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Post by eheitner on Nov 27, 2023 14:28:08 GMT
How did you come into your drawing style?
Have you ever tried to consciously change how you draw? How did you do it? Was it successful?
I spent a lot of time as a kid with those "how to draw comics the marvel way" type of drawing, constructing the stick figure, the rounded figures in space, and Will Eisner sort of melodramatic acting in a "realist" style-- but now I really love looking at flat, geometrical drawings or more abstract stuff. I've tried very hard and not been successful at dropping an attempt at the illusion of depth, of roundedness, I wish I could! Hatching and shading just keeps creeping in!
What about you?
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Post by pentimento on Nov 27, 2023 18:06:53 GMT
Drugs and drink will lower your inhibitions, allowing your true self to come through.
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GHO
Full Member
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Post by GHO on Nov 28, 2023 19:14:38 GMT
Drugs and drink will lower your inhibitions, allowing your true self to come through. this sounds like someone who doesn't draw. Draw from life a few times a month. and if you have fun doing something lean in that direction. Also, style is a myth, be open to change and move fluidly, don't inhibit yourself just because you want to stay "on model" I'm still very early in "learning how to draw" and what I keep hearing is to stay humble and keep learning. i'm sure every cartoonist you like is constantly learning new things even in old age, it's ok to not know everything. and it's ok to relearn certain things. mostly just keep drawing! |
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Post by pentimento on Nov 28, 2023 22:45:09 GMT
Drugs and drink will lower your inhibitions, allowing your true self to come through. this sounds like someone who doesn't draw. Draw from life a few times a month. and if you have fun doing something lean in that direction. Also, style is a myth, be open to change and move fluidly, don't inhibit yourself just because you want to stay "on model" I'm still very early in "learning how to draw" and what I keep hearing is to stay humble and keep learning. i'm sure every cartoonist you like is constantly learning new things even in old age, it's ok to not know everything. and it's ok to relearn certain things. mostly just keep drawing! You sound like someone who hasn't read all of my posts. I draw, and have had my work published by Fantagraphics, Caliber, Image, Eclipse, Seattle's The Rocket and The Stranger, also in the pages of TCJ, CBG, Cerebus, not to mention all sorts of zines. |
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Post by junkflower on Nov 29, 2023 0:51:57 GMT
this sounds like someone who doesn't draw. Draw from life a few times a month. and if you have fun doing something lean in that direction. Also, style is a myth, be open to change and move fluidly, don't inhibit yourself just because you want to stay "on model" I'm still very early in "learning how to draw" and what I keep hearing is to stay humble and keep learning. i'm sure every cartoonist you like is constantly learning new things even in old age, it's ok to not know everything. and it's ok to relearn certain things. mostly just keep drawing! You sound like someone who hasn't read all of my posts. I draw, and have had my work published by Fantagraphics, Caliber, Image, Eclipse, Seattle's The Rocket and The Stranger, also in the pages of TCJ, CBG, Cerebus, not to mention all sorts of zines. Who are you? |
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Post by pentimento on Nov 29, 2023 2:30:36 GMT
You sound like someone who hasn't read all of my posts. I draw, and have had my work published by Fantagraphics, Caliber, Image, Eclipse, Seattle's The Rocket and The Stranger, also in the pages of TCJ, CBG, Cerebus, not to mention all sorts of zines. Who are you? No one you or anyone here has heard of, or, if you have, you probably don't remember. Which is good! I'm not a "name" cartoonist, but have appeared in indie anthologies, as a freelancer / work-for-hire craftsman for the likes of Image, and so on. Made a few grand a year for about ten years, not enough to live on... but it nicely coincided with the mid-90s collapse, when hundreds of oldsters and newer guys like me were desperately trying to stay above water. This biz is always a mess. |
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Post by mikesheawright on Nov 29, 2023 23:40:02 GMT
i think the biggest thing that pushed my style towards where it is now is just forcing myself to draw with pen only straight to paper with no sketching. just hour after hour in college of staying up until 4am with my friends smoking weed and drawing in a sketchbook with pen only, it makes you look really closely and really pay attention to what you're doing. and if you make a mistake ("mistake") you have to just roll with it and turn it into something else. it becomes more of a dialogue between yourself and the line and i stopped stressing out about making things look "right" and when it was done it was just done. this also leads to developing certain tricks to hiding "mistakes" and making them look intentional. then the final drawing is kind of a surprise and the idea i started with in my head (if there was one) is more like a point in a direction than trying to recreate something i imagined identically.
for a lot of my more polished comics i do sketch things out, but i'm always trying to maintain some significant percentage of that spontaneity of pen in sketchbook drawing, that has the most energy to me. if i over sketch or am too tight with inking i hate how stiff the drawing looks. i absolutely hate drawing with a ruler for anything other than panel borders, just doesn't feel like drawing to me. always trying to keep it loose.
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Post by Scott Gerard Ruhl on Dec 1, 2023 2:37:54 GMT
It's there from the beginning and shapes itself over time, influenced by all matter of things consciously and subconsciously. I agree that drugs and alcohol open you up. At a certain point there was a definite decision to curate a specific style while leaning into what was already there. It's a lifetime work-in-progress, IMO.
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Post by pietrykowski on Dec 5, 2023 17:32:34 GMT
Don't over think it or try to find/force it. Just draw a whole bunch. Style is the common or reappearing traits.... it's the left over residue of drawing a bunch.
I used to draw on breaks at work a lot. Trying to fill a page in 10 or 15 minutes is a good challenge. It helps to burn through ideas.
Also if I feel like I'm drawing too stiff I will draw with my non-dominate hand for a while. Then when I switch back to my right hand I find I make more fluid marks.
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Post by whitecomics on Dec 5, 2023 20:35:09 GMT
Ideas about drawing I've thought about over the years and that have been helpful in various ways whether or not they've influenced my drawing style
* Dash Shaw's idea of a "dumb line" - a line that doesn't know what it's describing
* Sammy Harkham saying that his ideal line is any drawing of Pig Pen, which I'd reword for my tastes as "any especially dashed-off Schulz drawing"
* Lynda Barry's discussion of drawing spirals in her various comics making books
* the idea of "first take, best take," the question of whether or not I agree
* how drawing does or doesn't relate to sculpting
* Roman Muradov on redrawing, in various places including in his book On Doing Nothing
* Masashi Kishimoto claiming he filled entire sketchbooks with drawings of hands, to understand the difference between a tightly and loosely clenched hand (did I imagine this?? I can't find any such quote, Googling now, and Naruto is uh hardly a stunning example of artistic nuance)
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Post by bluebed on Dec 6, 2023 15:19:25 GMT
Ideas about drawing I've thought about over the years and that have been helpful in various ways whether or not they've influenced my drawing style * Dash Shaw's idea of a "dumb line" - a line that doesn't know what it's describing * Sammy Harkham saying that his ideal line is any drawing of Pig Pen, which I'd reword for my tastes as "any especially dashed-off Schulz drawing" * Lynda Barry's discussion of drawing spirals in her various comics making books * the idea of "first take, best take," the question of whether or not I agree * how drawing does or doesn't relate to sculpting * Roman Muradov on redrawing, in various places including in his book On Doing Nothing * Masashi Kishimoto claiming he filled entire sketchbooks with drawings of hands, to understand the difference between a tightly and loosely clenched hand (did I imagine this?? I can't find any such quote, Googling now, and Naruto is uh hardly a stunning example of artistic nuance) Roman Muradov has driven himself half-mad with redrawing, I wouldn't trust him. In all seriousness, though, I think it's all about letting in a lot of very diverse and disparate influences--then style emerges through the inability to of one human being to combine incongruous things. I think that's how you get cartoonists with very recognizable styles like Taiyo Matsumoto or Tsuchika Nishimura, who are both manga artists influenced by Euro people like Moebius and Tove Jannson, or Anna Haifisch and Léa Murawiec, who seem to be processing manga influences through Euro lens. It's simplified, I'm sure these people have much more stuff going on, but you get the idea--it's basically simultaneous deciphering and encryption, the way I see it. |
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Post by eheitner on Dec 6, 2023 15:58:39 GMT
Thanks for all the thoughtful responses!
One piece of advice I got recently that I think is helpful is find the "shortest distance between two points" which is similar to the "first take, best take" -- like, it works most of the time, and when it doesn't, having it to start from is helpful.
I guess to clarify: I've drawn a lot for over 20 years, with lots of like, life drawing and sort of classical realist drawing, and I have a style that I think is pretty unconscious, just what comes out when I put pencil to paper at this point--- and I want to change it!
I gotta look at those Lynda Barry books.
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Post by whitecomics on Dec 6, 2023 18:01:42 GMT
Ha bluebed I think you have mixed feeling about On Doing Nothing but I'd recommend it - for anyone who hasn't read it's as much a survey of various people Sometimes Doing Nothing as it is Roman's viewpoint specifically. Our collective fetishization of "how many pages/hours did you draw today" (including myself here) is a separate though related discussion, Roman's book is useful because it presents a different perspective that's more subtle than "don't work so hard or you'll die early like Tezuka." Though of course that's also true. |
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Post by bluebed on Dec 6, 2023 21:48:28 GMT
whitecomics I can't imagine finding anything I don't already know in that book, but I agree with the general sentiment, of course. Ivan Brunetti posted on his instagram recently something like 'if you don't love the process, you have no business in comics,' and it resonated with me a great deal--whether you're going for the first draft or redrawing, as long as you are in it for the process and not the result, it's fine, even if the result is disappointing. In one of Ivan's books he also has a line, something like 'style is temperament,' which is also very true--accepting your personality with all the parts that you don't like about it. How to do all that is a harder question, though...
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Post by whitecomics on Dec 7, 2023 14:45:04 GMT
whitecomics I can't imagine finding anything I don't already know in that book, but I agree with the general sentiment, of course. Ivan Brunetti posted on his instagram recently something like 'if you don't love the process, you have no business in comics,' and it resonated with me a great deal--whether you're going for the first draft or redrawing, as long as you are in it for the process and not the result, it's fine, even if the result is disappointing. In one of Ivan's books he also has a line, something like 'style is temperament,' which is also very true--accepting your personality with all the parts that you don't like about it. How to do all that is a harder question, though... Oh I wasn't recommended your own book to you, to be clear! Heh. Just to anyone else who might be interested. Those Brunetti quotes are both good, loving process reminds me of Saul Steinberg on materials and appetite which I've probably mentioned on here before because it's a big deal for me. |
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