[guitarfan01]

Have you ever considered doing comic-book style illustration?

Thing with that is, you have to know how to tell entire stories with pictures. If you want to look into it, I would recommend reading Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and probably anything by Jack Kirby as well. His run on Fantastic Four with Stan Lee is one of the best things there is when it comes to action-oriented comic art. Bryan Hitch's work on The Ultimates exemplifies extremely-detailed "widescreen" mythmaking. Art Spigelman's comic Maus, is highly iconic with little drawn detail, but is a story you'll never forget. Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes and of course, Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts have fantastic comic timing, especially when you consider that the format for newspaper strips is/was extremely restrictive on space (the preceding paragraph is entirely my opinion).

And if you want to learn about the nuts and bolts of comics, the theory behind them, you can't go wrong with Scott McCloud's series, Understading Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics or the books by the legendary Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling.

I suppose it all depends on what kind of stories you want to tell through your art (whichever medium you choose): what do you want to do with it? Do you want to explore the interplay of light or push your art to the technical extreme? What moves you that you would like to move others? I guess that's the essential question any artist has to answer if he or she wants to do more than just play around. Which is not knocking playing around at all. That's what I do with music, but it won't suffice for me when it comes to film.

Sorry if I hijacked your thread.

[Meggie moo moo]

Originally Posted by Galen

Have you ever considered doing comic-book style illustration?

Thing with that is, you have to know how to tell entire stories with pictures. If you want to look into it, I would recommend reading Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and probably anything by Jack Kirby as well. His run on Fantastic Four with Stan Lee is one of the best things there is when it comes to action-oriented comic art. Bryan Hitch's work on The Ultimates exemplifies extremely-detailed "widescreen" mythmaking. Art Spigelman's comic Maus, is highly iconic with little drawn detail, but is a story you'll never forget. Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes and of course, Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts have fantastic comic timing, especially when you consider that the format for newspaper strips is/was extremely restrictive on space (the preceding paragraph is entirely my opinion).

And if you want to learn about the nuts and bolts of comics, the theory behind them, you can't go wrong with Scott McCloud's series, Understading Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics or the books by the legendary Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling.

I have considered it, but I think I need to perfect my skills with drawing from imagination before I attack anything too serious in this genre. As you can see, I have been experimenting with drawing completely imaginary things lately but have not yet produced anything that is of a quality I am satisfied with.

I must get my hand on some comics.

Originally Posted by Galen

I suppose it all depends on what kind of stories you want to tell through your art (whichever medium you choose): what do you want to do with it? Do you want to explore the interplay of light or push your art to the technical extreme? What moves you that you would like to move others? I guess that's the essential question any artist has to answer if he or she wants to do more than just play around. Which is not knocking playing around at all. That's what I do with music, but it won't suffice for me when it comes to film.

I have no idea, to be honest. For now I am focused on technical excellence (although that's been set back a bit this year with how busy I've been, but it's my last day of high school ever today, so I hope now I'll have a lot of time to do stuff soon), and have no idea what direction I'd like to go with my art. I seem to have fallen into doing caricature stuff at school- the Year 12 classroom is plastered with drawings of weird monsters and manipulations of real people I've done when bored in class. I've just been enlisted to draw a caricature of each person in my class for the yearbook. I enjoy doing light-hearted, fantastic sort of stuff- it not only makes me happy but others as well.

One thing's for sure: I am not just playing around.

[guitarfan01]

Sweet. The artists and books I mentioned above are especially recommended.

Also, the art in Batman: Year One by penciller David Mazzuchelli, for me, sets the standard for realistic yet expressive comic art. And Tony Harris' work on Ex Machina practically defines the right way to use photoreference (here is a link to the first issue in .pdf format, completely legal from DC Comics' website). Mike Mignola is a master of light and shadow and using it to be creepy (as seen in his Hellboy works). Tim Sale also is good with the use of dramatic shadowing (terrible sentence structure, there).

All of these artists also are good at getting the eye to flow across the page in an understandable way and using the visual language of comics (which I imagine is related to other visual languages, but obviously will differ in places).

I have found some of these at the library, and depending on the size of a library near you, you might be able to as well (others, I purchased).

There are also a lot of different scans up on the LJ community scans_daily, which was invaluable to me when I started to read comics. Lemme see if I can get some examples of the ones I was talking about...

I'll go ahead and post this, which is what I have, and add more as time keeps slipping by.

Galen

[Meggie moo moo]

Originally Posted by Galen

Sweet. The artists and books I mentioned above are especially recommended.

Also, the art in Batman: Year One by penciller David Mazzuchelli, for me, sets the standard for realistic yet expressive comic art. And Tony Harris' work on Ex Machina practically defines the right way to use photoreference (here is a link to the first issue in .pdf format, completely legal from DC Comics' website). Mike Mignola is a master of light and shadow and using it to be creepy (as seen in his Hellboy works). Tim Sale also is good with the use of dramatic shadowing (terrible sentence structure, there).

All of these artists also are good at getting the eye to flow across the page in an understandable way and using the visual language of comics (which I imagine is related to other visual languages, but obviously will differ in places).

I have found some of these at the library, and depending on the size of a library near you, you might be able to as well (others, I purchased).

There are also a lot of different scans up on the LJ community scans_daily, which was invaluable to me when I started to read comics. Lemme see if I can get some examples of the ones I was talking about...

I'll go ahead and post this, which is what I have, and add more as time keeps slipping by.

Galen

Awesome. I'm going to look into it.


I found a picture of some semi-famous person and decided to draw it.

[RipVanWinkle]

I find that I repeat myself quite a bit in this thread, but that is really amazing!

[Meggie moo moo]

I find that I repeat myself quite a bit in this thread, but that is really amazing!

Thanks, again.

Aussie comedian Mikey Robbins in a clown get up:


I must avoid chequered items of clothing in the future.


I am now going to focus on the many things that people have requested from me, which I have agreed to do, and have not yet gotten around to doing.

[Joe Hardy]

Wish I could see.lol

[Meggie moo moo]

Another sketch:

[kchenault]

Nice. Anyone in particular?

[Meggie moo moo]

Yes, it is someone. I've forgotten where I got the reference though. I have an inkling that it is an infamous doctor of sorts- a psychologist, perhaps.

[chicka_218]

rtncxsjgi djenmek vhemrignd
(your drawing has left me speechless. really though, you are amazing )

[guitarfan01]

Originally Posted by Meggie moo moo

Yes, it is someone. I've forgotten where I got the reference though. I have an inkling that it is an infamous doctor of sorts- a psychologist, perhaps.

The eyes (and nose and mouth) remind me somewhat of Rene Auberjonois.

Galen

[Meggie moo moo]

Originally Posted by chicka_218

rtncxsjgi djenmek vhemrignd
(your drawing has left me speechless. really though, you are amazing )

Thankyou dearly! I still fancy that I have a ways to go, although.

Originally Posted by Galen

The eyes (and nose and mouth) remind me somewhat of Rene Auberjonois.

Galen

The resemblance is quite obviously there, but I am sure it is not him.


So anyway, here's a quick little thing I created when experimenting with digital painting:

[Meggie moo moo]

And you all have probably seen this before, but I finally got around to takin a better photo of one of my school artworks I did this year:

[RainCatcher]

You are really good.. you put me to shame. Honestly, I know it takes practice, but for me, I can never draw something unless I am told what to draw. Weird, huh? ...