Draw! #15 by TwoMorrows Publishing

NUMBER 15 SPRING 2008

$6.95

BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE

IN THE U.S.A.

82658 27764

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

WHERE TO GET YOUR

COMIC ART DEGREE

FEATURED ARTIST:

BILL REINHOLD

PLUS: MIKE MANLEY AND BRET BLEVINS’

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

SPRING 2008 VOL. 1, NO. 15 Editor-in Chief • Michael Manley Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Circulation Director • Bob Brodsky for CookieSoup Productions Proofreader • Eric Nolen-Weathington Transcription • Steven Tice Front Cover Illustration • Michael Manley For more great information on cartooning and animation, visit our Web site at: www.drawmagazine.com DRAW! Spring 2008, Vol. 1, No. 15 was produced by Action Planet Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Address is P.O. 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 2008 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 work-for-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, Commissioner Gordon, Enemy Ace ™ and ©2007 DC Comics • A.I.M., Blaze, Captain America, Dr. Doom, the Hulk, MODOK, the Punisher, Reed Richards, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, the Thing, Venom ™ and ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. • The Salon, The Voyage of the James Caird ™ and ©2008 Nick Bertozzi • Conan ™ and ©2008 Conan Properties International LLC • The Phantom ™ and ©2008 King Features Syndicate, Inc. • Shi ™ and ©2007 Billy Tucci • Badger ™ and ©2008 Mike Badger • Desiree’s Baby ™ and ©2008 respective owner • This entire issue is © 2006 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

3 4

CONTENTS COVER STORY

The Big Back to School Issue Introduction

THE JOE KUBERT SCHOOL

Interviews with Joe Kubert and Mike Chen

THE CENTER FOR CARTOON STUDIES Interview with Michelle Ollie

MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN Interview with Terry Beatty

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS Interview with Nick Bertozzi

SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN Interview with John Lowe

FEATURED ARTIST Interview with Bill Reinhold

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP “Drawing Your Best Foot Forward” by Bret Blevins and Mike Manley

FROM THE EDITOR

Figurative interpretation by Echo

School’s in session! Here it is, our big “Back to School” issue of DRAW! It was quite an undertaking but it was also really exciting, and surprising as well, to do this issue’s research and find out the state of art education in regards to comics. Sure, we comic and cartoon fans know comics seem to be making big waves today, from Hollywood to the rise of the graphic novel as a major genre in book publishing. Heck, any Barnes & Noble or Borders has a few aisles now set aside for comics trades and graphic novels carrying a pretty wide range from Naruto to Blankets to Batman. Certainly never before in my career as a professional cartoonist or even as a fan of comics have they ever been more visible in bookstores. Coupled with this is the amazing amount of people interested in cartooning and animation as a career. This seems to have caused an explosion of interest in the serious study of comics in college-level education. Many colleges now offer classes on writing comics and drawing comics, some as Continuing Education or as part of their Art and Illustration programs. The impetus or idea of this issue sprang out of my own teaching career and the questions that come from the help I give to my students at DCAD (Delaware College of Art and Design). Each year many of my students ask my opinion on where they might go after DCAD to continue their education, as DCAD is a twoyear school. Some like manga, some like fantasy art, some like animation or mainstream superhero comics. So while doing a little advising I started to come across more and more schools that offered cartooning classes, some even full degrees. And then it occurred to me that no one had ever, to my knowledge, put all of this info in one place, one source, so that people could compare and contrast what these schools have to offer, as not every school is the right fit for every student, and so the idea of this issue came to be.

There are a few schools, like SVA and the Kubert School, who have been around for a while offering classes and training in comic art, but now there are an amazing amount of schools offering a BFA degree in Comics. I find this to be both amazing and heartening to see comics accepted as a legitimate form of art, like film printmaking, painting, etc., and also the fact that this says comics have grown in importance to the overall culture of art in our country and the once common idea that comics will “rot your mind” has finally been buried. Today there are a handful of universities and school that offer the budding cartoonist a variety of approaches of philosophy as well. Just like traditional art schools where some focus more on abstract art while others focus more on classical art, the schools covered in this issue really offer a wide variety of philosophies as well. From the Center for Cartoon Studies, with its bent towards the more “indy” style of comic, to SCAD and MCAD, where you can do both or more mainstream superhero work. This also means that more cartoonists like myself are teaching, offering the students access to real working pros that just wasn’t possible outside of places like New York City in the past. In short, you as a prospective student have more choices and possibilities now than ever before in your education as a cartoonist. I’d like to thank all of the people who came through and really helped make this issue possible: The great Joe Kubert and Mike Chen from the Joe Kubert School in Dover, Nick Bertozzi who teaches at SVA in New York, Michelli Ollie from CCS in Vermont, Barbra Schulz and Terry Beatty from MCAD in Minneapolis, and John Lowe from SCAD in Savannah. I’d also like to thank my good friend Bill Reinhold for his help and time with his interview. Bill is an amazing artist; he can do anything it seems, and it was great getting to share not only his great working techniques, but also some of his fine art away from comics. I’d also like to thank my best buddy Bret for helping out on the Foot installment of our continuing series “Comic Book Bootcamp” and Steven Tice for transcribing above and beyond the call of duty on this issue. And as always we like to hear feedback from you: suggest artists you’d like to see covered here and subjects, techniques you’d like to see articles on. Lastly, I am sorry to report that due to the dreaded spambots I have had to shut down the DRAW! message board. It was corrupted with so much spam that it became impossible to manage. For now you can use my blog: www.drawman.blogspot.com to leave comments and questions, and I hope to have a new message board back up soon. DRAW! also has a myspace at: http://www.myspace.com/drawmag so stop by and join up. Best,

E-mail: mike@drawmagazine.com Website: www.drawmagazine.com Snail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082 DRAW! • SPRING 2008

his issue took a while to put together and was a big undertaking. I felt at times like an investigative reporter trying to nail down the facts behind a mystery or story— in this case the state of college-level education for cartooning and comics—and the case was bigger than I thought, one door led to another, and yet another. The original impetus for doing this issue devoted mainly to comics education and schools grew out of my own experiences teaching the past six years at DCAD (the Delaware College of art and Design) and advising and helping my students in choosing what schools they might want to attend after they leave DCAD, which is a two-year Associates Degree school. I teach in the Animation Dept. (Storyboarding and Storytelling and Drawing for Animation and Illustration) and often the students who like animation want to do comics and vice versa. In the course of advising some students from last year’s class, it really hit me that, as far as I am aware, no one had yet compiled in one place an overview of what colleges offer courses and degrees in cartooning, either as a separate discipline or as part of an overall program in Animation, Illustration, etc. At DCAD I do teach comic storytelling as part of the Storyboarding class and I cover the similarities and differences in film vs. comics and comics vs. comic strips.

Most people seem to know of the Joe Kubert School in Dover, New Jersey, run by one the best and most influential comic artists of all time, Joe Kubert. His school’s been around well over 20 years, and has probably the highest profile. But in that time comics have become, in many respects, mainstream. As a result of this explosion of comics upon our mainstream culture, courses on comics have sprung up, and now many schools—as you will read about here—offer an actual degree in Cartooning or have it as a significant part of their curriculum. Luckily, I have many friends and colleagues who teach at some of the schools offering classes, and I was able to interview quite a few of them here. I also wanted to, if possible, get some examples of some of the students’ work at the schools and to present the financial end of schools, as well. I know firsthand just how expensive college is and how that expense can directly affect one’s ability to attend any school. I also wanted to try and find out the strengths and differences in each school’s program and what they stress, as not every school is a good fit for every student. I want to again thank each and every one of the folks I interviewed here for their time and graciousness and enthusiasm in helping me put together this article. Let’s get the ball rolling with The Joe Kubert School, located in Dover, New Jersey. DRAW! • SPRING 2008

THE JOE KUBERT SCHOOL OF CARTOONING AND GRAPHIC ART Joe Kubert was gracious enough to take time out from his busy schedule to talk to DRAW! about his school and its programs, as was Mike Chen, the Special Projects coordinator, who also teaches there and has for a number of years. Mike was very helpful in supplying art samples by current students and more info about the Kubert School, and in setting up my interview with Joe. DRAW!: So as I come to understand it, Joe himself teaches in the senior year class? MIKE CHEN: Yeah. He’s teaching sequential art, naturally, and I think a sketching and layout course. DRAW!: Well, he is the master of layouts.

The Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art 37 Myrtle Ave Dover, NJ (973) 361-1327 The school was founded in 1976 and is a three-year vocational school. Find out more on their website: http://www.kubertsworld.com/kubertschool/KubertSchool.htm

Florida, California, Texas, Hawaii. People from other countries, Canadians, the British, South Americans, Central Americans, people from China, Japan. Some people from northern Africa. I think we even had one or two guys from Australia.

MC: Yeah, he is a genius. DRAW!: He’s someone that, whenever I get stuck for ideas, all I have to do is look at a Joe Kubert comic and it always seems to suggest an idea or free up the mental block. He’s one of the artists I think I probably learned the most from, as far as page layout. MC: Before I came to the school, I remember seeing his stuff at DC back in the ’60s, and it was eye-opening. It was not necessarily Neal Adams or Jim Steranko, but it’s like, “Wow! This stuff is great!” But I remember when he was doing stuff on Winnie Winkle, and you’re looking at this god-awful dull soap opera of a strip, and what he did with the panel layouts, it’s like, why don’t more people do this stuff? Of course, they don’t even try. But that’s the way Joe is. It’s second nature to him to experiment, to try things differently. Why just settle for the status quo? DRAW!: So, in the first year at the Kubert School, do you have Figure Drawing and Anatomy? MC: I think it’s ten courses. But Human Figure is mandatory; Design and Layout; Lettering; Methods and Materials; Intro to Animation, Humor and Caricature are all mandatory. Yes, you have to be funny here. Narrative Art is mandatory. Pacing, Mechanicals, those are all the courses that they have to take. All the courses that we have in our curriculum at each level are mandatory. There are no electives. You cannot pick and choose what you’d like to do. DRAW!: What about things like financial aid? And I know you guys at least had dorms. Do you still have dorms? MC: We have three dormitory buildings in and around the town of Dover, where we’re situated. They’re each about a mile, a mile-and-a-half away, and with the three buildings we can accommodate fifty students, I think, altogether. Obviously, we do get students from the New Jersey area, the Tri-State area. They just make their way here, they commute. But we are getting people from all over the United States, from Alaska, from

DRAW! • SPRING 2008

DRAW!: Wow! Do the foreign students get preference when it comes to staying in the dorm? MC: Yeah. It’s always going to boil down to a question of availability. We try to accommodate the foreign students as best we can, but if they decide to sign on at the very last second, and we’ve got all these Americans who’ve already signed up before that, we’ll do what we can, but it really does depend on when you’re signing up for this stuff. We only have so much space. DRAW!: And since you’re an accredited school... MC: A vocational school. DRAW!: A vocational. Does that help with prospective students obtaining financial aid? MC: Yes and no. Because we are accredited, they do have access to financial aid, but since we’re not a college, we’re not a university, we don’t offer any degrees, it’s a little bit tougher for our guys to be able to get financial aid. They still can get it. And, obviously, our tuition is a heck of a lot less than going to most colleges. DRAW!: What is the tuition? MC: Oh, bother. I’m going to say, off the top of my head, about $16,000. DRAW!: Not including the dorm, right? MC: No, no, no. that would be a separate issue. I think that’s another $6,000. DRAW!: Okay. That’s helpful because I’m trying to, as much as I can, give specifics. “This is what you get, this is how much it costs, the way the courses are structured,” so people can really start to compare. Because I’ve had students over the years ask me what school I recommend, or did I go to a school, when

to start looking, and there’s never been one place you could go and get that information. For medical school or music school, there are a lot of places you can go and see, “There are these schools, and this is what they offer.” MC: Of course, that’s all before the Internet. But there just never was that much interest. Like you said, in terms of a medical school, or a law school, or what have you, a business school, there’s plenty of information, because you have hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people who are interested in that sort of thing. Outside of the people that you know as cartoonists, how many cartoonists would you say would be in your state? You know, we don’t exactly broadcast our location, and we’re definitely in the minority. Not everybody is going to be a cartoonist. For that matter, not everybody who has the ability to be a cartoonist, the talent, is going to be one. We are a very rare breed. DRAW!: Yeah, and especially for things like political cartooning, where there’s actually a great decline of newspapers employing political cartoonists, now. That’s something I’ve been following the last several years, which is a shame, because that is a great and very vital form of cartooning. MC: I agree, and also newspaper comic strips; there are still a lot of people who are trying to get in there, but it’s not like it used to be when Joe Kubert was a kid. That was the Holy Grail. DRAW!: Or even when we were kids. [laughs] So do you talk about that kind of thing in the school? I mean, they’re really facing a very different world, as prospective professionals, than I did growing up in the ’80s, because now DC’s talking about doing web comics; they have a contract for doing web comics. I mean, that’s very different.

Artwork from Barry Lyndon Verastigue, a student at The Joe Kubert School.

MC: Right. I can’t say that, formally, we have something like that. We don’t have a web comics course, but because of the nature of our instructors, they’re spanning the generations, themselves. I mean, we do have younger instructors in their late 20s, early 30s, as well as the geezers. I think it kind of gives a good overview to the students of what’s going on there, and we get them to start thinking about this. Again, it’s not just a bunch of pretty pictures. They have to consider their livelihood. How is this going to affect them? DRAW!: And this covers things like how to conduct yourself as a professional in the business world as well, I suppose.

MC: Yes, I remember this guy who showed up at DC one day looking like a bum. He was dressed in shorts, and it looked like he was covered in dust. It was like Pigpen from Peanuts—just a cloud of dust. He comes into DC’s pristine offices carrying his artwork in a paper bag or a backpack or something like that. He goes up to one of the receptionists and says, “I’m here to show my artwork to DC to get a job.” And the receptionist, trained of course, properly, smiled sweetly and said, “Well, who’s your appointment with?” The guy is flustered. “I don’t have an appointment with anybody. Who do I show it to?” “Well, you would normally show it, perhaps, to one of our creative directors.” “Okay, well, which one’s available?” “Well, sir, you have to have an appointment first. We can’t just let you in.” And then this guy proceeded to get into an argument with the receptionist. DRAW! • SPRING 2008

SVA (SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS) Located in New York City the School of Visual Arts was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and was renamed in 1956. Hogarth drew the famous Tarzan newspaper strip and was an author of several books including Dynamic Anatomy (1958) and Dynamic Figure Drawing (1970). Many classic cartoonists from the Golden and Silver Age of comics attend classes there, such as Al Williamson and Wally Wood. SVA is a fully accredited college that requires the completion of a four-year, 120-credit course for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Animation and Cartooning are offered as undergraduate degrees. Comic luminaries such as Klaus Janson; Walter Simonson; Sam Viviano, a contributor and now current art director at Mad magazine; Jessica Abel, graphic novelist and writer/artist of La Perdida; Matt Madden, cartoonist/writer of Odds Off; Tom Hart, cartoonist/writer of Hutch Owen; Gary Panter, cartoonist/writer of Jimbo in Purgatory; and my old buddy Nick Bertozzi teach at the school. That’s a pretty impressive list of talent if there ever was one, and one that also covers a wide range of styles, personalities and genres in the field of cartooning.

School of Visual Arts (SVA) 209 East 23 Street New York, NY 10010-3994 The school was established in 1947 and is a fully accredited four-year college offering a BFA degree, as well as postgraduate degrees. Find out more on their website: http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/ Or contact them directly: Telephone: (212) 592-2000 Fax: (212) 725-3587 E-mail: admissions@sva.edu

I’ve know Nick for years, long before he was the giant he is today. His series Rubber Necker from Alternative Comics won the 2003 Harvey Awards for best new talent and best new series. He’s worked with Harvey Pekar and Jason Lutes on Houdini: The Handcuff King (published by Hyperion) and has two web comics, Persimmon Cup and Pecan Sandy as part of the ACT-I-VATE comics blog. When does this guy sleep?

DRAW!: I’ve known you since you were working at Fat Jack’s Comic Crypt in Havertown, PA. NICK BERTOZZI: That was 1992. DRAW!: I know! I mean, you were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. And ever so nice! [adolescent voice:] “Mr. Manley, can I help you find those issues of New Gods you were looking for?” But you were a smart guy right from the beginning. That’s something that I could pick up. And you’ve really come up through the trenches in a very different way than I came up, because being ten years or so older, when I was coming, the independent scene really wasn’t there in the way it is now. And I think my intent may also have been slightly different, too. I mean, I really wanted to work for Marvel. That was my goal. NB: So the question is where did my intent come from?

DRAW! • SPRING 2008

DRAW!: Yeah. When you were working in the comic book shop, and you were thinking, “Maybe I’d like to do this as a living,” were you specifically thinking, “I

want to do this type of comic” or “This type of story attracts me?” I remember seeing your first... I don’t know if they were first, The Incredible Drinking Buddies and stuff like that, and it was funny stuff. I mean, your drawing and everything of course has all gotten better since then, but I think your work had a very specific flavor to it, and I can still see that in anything that you do today. NB: [laughs] I’m happy to be praised as somebody who’s smart and funny, but not until recently have I become a critical thinker, and I was just floundering right after college. I was a Spanish literature major, and then I started working at a comic book store. I liked reading comics. I wasn’t interested in becoming a cartoonist. I was interested in pursuing music, and being a rock star, and playing in a bunch of bands. DRAW!: Which you still do, right? NB: I still do music, but I haven’t played in a band in a long time. But it didn’t occur to me until about a year after Another page from Nick Bertozzi’s webcomic, The Voyage of the James Caird. working at the comic book THE VOYAGE OF THE JAMES CAIRD ™ AND ©2008 NICK BERTOZZI store that I should be doing into my mind and I can’t stop thinking about it, and it turns out I comics, because it’s an art form that’s all mine. You can choose just kind of warp it a little bit and it turns into one of my stories. I to work with other people, but you can also very easily make won’t go into particulars about it. But when I first met you, I was comics by yourself, and tell very disgusting, dirty jokes. [Mike only doing comics just to put my foot in the water, never with the laughs] In just a few pages, you can get your anger, or whatever it is that fuels you, out on the page much more easily than going idea I’d be penciling or inking or writing stories for DC or Marvel, or any of these other big guys. Or even for Fantagraphics. into a room full of guys who are probably half-drunk or stoned and telling them what chords to play and having to berate them. DRAW!: Or certainly not being an editor up there. You were So when I first started doing comics, I’d always been doing art, an editor there for a while, right? and as a matter of fact, I had done about 80 of my own superhero comics when I was a kid, between the ages of eight and 14. NB: No, no. I was in marketing. DRAW!: Wow! These are, like, multiple-page epics, or just one...? NB: They’re basically ripoffs of X-Men and Starblazer. Oh, and then they turned into kind of ripoffs of Hitchcock movies. DRAW!: That’s quite an abrupt turn, going from Starblazer into Hitchcock! NB: Well, I’m still a sponge. If I watch a movie, it gets sucked

DRAW!: Oh, okay. I thought for a brief time you were an editor. NB: Oh, no, no. I get along with the editorial people, but they thought of me, I think, as a slick marketing person, because I—. It was funny, in your introductory question you were kind of saying, “You were always very nice.” I worked really hard for whoever I worked for, whether it was DC... I was working at a mortgage company before that inputting checks, and I was DRAW! • SPRING 2008

Conducted by Mike Manley Transcribed by Steven Tice

DRAW!: I understand you had some college or art school training. Was this is at the American Academy? BILL REINHOLD: The American Academy of Art. There was a lot of attention put on Andrew Loomis’ work there, and a number of the teachers actually pretty much were, you might say, teaching from that knowledge. DRAW!: From the Loomis books? BR: They didn’t actually put the books out. In our school, we never used the books. There were no books at all. In fact, my favorite life-drawing teacher, he didn’t even do demonstrations on paper. Rarely, very rarely. Everything was him describing things, and he was an amazing teacher. DRAW!: And who was that? BR: That was Bill Perks. DRAW!: Was he sort of a semi-retired, working illustrator?

BR: He could have been in his 50s. DRAW!: Which, of course, now we say is not old at all. [laughs] BR: That’s right. But you know when people are older and when you’re younger, their style is so different from you that they seem a lot older just by how they look. DRAW!: Although I think that generation of people, when they were 50, were older than us being that age or near that age. I think they had a very different view. BR: Yeah. So with Loomis, part of his teaching is talking a lot about planes and the figure, so there tended to be a lot of us that really went towards that, and with some of the artists that were learning that way, it was so obvious in our work. I mean, the planes would be exaggerated, almost. People would look like Iceman in the comics, y’know? It’s a great way to learn, to understand the figure, but at some point you have to start breaking that down so it’s not obvious, and you start making things look more organic. But I think that’s where my angular style developed from.

BR: Well, he was an older guy. You know, it’s funny, he’s passed on now, but when I look back at him, he seemed really old when I was there, but I was in my early 20s...

DRAW!: Was from that really structural breaking down of the figure into planes?

DRAW!: So anybody over 30 was old, then. [laughs]

BR: Yeah. So you understand, like, when you’re coming across a part of the figure and all of a sudden you’ve got to make a right

DRAW! • SPRING 2008

turn, and you’ve got to make a left turn. It’s obvious. You know where the signs are. A lot of my career was first learning how to draw, and then trying to forget a lot of that stuff, and trying to break it down into something more organic and looser. Because I would find my work looking too stiff, and when I penciled my own work and other people would ink it, I tended to work in that way, penciling was a step for me, because I was used to inking my own work. So sometimes a lot of that angularity would be in the pencils that I didn’t really see as being in the finish. If I were inking it, I would destroy some of that. I’d break that down and make it look more organic. But if somebody else inked me, they would sometimes emphasize it, even.

DRAW!: But, see, now you have the experience to be able to interpret that. BR: Exactly. I actually never turn young artists towards those books. To me, they’re confusing. They’re beyond what I think a beginner can really look at, to me.

DRAW!: I know what you mean. I do recommend them to some of my students, but in general what I do is take certain pages, when we’re talking about, say, blocking the masses, and I will use them to illustrate the principles... the big masses. I think his work, because it is so highly stylized, you sort of look at those figures and they look like, I don’t know, DRAW!: Well, that’s like Gil statues or something. “How Kane’s work when he would do I apply that to trying to ink himself, or, say, someone draw a normal person?” I like Romita or Wood would remember thinking Jim ink him with a much softer Starlin’s art, when I was a kid, style, it would sort of soften looked like Bridgman. his work. But sometimes Everything was big and inkers would ink his work and A 1989 self-portrait/mug shot by Bill. blocky, and it was like the ARTWORK ©2008 BILL REINHOLD would emphasize the angularipeople had no skin or were ty of his work, so the people made of stone or marble. I could clearly see that obviously not look more like moving statues or something. only did Frazetta, but Gil Kane definitely did study his work. BR: Exactly. Yeah. But I really like learning that way, as opposed to artists like George Bridgman. When I saw his anatoHOGARTH VS BRIDGMAN my books, I couldn’t make sense of those things. DRAW!: I think that they’re very difficult to digest without a good teacher to help you, or without having a fair amount of drawing experience yourself. BR: Now I actually can enjoy them. I look at them and go, “Wow, this is really good.” [laughs]

BR: Well, are you thinking of Bridgman, now, or Hogarth? DRAW!: Bridgman. BR: Okay. Hogarth... DRAW!: Hogarth I never liked. I never liked his work, ever... DRAW! • SPRING 2008

BR: He was even further. I mean, he was the real Gil Kane, Jim Starlin, for anatomy books, you know? The reason comic book artists like his stuff is because it looks like comics, because the guy was a comics artist. Although the guy can draw like crazy, all of his background is like if you, I don’t know, took the average comic artist and they learned how to draw really well, they’d still be drawing the comic style, but it was done in a technical way. DRAW!: You know, it’s funny, because I always disliked his work. I never liked his Tarzan stuff. And I actively tell my students, if they have the Burne Hogarth books, to actually throw them away, because I think that they’re terribly inaccurate, but they’re convincing because everything is so well-finished, it’s so well-thought-out and completed that it gives you the false sense that what he’s stating is actually true. But the more I learn about figure drawing over the years, the more I realize that a lot of the stuff he talks about is just his very personal, sort of twisted take on it. BR: There’s really no room for that in other kinds of art. In comics there is more room. I wasn’t attracted to Hogarth’s comic work at all. I mean, I’d look at it; it was somewhat interesting. But really, the reason I liked his books is because everything was so evident. When I looked at somebody like Bridgman, or even some others, either I didn’t like the figure work, or I just thought it wasn’t playing what was being said and the way things were described. I liked when I could see where the muscles connected and where things actually went. I felt like I needed that. So that’s why I was attracted to Hogarth

DRAW! • SPRING 2008

and Gil Kane and Steve Ditko. These guys, the anatomy was there, plainly. You could see it. Whereas somebody like Buscema, their stuff was so organic, you really couldn’t learn to draw from it, at least in a technical way. You could learn a lot about good art and composition and drawing, but it was more advanced, in a way. It was more subtle. DRAW!: I’m taking anatomy classes now, and it’s completely different to teach yourself and to learn from comics, where everything is very extreme and all the people are extreme. Hogarth’s approach is an extreme stylization of anatomy. It’s not like really learning how the body is put together. He doesn’t really talk about how the muscles insert on the bones, and... BR: I’ve never read the books. I’ve just looked at them. [laughs] DRAW!: When you start really studying anatomy from a very technical standpoint, you start to learn the different layers of muscle on the back—you have the romboids, and then you have the trapezius, you have these layers of muscles that work together. BR: I would look at other anatomy books for that. I have a lot of anatomy books, and some of them are more technical, almost

medical. Because I would find myself, as I was learning anatomy, becoming more and more curious about where things went and how they connected. And I needed something to show me where things went under the layers, how they connected to the bone. I didn’t go too crazy on that, but, still... ’Cause if you’re drawing figures all the time, and if you are drawing anatomy that’s obvious, you’ll find yourself drawing a line, and you go, “Wait, where does this go? Does it go over this muscle or that muscle?” And then I’ve got to find out.

because it was right there. You could see it. And it wasn’t until later that I learned to hide it more and make it less obvious. Or even when I drew folds on drapery or clothing, I mean, my folds were so cut-out. I wanted to, the same way with anatomy, I wanted to know where everything was going. I had to understand where it was connecting to. Where now, I try to leave things out, be more spontaneous, and put fewer lines than I used to put in, and try to tell it in a simpler way.

DRAW!: And then you have the completely different experience, if you’ve only learned to look at comic books or books, and you go and look at a middleaged housewife as your life-drawing model, and it’s like, well, she doesn’t have rippling triceps, and she’s got several layers of fat over her skin, and her sternomastoid doesn’t look like the Hulk’s. It’s good to know where things are, but if you just have just a steady diet of that one form of drawing, it really only applies to maybe comics, and somewhat to animation, but otherwise you’re pretty lost for other kinds of drawings. BR: Well, in my school, I was mostly studying with teachers that taught more surface anatomy, more form, and not so much the almost medical side of anatomy. I had one teacher like that, because I felt like I needed it at one point in school, because I had so much of that teaching on more surface anatomy, the planes and understanding the outside of things as well as you would understand any physical object. So when I took this other teacher, then I was hanging around a bunch of artists that were really into anatomy, the guys who would go to study cadavers, things like that. I didn’t want to do that, but these guys had that kind of thought about anatomy. And that really helped me out a lot, too, because it answered some of my questions.

DRAW!: I think, in general, it seems that as you mature as an artist, the “less is more” tends to be sort of the way a lot of artists go. In the beginning, you’re very conscious, I think, of wanting to show your knowledge; you kind of want to pile that on, and as you go along you realize that to be a little bit more sophisticated you can only hint at that, and if you know your stuff you know exactly what you need to put down in order to indicate that that other stuff is there. You don’t have to emphatically state everything in such an equal way. A lot of the ’90s style of drawing that came up—where you had a lot of guys who were sort of fan artists become professional artists—the average lay person tends to equate detail with sincerity, with merit. The more detailed something is, the better it is. BR: That’s what most young people think, anyway. DRAW!: Right, and then it’s sort of a process, of learning, of education, that that’s not necessarily true, and more is not better. Sometimes more is wrong.

Bill enjoys painting landscapes, such as this unfinished watercolor painting.

BR: But there are people who are expert at more. They are great artists, and you can lovingly look at their detail, but that’s because they understand all sides. I think it would have been hard if I had come up as an artist in the ’90s as opposed to the early ’80s, because then I would have been really influenced by all that stuff. Because it influenced me, a little bit, anyway.

©2008 BILL REINHOLD DRAW!: You could directly apply that philosophy, then, to your comic book work, and help give it a little bit more of a sense of flesh, and not a sense of people being made out of dolls or mannequins or DRAW!: Well, I think it influenced everybody. something. BR: I think if I had come up then, I very possibly would have gone in a totally different direction. We were talking about this BR: After a while, yeah. It took a while for me to change like more linear, detailed side, that the other side to that is when I that. I mean, my early work is definitely more towards the discovered Alex Toth, and then everything changed. Everything angular side, and more obvious side of anatomy. I don’t know. I from storytelling to drawing, I looked at everything differently, mean, there are some artists who seem to just come out of the and I found myself seeking out other artists that also loved Alex gate and have a good understanding of the figure, but I don’t Toth. I’d go to a comic convention and be talking to a guy, and know. It was a slow change for me, in a lot of ways. People then Toth would come up, and then it would become a big conwould always say to me, “Oh, you seem to know anatomy well,”

DRAW! • SPRING 2008

Drawing Your Best Foot Forward By Mike Manley

hey say a person should always start out on any journey putting their best foot forward, and this is just as true for an artist as it is for anyone embarking on a sequence of grand actions or events. This being so, it is of course vitally important that we visual artists have a solid grasp on the anatomy of the human body as a whole, with extra attention given to the head, hands and feet, which offer every artist a great challenge.

One of the main judgments of an artist’s ability is their skill in drawing people, and especially the face, hands and feet. Where would the portrait artist be—or the fashion artist or comic artist—without these skills? Probably mostly underemployed. Drawing the figure well clearly separates the A-level artists from the C-level artists. And it seems artists who don’t draw the figure well, and are weak on their drawing of hands and feet, will go out of their way, try anything to avoid drawing them.

Feet of Clay? Nay, Feet of Smoke!

It is sometimes surprising to see how poorly so many artists (pro as well as amateur) draw the foot, as well as shoes. Often they will employ an amateurish bag of visual tricks to avoid drawing the feet altogether. In the ’90s, during the boom and rise of the Image Comics look, it became the rage for artists to

DRAW! • SPRING 2008

avoid drawing the feet by “fading them away,” hidden in some ever present mist or low lying ground fog that perpetually surrounded and obscured the characters’ feet in any drawing. It could be outer space, it could be the bottom of the ocean; it mattered not what time of day it was... nope, those pesky feet were a problem to draw, and so they were eliminated in puff of smoke or series of “fade-away lines.” I can’t tell you how many portfolios from prospective artists I saw doing the “fade-away feet” back then, and still do now. It’s one of the biggest deficiencies I see in the work of artists I meet at conventions who are looking to break into the business. They draw the foot like they’ve never seen one, don’t have two themselves dangling at the end of their own legs. As a result, the shoes are poorly drawn to boot, their figures often awkward, clumsy looking and off balance. Nothing can ruin an otherwise good drawing of a sexy girl or super-heroine faster than big, ugly or clumsy feet. Since this is such a big hurdle for so many artists, Bret and I decided right away one of the earliest “Comic Art Bootcamp” articles should be devoted to drawing the foot. To get started on

the right foot, let’s begin with some basic anatomy to give you some solid knowledge of how the foot is constructed and how it fits or is attached to the tibia—one of the shin bones of the leg. Fear not loyal DRAW! reader, Professors Bret and Mike won’t leave you with feet of clay, after the mini-lessons in the next few pages you will be able to blow away the fog of ignorance and draw feet that not only stand on solid ground, but are dynamic, powerful, sexy and fashionable. To start off let’s cover some basic construction fundamentals about the foot. It doesn’t matter if you are drawing realistic feet or

a more stylized foot, say for an animated character where you must eliminate detail and rendering, the basic construction is still the same. The foot breaks down into these basic parts: • The Heel (The Oscalcis) • The Ankle • The Arch • The Toes (Phalanges) DRAW! • SPRING 2008