Draw! #11 by TwoMorrows Publishing

NUMBER 11 SUMMER 2005

$5.95

IN THE U.S.A.

THE PROFFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS AND CARTOONING

IN THIS ISSUE! IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW AND DEMO WITH THE MOTH’S

STEVE RUDE FROM HAPPY TREE FRIENDS TO PARADISE WITH ANIMATOR

ROQUE BALLESTEROS FROM ZITS TO POLITICS WITH PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING CARTOONIST

JIM BORGMAN PLUS! DRAW!’s REGULAR TUTORIALS BY

ALBERTO RUIZ, BRET BLEVINS, and MIKE MANLEY!

THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING WWW.DRAWMAGAZINE.COM

SUMMER 2005 • VOL. 1, NO. 11 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreaders • John Morrow & Eric Nolen-Weathington Transcription • Steven Tice

FEATURES

COVER STORY INTERVIEW WITH THE DUDE STEVE RUDE

For more great information on cartooning and animation, visit our Web site at: http://www.drawmagazine.com

Front Cover Illustration by Steve Rude

CARTOONING POLITICAL CARTOONIST AND ZITS! ARTIST JIM BORGMAN

SUBSCRIBE TO DRAW! Four quarterly issues: $20 US Standard Mail, $32 US First Class Mail ($40 Canada, Elsewhere: $44 Surface, $60 Airmail). We accept US check, money order, Visa and Mastercard at TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614, (919) 449-0344, E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com ADVERTISE IN DRAW! See page 2 for ad rates and specifications. DRAW! Summer 2005, Vol. 1, No. 11 was produced by Action Planet Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address is PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2005 by their respective contributors. Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if workfor-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman TM and © 2005 DC Comics • The Hulk TM and © 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. • The Moth and all related characters TM and © 2005 Steve Rude • Nexus TM and © 2005 Mike Baron and Steve Rude • Joe Paradise TM and © 2005 Wildbrain.com, Inc. • Happy Tree Friends TM and © 2005 Mondo Media • Zits TM and © 2005 Zits Partnership. This entire issue is © 2005 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

FLASH ANIMATION INTERVIEW WITH JOE PARADISE CREATOR ROQUE BALLESTEROS

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR TIPS USING SYMBOLS BY ALBERTO RUIZ

DRAWING ON LIFE BY BRET BLEVINS AND MIKE MANLEY

Figurative interpretation by Bret Blevins

FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to DRAW! #11, which you are hopefully reading as you wade through the crowd of Jedis, Storm Troopers, and Klingons at the annual San Diego Comic-Con. This issue has it all, baby! From Pulitzer- and Ruben-award winner Jim Borgman to Eisner- and Harvey-winner Steve Rude. I want to thank Jim Borgman, who was a complete gentleman, taking time from his busy schedule to do an interview and share with us the steps behind his process. Jamar Nicholas, who is a fellow political cartoonist for the Philadelphia Tribune, was the man who came through with the interview, cartoonist to cartoonist. It was especially interesting to see Borgman’s sketchbook and idea process. I want to thank both Steve Rude and his hard-working wife Jaynelle for all of her technical help in obtaining the art files for the art in this issue’s interview. I wish we could have made this issue twice as long to show even more of Steve’s great art. Last year’s San Diego Comic-Con was a fortuitous event, because that’s where I happened to bump into animator Roque Ballesteros, whose Joe Paradise cartoon I’d been a big fan of, and voilà—a year later and here is an article on Roque cuing us in on Joe and what he’s been up to since then. A hearty thanks and slap on the back to my regular DRAW! contributors, Alberto Ruiz and Bret Blevins, for their informative, fantastic, and enjoyable articles. Who knew kitchen cabinets could be so inspiring and sexy? Imagine what Alberto could do with a dinning room set, or even a sofa! It was especially enjoyable to jointly do the article on gesture drawing with Bret and compare notes and approaches as well as drawings. I really encourage each and every one of you to take the life-drawing plunge, headfirst. Go out to a mall, local park or eatery and draw from the spectacle of life that parades in front of you. You will be surprised how much this will improve your drawing of not only the fantastic, but of the everyday situation. You don’t need to spend a lot on art supplies to do it, and even 45 minutes once a week will give you a wealth of material and experience to draw from. So get to drawing! Have a great summer and we’ll see you in October!

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.drawmagazine.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082

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ince the ’80s and his long run on Nexus, Steve Rude has won just about every award the comic industry has to offer, from the Harvey to the Eisner. Steve’s dedication to his craft, along with his legendary sketchbooks, have made him the “artist’s artist” to his peers. Since the first issue of DRAW!, Steve was one of the artists I really wanted to interview for the magazine. I caught up with Steve as he continues to work on his new creatorowned series The Moth, published by Dark Horse. This interview was conducted via phone from Steve’s studio in Arizona.

THE MOTH © AND TM 2005 STEVE RUDE.

—Mike Conducted 5/9/05 by Mike Manley Transcribed by Steven Tice DRAW: When we set up this interview you told me right now you’re in the process of doing layouts for issue #5 of the next mini-series of The Moth. STEVE RUDE: Yeah, it’s going to be six issues. We left off at number four; now we’re going to be doing five through ten, and it all depends on Dark Horse whether it gets picked up or not. The way we did it last time was, we had a special, which was intended to be DRAW! • SUMMER 2005

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issue #1, but Dark Horse marketing decided it might be a better sell if we double-whammied them, a special, and then a #1 coming out. DRAW: So you can essentially have two number ones, in a way. SR: That’s right, yeah. I wasn’t crazy about it, because I don’t necessarily subscribe to that kind of thinking marketing people have, but they seemed pretty desperate to sway me. I thought, “Well, let ’em try it. That’s fine. It’s not a big deal.” DRAW: Right, and it does seem today that one of the things you do face is that unfortunate drop-off between issue one and issue two and issue three, and then maybe people come back with issue four or five. Several friends of mine who have done their own self-publishing, or their own mini-series, their own independent books, as well as myself, you deal with that unfortunate drop-off between issue one and two, where everybody orders the first issue, then they immediately slash the orders 30%, 40% sometimes on issue two. And then, down the road, because they’re ordering, say, issue four by the time they’ve actually seen what they’ve sold on issue #1 your numbers may either bump up or not, and then you have to make a hard choice.

SR: Well, that would be great. But the thing is, there’s a problem too. People ask “What are your long-term plans?” I have shortterm plans, and that’s all based on what my conscience tells me I have to do, but now I’m going to do The Moth regardless of whether I’m getting paid to work on it or not. Also because we’ve already let so many months go by after issue #4—that was the last Moth that came out. DRAW: So you don’t want to lose too much time between issues. Basically, you don’t want to give people time to forget about The Moth. SR: That’s exactly right, so going on the assumption that we’re going to have a book, rather than not have one, I want to be ready. And I want to make sure that I can take advantage of whatever commissions, notoriety, interviews, and all that sort of stuff that comes from my comic book work.

THE THUMBNAIL DRAW: So you’re working on issue #5, and you’re in the layout stage, and you’re continuing to work with Gary Martin as the writer and the inker. Is he going to continue to ink, or are you going to ink yourself on some of this next series?

SR: Interesting. So that’s how that works. It’ll pick up with issue #4. DRAW: Well, in the case of someone like you, who people know, and they know your work, it’s different than if, say, you’re someone who is new, or an artist they are not really familiar with. Retailers are ordering the first issue sight unseen. They’re ordering usually the fourth THE MOTH © AND TM 2005 STEVE RUDE. issue by the time they’ve actually sold the first issue, because we have to work so many months ahead. You have to solicit three months ahead. So there’s that whole other aspect of the business that you have to consider, besides just learning how to draw drapery, and foreshortening. [laughs] But, still, I imagine that having the issues done, having all that work done, whether you go through Dark Horse or not, you’ll still find a publisher who’s going to be willing to take the chance, because you have so much material already finished. 4

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SR: No, he wants to continue as inker. Gary really wants to do that. DRAW: And I guess that also allows you to just keep concentrating on penciling. It’s hard to stay on schedule doing both inking and penciling. SR: I’m happy to let someone else do the inking. As long as I can see the pages, Mike, after the inker’s done with them. DRAW: So you can make little tweaks? SR: I always make tweaks, yeah. And in some cases even paste over some heads, things like that. DRAW: Now, are you physically sending the pages to Gary to ink, then he’s sending them all back, and you make your correc-

COMICS

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tions, if you need to, and then you send them out to Dark Horse? Or do you send them directly to the colorist, Glenn Whitmore when they are inked? SR: We send them directly to Glenn after that. But I’ll send the pages to Gary, Gary will ink them on the board, and then he’ll send them back to me. And then I’ll make my touch-ups, and then I’ll scan the pages, or, rather, Jaynelle, my wife, will scan the pages, and then get them off to Glenn Whitmore. And then he has electronic files that he’ll color and send to Dark Horse. DRAW: Now, are you lettering on the boards? Are you doing the lettering in illustrator; is that being done later? SR: No, I forgot about that, we’re actually lettering it on the board because I like the way it looks. DRAW: I think it’s great when you have the opportunity to do that, because you can really incorporate the balloon, as you should anyway, into the flow of the art, leading your eye around, as a compositional element. And sometimes you can also make an adjustment. If the balloon ends up being a little bit bigger, you can slightly tweak a head or a hand or something. A little nip and tuck, you can move it a little bit, if you need. THE MOTH © AND TM 2005 STEVE RUDE.

SR: Well, there are production advantages to both, but because I’m an artist, I think in terms of the original art. So rather than no lettering being on the page—that cuts the appreciation in half when you don’t know what people were talking—it’s actually on the boards. DRAW: So you prefer to have the lettering on the board because you like the aesthetic of having the final page, the original, with the word balloons and lettering on it. You like that? SR: Yes, I do. I love that. As do all guys from my generation. DRAW: Although it’s very rare now when that actually happens anymore. The last several jobs that I’ve done, I would say, within the last five years especially, it’s really rare when I actually get a job inhouse to either pencil or ink, that actually has the lettering on it. SR: How do you feel about that, Mike? Having to fill in all those areas that may get covered up? DRAW: It depends. If it’s a plot, in which case I’m sort of always having to guess or make up what the writer is suggesting and then basically play the movie director and make it specific.... Like, “This person is yelling here, and having a conversation with another character, telling them to get out,” etc. I’m having to write dialogue in my head so I can make the character act. Y’know, there’re pros and cons, because if you’re really in sync with the writer, it works out well. But sometimes you’ll draw a page or a sequence, and you had somebody making a gesture or yelling, and the writer has the guy not yelling. And that feels like bad comics, bad acting. In your case, since you’re the head honcho on The Moth, you can have final say. Ideally, I think the balloons should be lettered on the board, and even if it’s not a full script, it should still be set up so that, as the artist, you can control that flow of the balloons. Because a lot of time, when they allow other people to do it—I hate to cast aspersions, but not

PREVIOUS PAGE: Model sheet for one of the Moth’s gadgets. ABOVE: Pencils for The Moth #3, page 1.

every editor or every writer is good at eye flow. SR: No, that’s for sure. But that’s what comics are to me. When you look at a page of art, everything should be on there, like there used to be. Things have been changed over the years. I have nothing against technology, but if it goes against what I think is aesthetically part of what comic books should be, I’m going to go against it. And as long as I can do it, I’d sure like to keep doing it. DRAW: Also, in your case, since you’re in control of the factory, per se, you start it and you end it and you monitor production along the way. That’s a little bit different than if you just get a script from Marvel or DC. Especially from Marvel, where you’re working Marvel-style, say, from the plot. So, touching on that, is The Moth a full script, or is it a plot? Do you and Gary get on the phone and talk things out, and then he types and sends it to you? How do you guys work that out? SR: Well, in the beginning I just kind of briefed Gary on what the whole circumstances of The Moth was all about. I remember originally he thought up very silly things that I thought, “He DRAW! • SUMMER 2005

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can’t be taking this seriously when he’s saying this to me.” But he was mentioning things like the Mothmobile. [Mike laughs] Things like that. I said, “No, no. This is the real world, man. There’s no Mothmobile.” [laughter]

SR: Yes. In fact, I’ve found that when I got done with the thumbnails on five and six, they went over by sometimes, like, four pages.

DRAW: So you weren’t going for sort of a campy feel?

SR: Gary wrote it to be, like, a 21-page story, and I made it into a 24-page story.

SR: God, no, because I despise camp. It’s making fun of something I think is very serious, in a deliberate kind of a way, so I don’t go for that at all.

DRAW: Oh, and Dark Horse allowed you to do that?

DRAW: So if the Moth had a car, he wouldn’t call it the Mothmobile, he would just use a car. SR: Yeah. He has a truck that belongs to the circus. Real-life stuff. Because that’s the way I think about all the things that I do and draw in comics is a reflection of real life, the world that I live in. DRAW: So you work all this out, back and forth with Gary.

DRAW: The issues went over by—?

SR: Thank God, yeah. That’s what I like about Dark Horse. They’re not so corporately stringent about policies that they don’t allow the story to rule.

PLOT VS. FULL SCRIPT DRAW: Now, on The Moth you’re working a little bit differently than when you were working with Mike Baron in the past, because I would assume on Nexus you were getting a full script.

SR: Yeah, and then I let him go. And Gary—I wanted to see what he could SR: Yeah. And turn up when the remember, there is training wheels were an evolution taking off, and he did a place with different great job. I thought writers working difthe dialogue was a ferent ways. I startlittle weak on the ed off with Baron THE MOTH © AND TM 2005 special, but right STEVE RUDE. always having full after that he scripts, and he picked up on continued to do things I was going that for a long, long over with him really ABOVE: A turnaround guide for Sophie, part of the supporting cast of The Moth. time. In fact, he drew well. And by issue four NEXT PAGE: Steve’s pencils for pages 4 and 12 of The Moth #3 show that talking heads probably the scripts for pages don’t have to be boring while getting necessary information across to the reader. he was extremely strong, the first 50 stories that and I got really excited we did for Capital and to see how good he was getting. And now, with the issues that First. And then Baron’s back got bad from hunching over and he’s turned in since then, five, six, and seven so far—eight’s on drawing the scripts. its way—these stories are as good as anything I’ve ever worked on, Mike. They’re plots, they’re Marvel-style plots. There’s about DRAW: So he would draw the script as like a little comic book a paragraph description of every page. page? DRAW: So each page is broken down into about a paragraph’s length, which describes what happens on that page? SR: That’s right. DRAW: But then you’re still free to flow something over to another page if you feel you need to do that? 6

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SR: Yeah, that’s exactly right. He would just draw his little figures in there. And I think he had a great time doing that. And so that was the way I always worked with Mike Baron. I did a few other projects in between those 50 issues of Nexus, and I thought this should be a good time to experiment. “Let’s see what it’s like when you give me a breakdown of the story rather than a full-dialogue kind of

Conducted in 2005 by Mike Manley Transcribed by Steven Tice n the glut of webtoons that sprung up seemingly overnight in the Dot-com boom of the late ’90s, Roque Ballesteros, with his award-winning web cartoon Joe Paradise, was one of the real stand-out talents. After the boom went bust—taking most of the web cartoon sites with it and making new millionares, “thousandaires”—Roque surfed on and has stayed at the forefront of Flash animation as it’s matured and continued to develop as a valid and viable format for animation on both TV and the web. Working from San Francisco with his new company Ghostbot, which he runs with two partners, Roque continues to use Flash as he animates on everything from TV commercials and rock videos, to those cuddly little bundles of violence, The Happy Tree Friends. I meet Roque last year at Comic-Con International: San Diego and was immediately floored by the demo DVD he had with him. Being a big fan of Joe Paradise, it was great to get to talk with Roque and show more of his work and that of the mysterious men of Ghostbot. —Mike Manley

DRAW: This is the typical question I always ask artists I interview, but I’ll ask you the same thing: Were you into comics and animation as a kid, and when did you decide that this was what you wanted to do as a job? ROQUE BALLESTEROS: Definitely! I loved comics since I was a wee lad. I think the first comic I owned was a Jack Kirby FF. Then the Uncanny X-Men was my book for the longest time. I’d watch animation all the time—three o’clock was the golden hour of my afternoon because I’d watch Transformers, He-Man, Thundercats, SpiderMan and his Amazing Friends, anything and everything. I even loved the animated bits on

ROQUE BALLESTEROS

FLASH ANIMATION

Sesame Street. I think they burned a hole in my subconscious. So the story goes, one day in seventh grade, me and a buddy wanted to go watch a Jean Claude Van Damme movie... I think it was Cyborg. My mom caught wind of our plan and said, “Why don’t you go watch The Little Mermaid? Of course this was a rhetorical question because basically she was forcing us to go watch the less violent Disney film over the blood-and-guts neo-apocalyptic flick. So, we reluctantly went. As I sat and watched that movie, I found I was wrapped up in the story and the characters and I forgot that I was watching animation. I distinctly remember one moment that I caught myself and thought, “Wait a minute—someone had to draw all of that?” I thought that was the coolest thing and I realized I wanted to do that when I grew up.

physically cutting the film and all that kind of stuff. We weren’t really technologically on top of the bar, so I didn’t know that much about Flash when I got out of school. I went straight from RISD to a commercial animation studio in Boston called Olive Jar Animation Studio. I just had a brief stint there. I was there for maybe a month and a half, and I was animating a commercial for Kraft Singles. [laughter] The thing about Olive Jar was since they were close in proximity to Providence, they tended to get a lot of RISD grads in their pool of talent, so a lot of grads went straight there, which is what happened to me. So it was like you got thrown into the pool of commercial animation. I wouldn’t say I was that prepared for it. It was going from animating your own fancy artsy-fartsy student film to animating on a commercial. But definitely it was a good experience. DRAW: And I’m sure the biggest difference is the time crunch, because on a commercial you probably have to really crank it out. RB: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it was kind of crazy because I actually started that job a little bit before I graduated, just a few weeks before I graduated, so myself and another pal of mine were actually commuting back and forth from Providence to Boston to work. Basically since our finals were over, we didn’t really have that much schoolwork to do, we had some gaps in our schedules, and we could commute back and forth. It was insanity; it was really, really crazy. DRAW: So while you’re working at Olive Jar, and working on commercial stuff, were you starting to develop things like Joe Paradise, or think of your own projects? Were you getting gems

RB: Yeah. I don’t want to knock my school, but I guess every school has its weaknesses. One of the weaknesses, I thought, of RISD [Rhode Island School of Design] was they weren’t the most technologically-savvy when I was there. It was great because they were really focusing on the traditional foundation pencil-and-paper kind of work, gritty film editing, ABOVE: Joe Paradise design model. RIGHT: Storyboards for Episode 16: “The Stranger” of Joe Paradise. NEXT PAGE TOP: Miss Hush pitch model.

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DRAW: So when you graduated from art school, where did you go next? Because at that time in the late ’90s I guess Flash was starting to come up, and was growing as fast as the web was growing then.

or this fun assignment I wanted to give the cover the look of the silkscreen posters from the WPA era [Works Progress Administration, 1935-1943, an arts/information program created by the government to provide economic relief from the Great Depression]. I went off to experiment with textures, using the Symbols feature in Illustrator.The idea is not to fool the viewer into thinking the end result is an actual painting, but to sort of soften the digital feel of a native vector picture.

By Alberto Ruiz

The drawing featured on this page was my first idea for the finished cover. I like it a lot, but I wanted to use the actual cover assignment to apply the Symbols palette goodies built into Adobe Illustrator CS. I braced myself for a lot of trial and error, since this was my first time using Symbols, but to my surprise, the Tools and Symbols palettes were intuitive and user-friendly.

ALBERTO RUIZ

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

Before I started working in Adobe Illustrator, I put together a comprehensive color sketch in Photoshop.The final image ended up a lot different than the comp [see below], but this was needed to minimize the color and shading guesswork. I worked out the color planes, highlights, and shadow areas, and even the logo placement.

I was bent from the beginning on using an “all flower” pattern, and I carry this idea right towards the end. Eventually I found that it was way too busy to have the girl’s dress and the background competing with each other for attention.

Fortunately for me, I had created a few flower repeat patterns for surfer trunks back in my garment district days, so I had a few designs to choose from.

For the sake of this demonstration, however, and to show you how easy it really is to generate a pattern in Illustrator, I re-drew and put together a new “tossed” flower repeat based on the old designs.

As with most of my illustrations involving preliminary drawings, I scanned the original pencil rough at 150 DPI and saved the image in TIF format so I can then use it as a template. After creating the new document in AI, I placed the file by choosing Place from the File menu with the Template option checked.

I then locked the current layer (Layer 1 or Template) and created a second layer, which I renamed “coloring” and dragged directly underneath.This is the layer in which I’ll be doing most of the work. I used just one layer for this illustration—quite a departure from the 20-plus layer, gargantuan files I normally deal with.

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COMICS seemed like he just wanted to hate on everything so much in that critique, that it’s like, what could you pull out of that that you could use? SR: Yeah, the more I tried to account for what I had done that he had erroneously pointed out, the more mad he would get. DRAW: So when you said, “No, that’s not a fake camera, that’s an actual, real surveyor’s camera, and I went and did research on it.” SR: Yeah, that was not something he wanted to hear. He was much more content with just blasting you and having his way. And that was that. DRAW: Yeah, that’s too bad. SR: He’s unlike any person I’ve ever met in my life in his extreme attitude about things. He’s an absolute extreme in a way that I’ve never seen anyone in my life. DRAW: Well, it’s a mixed event sometimes, meeting people that you admire. Sometimes you can meet a person that you admire and they are such a wonderful person that it’s just a great experience. And sometimes you can meet a person who’s a hero or that you admire, and they just end up being an ass, they end up being a bad person. SR: Yeah, it’s fascinating to look back at all the people, like Kirby being the perfect gentleman and the easiest guy on Earth to talk to. And then you meet the opposite in Alex. DRAW: Is there something else you’d like to say? SR: The only thing I might want to say is kind of what we touched on, Mike. I’ve been reading this really nice article about Will Eisner in Alter Ego here, that just came, and the whole entrepreneurial spirit that Will Eisner had about knowing what he wanted to do and doing it, regardless of the circumstances of the publishing world and what they would give him, I think is the route that I am set on hopefully for my life, here. Even with the business being so shaky right now. DRAW: So you’re going to try to find some way, despite it being shaky, to make it work for you? SR: Yeah. I feel driven by conscience to do as much as I can to reflect a manner of producing a comic book that is the way they did back in the ’40s, even. DRAW: And you’re talking from the craft level? SR: Yeah. Some kind of a full circle kind of a thing, where I don’t want to work under some guy that knows nothing about the needs of me as an artist, and so I had to create my own character.

STEVE RUDE

I’m looking at this Alter Ego with Eisner in it, and there’s an ad for All-Star Auctions, and there’s a Spider-Man cover, #40, where Romita drew Spider-Man standing over the Green Goblin. Just the excitement that oozes from these covers, where Spidey saves the day, the end of the Green Goblin. That’s what personified anyone picking up a comic book. You looked at it and you thought, “Oh, my God! I’ve got to get this here! I’ve got to get this thing!” Well, that sensibility has been gone for so long. In fact, it’s been turned on its ear. Now everything is about this really stoic-looking dark crap on the cover, where a #1 isn’t put big in a book anymore; it has no meaning anymore. They went overboard in the Valiant days, when they would gold foil everything, and put a hologram #1 on the cover and all that kind of crap. And now they’ve gone the reverse of that, probably to try to make it more adult or whatever, their layouts. That’s where Marvel is right now. And I couldn’t work with those kind of guys. They don’t agree with my sensibilities. DRAW: No, that’s the hardest part. And that thing you were talking about, about that Romita cover, is just his natural sense of appeal. His drawings were always appealing. They always showed you the shots that you wanted to see, they always showed you the kind of image that you would like. And they were drawing comics that would also appeal to a younger audience. And now that the audience is our age, right, so the audience is in their late 20s to late 40s, they’re not trying to draw Spider-Man to appeal to a nine-year-old or ten-year-old. They’re trying to draw Spider-Man to appeal to a 40-year-old. And to do that, then they draw Mary Jane like a stripper. [laughs] SR: Yeah, the current vogue in drawing people in comics is essentially the Image look, isn’t it? Well, maybe that’s my problem. I’ve never done anything I’ve ever done on thinking about an audience. I’m so glad I spared myself that, what I have to do to make people happy. That’s the surest way to suicide, I think. DRAW: Do you collect old comics? SR: Yeah, I sure do. And it’s the only thing I collect. DRAW: Do you collect art? Do you collect illustration? SR: Last year I went over to the Kirby booth, where [Mike] Thibodeaux was, and Lisa Kirby, and I bought a page from the ’50s, a romance book. And I just said, “Gee, I’ve got to have this.” I’m someone that looks at material possessions as something that’s critically important to your life. It just goes against all that PC crap where you’re not supposed to put to much stock in all that. That’s all horsesh*t.

DRAW: Now, if you’re buying that, you’re buying it because you not only DRAW! • SUMMER 2005

By Bret Blevins and Mike Manley ruth is a vital part of expressive realistic drawing, and the source of visual truth is observation from life. This article demonstrates the value of keeping a sketchbook with you and using it everyday. In past issues of DRAW! we’ve discussed many aspects of figure drawing, mostly principles of construction, rhythm, proportion, movement, and other concepts directed toward the creation of invented imaginary figures. Usually these drawings are designed as instruments and components of a narrative— designed as characters with personalities that can be manipulated by the artist through a process of “acting on paper.” A storytelling figure artist depends on an understanding of human emotions and attitudes as outwardly revealed by the position of the limbs, head, and torso— collectively referred to as “body language.” These clues, signs and hints about a person’s inward thoughts and emotions that we gather from observation are endlessly vast and varied—no one can store every possible variation of this subtle and often fleeting language in memory. This makes constant sketching from life an invaluable resource for deepening, refreshing and enriching your range and mastery of the revealing gesture. As every serious artist knows, it’s easy to level out into plateaus as you proceed through the years. There are so many demands on your time and energy that one can fall into an unexamined habit of using “stock” shorthand solutions to many picture-making problems. There is nothing inherently wrong with achieving a set of workable skills and then repeating them, but there is so much more territory to explore— more than any one artist could fit into several lifetimes. Returning to the source of all art and experience—your life in your environment—is a constant source of renewal, both of your skills and your spirit. As you’ll see in the pages that follow, making quick sketches from the human life happening around you doesn’t necessarily create glamourous rich works of art (although it can), but a finished masterpiece is not your goal. This realization is important—most artists resist this endeavor because the results are often so fragmentary and unimpressive to the undiscerning eye. You need never show

DRAW! • SUMMER 2005

these studies to anyone—they are made for your benefit, your improved understanding, as a means of increasing your awareness and ability. The essential strength of sketching from life is the effect is has on quickening your eye and hand—as you gather filled pages of “lightning sketches” you will experience a process of distilling the most important information almost instantly. I call this “essencing”— honing in on the most bare, sparse statement of the key shapes and rhythms. To an appreciative eye, these simple yet remarkably eloquent brief arrangements of lines convey a sense of life and consciousness that is often missing from elaborately constructed and meticulously rendered realistic finished drawings. In turn, both your collection of sketches and the experience carved into your mind by the act of making them will enrich your invented work immeasurably. Sketching the people, animals, objects and places around you is an ever renewable resource for your ongoing growth as an artist. Experimenting with different tools and means of making the sketches will broaden your mastery of techniques and your range of expression, as well as fill your memory with the construction and shapes of innumerable bodies, faces, garments, shoes, handbags, buildings, tables, chairs, cars, trees, plants, clouds... the list is endless. This infusion of ever fresh information will inform all of your work, expanding the breadth and subtlety of choices you can mine as you begin each new artwork, whether a single illustration, a 20-page comic book story or a 1000-frame storyboard. It’s important to remember that the prime result of observation sketching is not the drawings themselves, but the experience gained by making them. Time spent sketching from life is never wasted.

GESTURE DRAWING

MIKE MANLEY

BELOW: This college student was a good subject, lost in thought. Most of the time you will have 20-30 seconds or even less to draw a person as their pose will chnage or they will pass you or get up and move. It may take a few trips out to sketch until you find your “groove” and loosen up. Relax, and have fun; don’t worry about mistakes, paper is cheap!

ABOVE AND RIGHT: Old people are a lot of fun to draw. Time has given their faces and bodies a lot of character that makes drawing them a blast. And old people wear hats, like this lady I sketched at a local mall in colored pencil and marker. Compare her posture to that of the student.

LEFT: This old fella had a great head to draw, what a cool “type.” After I drew him, I re-drew him a few more times (BELOW) from memory trying to “push” the drawing or design. I find this to be a great exercise.

ABOVE: The variety of people is endless and entertaining. Sitting in a mall or coffee shop for a few hours is only giving you the smallest sample of humanity, yet combinations of porportion are endless as these two figures show. Both ladies were walking withing a few steps of each other.

DRAW! • SUMMER 2005

GESTURE DRAWING

BRET BLEVINS

LEFT: I made these drawings from the balcony at a concert, very quickly and in near darkness. In the second sketch (in five minutes or so) I attempted to capture an impression of the entire choir—don’t be afraid to tackle any subject. If the attempt fails all you’ve lost is a sheet of inexpensive paper and a few grains of graphite!

RIGHT: The first lightning marker sketch was made on the spot as this shopper was bending over a jewelry display, and was then used as a basis for the stylized sketch. Again the changes amount to a simplified exaggeration of the rhythm and increased clarity of design. I’ve lengthened her legs and narrowed her waist and hips to enhance the effect of feminine grace. The increased swing in the angle of the line that sweeps across and through her shoulders and arms strengthen the gesture, as do the fold indications of her shirt.

DRAW! • SUMMER 2005