Robert Fawcett: Lights and Darks and the Whys and Wherefores

I have developed a deep and abiding love with Robert Fawcett, whose bio/art book Robert Fawcett: The Illustrator's Illustrator has completely overwhelmed, and was delighted when David Apatoff of the Illustration Art Blog, posted art that Fawcett had created to teach while visiting the Famous Artist's School back in the day. Not only are they delightful examples of his art, there is, of course, so much that we can learn from them. Now, thanks to the post from David, i'm sharing with my readers as well.

here are three different drawing of "They heard a knock at the door..."

The emphasis was on the pattern of lights a darks within the picture to create tension, movement, interest. To help convey that, it appears that he then put tracing paper over the drawings and shaded in the darks, knowing that he could then remove the top layer with just the fascinating negative/positive patterns to make his point.

His handwritten instructions on what to learn from this exercise are insightful and interesting. And timeless. And if you can't get enough, here is another blog post on Fawcett by Apatoff for you to enjoy.

Sketch A Day #31 - Samurai!

Reworked a sketch from this last saturday and came up with one that i really like. Reminds me a little of Mike Oeming's stuff on the mid-period Powers series that i liked.

Little more cartoony than I usually do, or is this just a cleaned up version of my usual style?

"G" nib Crow Quill, Brush, Rotring Technical pen on Bristol


I know that a lot of mangaka like the "G" Nib, but i'm having a hard time using it on bristol, it stalls out when i want it to start a line. I still prefer the old style Hunt 102s. Any thoughts by other artists out there?

The Human Hourglass Page 10: The Process In Full

This post is a sequel of sorts, where i posted parts of the work on page 10 and i decided to do more scanning along the way so that I could really post a full page from script to finished product.

The initial thumbnail is pretty small, and this is my "script" for the story: part words and initial layout/visual cues as they hit my brain. Mostly dialog however. I end up with pages of these that are small and scribbly.




















then its only to doing a full size page on paper with rough figures including the X'd out panel where i realize that my initial idea for the panel wasn't going to work.




















Then, using tracing paper, I create tighter versions of the panels, drawing through the figures, getting a little bit better about the crop of the panel borders. Occasionally I blow the panel up on the photocopier to simply stop myself from getting too boring by drawing everything the same size. I believe in zooming in on the drama to intensify the story points. I don't want everything to be the 1960's DC mid shot. Yes, Mr. Shooter, you can get an initial read on what's happening in the panel, but it doesn't make for an exciting story.












The light box on to bristol and using the construction lines on the tracing paper to pencil real panels. Change this crop, move this balloon, futz, futz, futz.



















All inked up. Ready to scan in and create tone on it in Photoshop as well as add the dialog.

Once Upon A Process...

Everyone has been supportive of my struggle to find lines and finished artwork that I find both meaningful and professional, so I'm posting a few things that are on the board right now: a page of script from Pistoleras by Lis Fies with my thumbnails all over the place,







then a tracing page of rough layouts for The Human Hourglass Page 10,















along with another tracing paper where I tighten up panels 1 and 3. From here I will pencil via the lightbox onto the bristol then ink!

Does this seem simple? It is very possible that most of you will look at this and think, "That is likely the most convoluted and wasteful process ever seen in the history of artkind." And you might be right. It is, however, getting me closer than i used to be to doing work that I like. I was, until recently, photocopying or scanning the thumbnails and then blowing them up to get some of the proportion that i liked. i've also photocopied the pencils and then hit them with Sharpies trying to get the blacks spotted correctly.

I will likely repost page 10 when finished with all the associated sketches so that we can have an old fashioned"compare and contrast" as they used to say at the end of each chapter in a textbook!

Your Friendly Neighborhood Who? Pt II

A little more done on this. Its funny, but somehow, once you just pencil in the webbing on his costume that suddenly "it looks like Spider-Man"! Its just somehow the one thing that really get the visual appeal going with the character.

Good old Sturdy Steve Ditko.

The Carnival: The Human Hourglass

Since i've gotten such enthusiastic responses over the first panel that I posted two days ago, I wanted to update everyone on how it all comes together.

You were warned.

I guess that you could and should file this under "process", for what its worth, but as I finish pencilling page 3, I've decided to wait on the inking until I've gotten more than a few of the pages in the fully pencilled stage.

The inking is the fun part. so is putting on the lettering, since then, to me, it becomes something more than just drawings. it truly becomes a comic when you can read the damn thing.

Its true, I hate pages without the lettering on them. The old Valiant pages would drive me insane since you couldn't see where the balloons were going to go, you couldn't read them afterwards, it just ruined it for me. I love my '70's artwork that has those great Marvel word balloons wiht the big lettering. Its fun to simply marvel at.

It also makes sense to know where the placement is. Simple reason: white word balloons count as positive space, and they can compliment or completely screw up the flow of your page as an artist. you're busy spotting blacks on the page to help lead the eye through the panels, and to have that level of storytelling taken away is a mistake.

I know, bitch, bitch, bitch.