analogue art

"Currently, I’m back to painting or drawing most all the artwork, and scanning in any and all pieces and working on them on my computer before sending off the final version on disk. Original art may be one piece of artwork or a composite of twenty separate elements. So I suppose the fact that the work is done by hand helps
it look more 'human'.”*

-Bill Sienkiewicz

* The Education of a Comics Artist: Visual Narrative in Cartoons, Graphic Novels,
and Beyond, edited by Michael Dooley and Steven Heller(2005) New York: Allworth Press

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Traditional art tools: drawing board, pencils, white acrylic paint, brushes and a dip pen with Gillot 303 nibs and a lot of Indian ink. I currently have a drawing board in the hall and another in the living room with 2 pages set up on each board... I pace around a lot and then find myself in front of a new board and continue sketching like I'm stuck in an old ping pong arcade game. I also acquired some toy cars and a door viewer to use for distorted macro photo reference.



Influenced by Moebius's experimental 'comic without a script', The Airtight Garage that continued to be published in Metal Hurlant magazine from 1976–1980 and the well received recent stream-of-consciousness comic art by Geof Darrow for Shaolin Cowboy, I am progressing with the narrative of my own comic using a combination of text and image, essentially completing the script with images rather than words. This method seems to be working for me as images suggest where there narrative should lead and with the visual medium of comics, the art needs to clearly show the story using a sequential illustrations and be understood without needing text. Stan Lee used the conceptual talents of the artists he worked with to his advantage, allowing them freedom to create a sequence, providing them with only a skeletal plot outline. After the artwork was completed, he would then complete the writing process, and as a result of his prolific output, 'the Marvel Method' has been a tried and tested method for the creation of comic books.

Below: left, a page from Moebius' The Airtight Garage c. 1976 and right, a page from Shaolin Cowboy with line art by Geof Darrow and coloured by Peter Doherty.

After collecting visual references, writing a treatment and an early draft of a script I have been experimenting with beat scripts with mixed results. I am continuing the project by letting the narrative unfold using visual beats; storyboarding the comic book and writing with images. The juxtaposition of images in the pencilling stage suggests where the sequence should go. The dialogue will be added digitally after the final artwork has been scanned. The comic pages are loosely laid out in pencil, setting out the composition and erased when necessary and then the bulk of the drawing is done in ink.

below: work in progress, using ink as part of the development of the drawing




Using traditional art tools, I can get a more immediate and violent effect in the artwork that reflects the violence in the narrative. The sharp Gillot 303 nibs used in the dip pens scratch away at the paper and occasional ink splatter adds to the disorder that I want to create in the depiction of the protagonists world in the comic. Reworked artwork, using white acrylic to paint over lines and then inking over those marks is there to suggest that the protagonists perception may not be reliable. As seen in a previous post, using the example of the art style of Jerry Moriarty, leaving traces of the artwork below layers of ink and paint draws attention to the medium itself and leaves evidence of the artist in the construction of the images.

Jerry Moriarity's reworked comic art illustration style can be seen in my previous blog post: http://valentedrawingboard.blogspot.com/2010/02/human-hand.html

"I often sketch with pen. It forces me to be exact. And if it doesn't work, it screams at me. The sketch. The pen just laughs."

-Bill Sienkiewicz

below: a page from Bill Sienkiewicz's Marvel comic book adaptation of David Lynch's film of Dune