or whoever. In art school you draw from the gut, technique meets that point where you throw out what is right and
Why is art right or good? because we set up a system of rules that we use to decide what is good. What entertains us, what we like, what impresses us. With representation it’s often the craft that makes us think, “wow that’s so cool, it looks real”. Just look at how Thomas Kinkade or any current comic book artist is judged.
A lesson for anyone who wants to do good storytelling with subject matter that is not the easiest thing to make dynamic in a hand drawn medium, cars.
Hot wheels at that