Oodles of doodles.

TOTH'S LINE 2: INFORMALITY

jessehamm@frontier.com — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:26:10 GMT

Artists often complain that their sketchbook scribbles look more lively and authentic than their finished work. "Why can't I get that magic into my finished work?," we complain, laboriously draining our finished work of that magic.

I believe part of the answer lies in the formality of the lines. Formal lines -- lines with a mechanical smoothness afforded by careful rendering -- demand attention. Their precision grants them each an air of importance. But when all of a drawing's lines carry the same regal air, IT'S LIKE A SENTENCE WRITTEN ENTIRELY IN CAPS. The eye tires of all that "importance." As artists, we sense this, and yet we keep returning to that rigid formality. Why?

For one thing, we worry that imprecision will look unprofessional. Just as we wouldn't want to address an audience with slurred speech or mussed hair, we don't want to present readers with sloppy lines -- so we compensate with fussy formality. Few subjects (and there ARE a few) warrant that suit & tie approach.

Another reason is that we tend to treat each line as its own drawing, instead of as a part of a whole. In the act of creation, when our noses are glued to the page, every square inch seems to merit great care and precision. But, as screenwriter David Mamet observes, a nail needn't look like a house to do its job. Neither must a line look finished for the whole drawing to look finished.

Young Alex Toth was guilty of such over-formality...

...but mature Toth relaxed into a more casual approach:

In fact, though Toth's work is often characterized as neat and orderly, I think this describes the feeling his work conveys, rather than the work itself. When you examine his work up-close it often looks surprisingly messy, with dashed-in lines that overlap or fail to meet:

He didn't care whether each line was perfect, so neither do we. The looseness of his lines signifies to our brains that the lines are of little importance, individually. And since they don't compete with each other for our attention, we are free to ignore them individually and contemplate the whole. The result is a whole with greater power than that of pictures in which every line clamors for respect.

Compare this Toth panel with this portion of a drawing by Burne Hogarth:

Though the foliage is dense in each image, Toth's lines appear random, excusing us from paying them much attention, whereas Hogarth's lines look deliberate and demand attention. So the informality of Toth's linework lessens the workload we bear as we interpret his image, even though each of the images above contains roughly the same amount of raw information (the number of lines) and narrative information ("heroes & foliage"). (See my prior entry on the relationship of raw-to-narrative info.)

Not only does it decrease our reading workload, informality increases the narrative information we take from the drawing. By being vague, informality frees us from locking in on the lines themselves. It instead evokes the pictured object with all the detail our imaginations can muster:

Here's how this might break down in terms of the artist/reader dynamic. I suspect Toth thought of his drawings as a sort of tent that loosely covered and thereby revealed the imaginary objects they were meant to portray. Since his lines don't always meet up precisely, the reader cannot perceive them as an object on the page, and must therefore infer the real-world object that those lines represent:

"Remember, in simple line drawings (sketches/finishes) it is often what is NOT drawn that creates visual interest! Forces the viewer to SEE AS YOU DID, the shapes of the subject matter! The viewer's EYE will 'draw in' the rest! It INVOLVES him -- he PARTICIPATES!" ~Alex Toth

By contrast, artists who create a neatly packaged object out of their lines encourage their readers to think of the group of lines itself as an object, without a real-world referent.

(This is also why the corners of eyes don't meet in manga drawings. Since the eyes are not portrayed as physical objects on the page, they more readily "live" in the mind of the reader.)

Is the lesson simply that artists should loosen their lines? Not quite. There's a difference between loose -- or informal -- lines, and plain ol' sloppiness.

When Toth's lines stray from precise accuracy, they generally err toward a "telling" curve (a curve that characterizes the depicted object) rather than away from it. The 'swing' of his loose lines emphasizes the object's basic shape. Compare his portrayal of Edd "Kookie" Byrnes with that of Russ Manning:

Manning achieves a more literal likeness, but his too-precise linework tells us his drawings were a struggle (which pulls our attention toward his process and away from the subject), and his timid shapes belie Kookie's flippant demeanor.

By contrast, Toth's shapes emphasize Kookie's jutting bangs and vulpine grin, offering a portrayal which is livelier and more faithful to Kookie's persona.

How was Toth able to emphasize the right curves? By constant observational drawing (drawing from life or photos), which filled his brain with reliable imagery. This gave him a clear mental image of the objects he drew...

...rather than the blurry, unreliable imagery retained by a less practiced artist.

Toth's hard-earned, superior knowledge of objects' appearances enabled him to hustle lines along their telling curves -- as though racing along a familiar route, instead of plodding or swerving like a driver on an unfamiliar track. This is the difference between sloppiness and informality.

Speaking of driving, join me in a week or so when we'll take a look at Toth's Hot Wheels!

Previous essays on Toth and other artists can be read at my website.

Some odds'n'ends.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:49:06 GMT

Sorry not to have been updating around here; most of my art updates appear now at my website. Recently, I drew 10 pages of Hawkeye #7, currently in stores, so here's a pin-up of the character I worked on. Also, here's Kei (Dirty Pair), Storm (X-Men), and the first page of a 3-page X-Men comic I did for fun (click on the image for the rest).

TOTH'S LINE (part 1)

jessehamm@frontier.com — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:32:54 GMT

Looks like the new Alex Toth book, GENIUS ILLUSTRATED, is due out today from IDW. (I couldn't find any info about it at the publisher's site, but hopefully they're just playing hard-to-get.) This one covers Toth's peak years (1960 onward) and will surely belong in the library of any serious cartoonist. In keeping with tradition, the release of another Toth book has lit a fire under me to blog some more about his work. (Previous entries can be found here.) This time my post went long, so I broke it up into different sections; I'll upload one every few days.

In prior posts on Toth, I described his development and some of his compositional techniques. Now I want to focus on the skill for which he is best known: his concise linework. As critic R.C. Harvey once wrote of Toth,"He's the indisputable champion of telling simplicity in drawing. [S]ometimes, a single line tells the story, reveals motive or emotion." (The Comics Journal #185) In the same piece, Harvey quotes Toth himself on the subject:

"For the first half of my career I was concerned with discovering as many things as possible to put in my stories -- rendering, texture, detail. For the second half of my career, I have worked as hard as I could to leave out all those things."

Toth continues:

"Now, how do you leave out the right thing -- that's the secret of it."

Our goal over the next few entries is to explore that secret.

GOOD DESIGN

A thorough examination of Toth's technique is best begun with a few words about design, a subject cartoonists often neglect. We're all familiar with art's mimetic goals (the goal of imitating reality) and art's thematic goals (the goal of putting across a point), but design deals with art's aesthetic goals: how pictorial information is organized. Though Toth was good at the usual things we praise in comic book artists (accurate draftsmanship, smooth storytelling, etc), it was in the area of design that he reigned supreme.

This has led to confusion and debate over Toth's importance to the comics medium. A fan who values mimetic art may recognize Toth's skill at draftsmanship, but rank him lower than draftsmen whose depictions are more faithful to reality. "Toth was good, but look at the realistic detail in these pages by Russ Heath!" Meanwhile, a fan whose priorities are thematic may discount Toth for not drawing stories with weighty themes. "Toth's work may be drawn well, but it has nothing to SAY!" What both fans miss is that Toth's genius occupied a third category: the artful arrangement of visual information. He was like a pruner of bonsai trees or a planner of rock gardens, but instead of trees or rocks he pruned and arranged lines and shapes. The message of his stories was not a mere "Zorro is heroic," but rather "clarity is heroic." And by "clarity," I don't mean the sterile clarity of an instructional diagram; I mean the clarity of a poet, who attempts to clarify things without making them ordinary. To rid scenes of clutter is the task of a designer, but to do so without ridding them of wonder is the task of a poet, and this is where Toth's artistry lay.

"If you can find interesting ways to be clear, you’re really onto something." ~Steven Soderbergh

So let's look over some general design principles before digging into specifics:

Most images consist of four concrete visual elements -- lines, shapes, dark/light values, and (often) colors. These elements are the image's raw information. By contrast, the image's inferred elements -- its subject matter and its intended point -- are its narrative information. The designer's goal is to offer the greatest amount of narrative information per unit of raw information. The better the ratio of narrative to raw information, the greater narrative reward our brains enjoy for bothering to process the raw info.

The appeal of this work/reward ratio is like that of rich food: when we eat candy instead of cabbage, our body's effort of chewing and digesting is more amply rewarded with calories. Similarly, a drawing with few lines has more appeal to our brains than a drawing that shows the same things with less economy. This ampler reward of narrative "calories" is what we refer to when we call an image objectively attractive. (There are also subjective reasons to find an image attractive, such as a fondness for its message or subject matter, but that's not our concern here.) This is why Toth's drawings grab us. Our brains see the drawing, quickly grasp the relevant information, and go,"Woah, I got all of that without hardly trying. MORE!" This is also why Toth remains appealing to readers who care for neither his stories' message nor their subject matter. As film critic Mike Stoklasa is fond of saying,"You may not have noticed this technique... but your brain did."

How did Toth optimize the raw/narrative information ratio? Through good design. A good design increases differences and similarities in the raw information to reveal differences and similarities in the narrative information. For instance, a picture's most important character may be given a unique color, while members of the supporting cast are rendered in more uniform colors. This purposeful adjustment of raw information (color) enables viewers to quickly grasp the image's narrative information (the characters' roles). In the coming sections, we'll look at several such ways in which Toth accomplished good design.

First up:

CONTINUATIONS, CONCLUSIONS, and TRANSFERS

People often praise a drawing's succinctness by saying that it has "few lines," but what does that mean? After all, the drawing at the left uses only one line, but the drawing on the right looks more succinct, despite using several lines.

I think the real test of linework's succinctness is not the number of lines, but rather the way the lines continue, conclude, or transfer.

A line continues when it proceeds in a uniform direction, either straight or along a uniformly angled curve:

A line concludes when it stops against a corner, or against another line, or in empty space:

A line transfers when it smoothly changes direction, or when it joins another line running in a similar direction:

Continuations of line are a similarity of raw information; conclusions of line are a major difference in raw information; transfers of line are a minor difference of raw information. So in a well-designed line: continuations mark narrative similarities, while conclusions mark major narrative differences, and transfers mark minor narrative differences.

In the tree drawings above, the tree drawn with one line has numerous corners (conclusions) and bends (transfers) -- far more than are needed to convey the narrative information that the image is a tree. Though it has only one line, that line's excessive conclusions and transfers result in a poor narrative-to-raw information ratio. But the other tree has fewer conclusions or transfers, and then only to distinguish its major parts and convey "tree-ness." Most of its lines "continue." Therefore the latter tree is more succinct and better designed. (That is, assuming "tree" is the only intended narrative. Further narrative -- "gnarled," "magnificent" -- may require more conclusions & transfers, but the principle of economy would remain the same. More on "how much is too much" here.)

(Two corollaries of the above principles are tangencies and interruptions. A tangency is a transfer or continuation that occurs where a conclusion should have occurred. Tangencies are bad design because they create raw info similarities between elements that are narratively different. By contrast, an interruption is a conclusion that occurs where a transfer should have occurred, or a transfer that occurs where a continuation should have occurred. Interruptions create raw info differences between elements that are narratively uniform.)

Back to Toth!

Among Toth's "secrets" was his ability to use conclusions and transfers (and avoid tangencies and interruptions) to clarify the narrative information his linework was meant to convey. We can best see this in comparisons between his art and that of other artists who drew the same subjects:

Above: Jack Abel (left) and Toth (right) illustrate the same scene in House of Secrets #66. Here we see random passers-by being thrown through the air. Using numerous transfers, Abel includes far more information than Toth about the folds in the man's clothing...but is it necessary? Notice especially in each drawing the contour from the near armpit to the near knee. Abel unduly interrupts the man's jacket mid-way down with a conclusion of the line. Toth, by contrast, not only unifies the jacket with a single, continuing line, but goes on to unify the pants with the jacket as well! Two objects; one line -- as if to say simply "suit."

Above: Toth and a young Bernie Wrightson illustrate the same scene in The House of Mystery #194. Note the way Wrightson's line undulates on the fingers, recording trivial curves, while Toth's line records each finger in a couple of bold arcs. Wrightson's line control was excellent, so this difference wasn't a matter of dexterity but of willingness to sacrifice detail. "Truth is beauty -- clarity -- simplicity and economy!" Toth once wrote,"It can stand naked! It needs no embellishment!"

(Click here for the image; it was messing up my formatting.)

Above: Toth's animation designs compared with drawings by Alex Ross for a toy line based on Toth's designs. This comparison is especially instructive, because in addition to using the same poses, Ross uses roughly the same number of lines as Toth used in these drawings (aside from the shirt & hair textures). So the difference in economy results not from an excess of lines in Ross's drawings, but from more curves (transfers) in the lines he does use.

Above, and throughout his work, Toth often lets his line "continue" in uniform arcs and straights along the edges of an object, as if to say,"This is all essentially the same object." His line often cuts right through places where little interruptions would occur in real life, such as wrinkles or bumps in clothing or anatomy, because he wants his raw information (the line) to emphasize the object's narrative unity. (E.g., the man's suit in the Toth/Abel comparison.) Meanwhile, he uses sharp conclusions to give character and emphasis to those details which he felt merit notice. (Note in the Aquaman sketches how Toth occasionally includes a sharp conclusion at a knee or elbow, while Ross depicts joints with nothing but transfers, granting none of them special emphasis.) And where a change of direction is necessary, but needs no special emphasis, Toth uses transfers. (Notice for example the smooth S-curve from armpit to knee on his largest standing Aquaman; Ross interupts the same contour with a creased oblique below the belt, and the hint of a hip bone.)

"Any 'transmitting' device or applied technical method, which gets in the way of the 'transmission'/message/story, etc., is a negative element, garbling that which ought to be clear and instantly understood, and ought to be simply-stated with economy!" ~Alex Toth

It can be tricky to grasp the significance of Toth's techniques because the difference between competence and excellence -- or even excellence and genius -- is so subtle. His genius often comes down to something as apparently trivial as the way a line is angled, and we may question how so slight a difference can account for anything. One answer is that our subconscious is sharp enough to detect and enjoy nuances that are hidden from the conscious mind. Another is that small features add up throughout a drawing to produce an overall effect that can't be explained by any one feature. Toth's superiority to other fine cartoonists is often just the sum of numerous tiny excellences.

That's all for now. Tune in again soon when we'll be comparing Toth's backgrounds with those of a Mr. Burne Hogarth. And feel free to comment!

Meskin The Obscure, and The Hall of Fame

jessehamm@frontier.com — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 11:57:53 GMT

I'm sorry to see that Mort Meskin was refused induction into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame this year. I'm frankly surprised he isn't already listed in that pantheon. (Rudolph Dirks made it in? Dirks, who based his career on a watery imitation of Max & Moritz?) Though Meskin isn't as famous or beloved as many other cartoonists of his era, I do believe he's among the most significant, and I'd like to explain why.

Admittedly, Mort Meskin is not a big favorite among comics fans. He never worked on major characters, being limited to third-stringers like "Fighting Yank" and the anonymous denizens of horror and romance one-offs, and his figures have an ugly, marionette-like quality that discourages vicarious identification. He's the opposite number of approachable, crowd-pleasing greats like Alan Davis, Nick Cardy, or Curt Swan.

But what Meskin brought to comics was rooted in that very quality that deprived his characters of their appeal. Specifically, he taught us to see comics panels as abstractions: a language of blunt shapes floating on the page, rather than dioramas of nicely drawn people. Before Meskin, cartoonists drew in a curvy, sinewy fashion intended to portray rounded organic forms. Whether their aim was stark realism or goofy humor, the goal was to draw credibly three-dimensional figures and imbue them with life. Meskin, too, initially pursued this goal, as one can see in his work from the early '40s. But throughout that decade his work underwent a strange evolution. He became less concerned with conveying three-dimensionality, and more concerned with balancing shapes against each other on a flat, two-dimensional plane. His lines no longer dovetailed together at the corners of a shape in a way intended to establish that shape as a real object. They instead met roughly, like the corners of loosely drawn letters. His drawing became like kanji -- like writing.

The effect of this change was off-putting, because it suggested to readers that the scenes portrayed were not happening before their eyes, but were instead more like written pictorial accounts of what happened. These weren't the immersive fantasies of more popular fiction -- like those beautifully realized in the art of Hal Foster, for instance -- but crude diagrams of those fantasies. It's as though Meskin had traded drawing comics about heroes for drawing comics about the lines and shapes he had seen in comics about heroes. (A similar shift had occurred already in gallery art, where painters like Picasso and Matisse drew diagrams of nudes instead of nudes. Notably, Meskin's only spiritual brethren in comics were influenced more by gallery art than by comics: Garret Price, Jesse Marsh, Lionel Feininger....)

To be sure, a similar codification had been occurring in comics long before Meskin. For example, Billy DeBeck's comics obviously didn't depict human beings in a strictly literal sense. But it was with Meskin that this trend turned the corner and became a thing of its own. Pre-Meskin cartoons still clung -- however loosely -- to conventions of literal shapes and emotive faces. When you drew a cartoon person, you drew an exaggerated, simplified version of a physical person; the intent was still to mimic an object in space, and one with personality at that. But when Meskin drew a person, he drew an assortment of shapes: a lovely dance of black/white/black/white/black. His abandonment of literal conventions cut the final dock-line between the ship of cartooning and the port of representational art.

What is the advantage of this approach, if any? Is it just a bunch of arty-fartying around? The advantage is that it pushes the language of comics beyond clunky literalism and up into a jet stream of fluid comprehension. Once the reader becomes accustomed to the strange idea that drawn lines aren't meant to BE the object they represent, but that they can merely REPRESENT that object, the reader's ability to comprehend drawn information flashes forward. It's like that moment in the distant past when (according to my sloppy and probably false idea of history) a Chinese scribe first realized,"I don't have to DRAW a house to denote a house; this house-like configuration of lines can simply MEAN a house." With that revelation, writing -- and, more importantly, reading -- suddenly became much easier.

Meskin's breakthrough didn't go unnoticed by his fellow artists. Three artists in particular show heavy signs of his influence: Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Alex Toth. Toth was arguably the most influential DC artist of the 1950s; Kirby and Ditko were the most influential Marvel artists of the 1960s. All three powerfully influenced not only the American mainstream, but alternative and foreign comics besides. If Meskin's influence on those three artists was as strong as I believe it was, then he indirectly fathered more American cartooning styles than anyone outside of the newspaper strips, and he absolutely deserves a place in the Hall of Fame.

So did Meskin influence those powerhouses? Toth and Ditko have enthusiastically confirmed Meskin's influence on them in print, but the case of Kirby is more tricky. To my knowledge, Kirby never cited Meskin as an influence, and in fact Meskin did cite Kirby as an influence, so one could argue that the influence flowed only from Kirby to Meskin, not vice versa. But Kirby and Meskin's work during the '40s suggests otherwise. (At least, as much of it as I've seen. Due to the scarcity of reprints, I haven't had a chance to compare a thorough sampling of Meskin's '40s work with a thorough sampling of Kirby's, but the trend as I see it is that Meskin's work veered toward geometric abstraction sooner than Kirby's.) Kirby began the decade drawing in the conventional fashion. His figures were sinewy and organic, a la Lou Fine or Alex Raymond, as were Meskin's. But midway through the '40s, Meskin's work started to take on an oddly geometric, abstracted quality. By the end of the decade, after working side by side in a studio with the evolving Meskin, Kirby's work, too, had become strangely blocky -- much more like the Kirby we all know and love.

This new style of Kirby's matured during the '50s in stories like Boys Ranch, and then achieved even greater power during the '60s on titles like The Fantastic Four. Kirby's figures by then had a rocky, geometric, robot-like, inorganic quality that made them all kin to The Thing. This quality -- to which Meskin had apparently opened the door -- is what elevates Kirby's characters from strongmen to gods. Their visual inhuman-ness (pun intended) grants them permission to be more than human in our minds. Imagine how much weaker Kirby's art would have been had he tried to draw his characters in a conventional, organically three-dimensional manner. Imagine if Galactus or Apokolips -- or MODOK, or the Juggernaut -- had been drawn by Lou Fine or Hal Foster or Curt Swan! In fact, we don't have to imagine that: we can see it in any number of proficient artists who try to draw like Kirby without understanding what Kirby was doing. Every time we see a non-Kirby drawing of a character designed by Kirby but with rounded-off, realistically-rendered muscles, looking like a pro wrestler instead of a mythic totem, we get a taste of how Kirby's art may have turned out without the needed abstraction. Which is to say: without the influence of Meskin.

Meskin's geometric abstractions helped make way for Kirby's mythic superhumans, for Ditko's awkwardly angular Peter Parker and dimension-defying Dr. Strange, and for Toth's austere, modernist elegance. He influenced the pillars of the American mainstream and re-introduced the language of hieroglyphs to American comics. That he isn't already in the Hall of Fame perhaps only shows how broadly pervasive his influence was.

But it sure would be a good idea to put him there anyway.

****************************************

Interested readers should check out the art book/biography "From Shadow to Light: The Life & Art of Mort Meskin," which I'm currently reading and enjoying, or Out of the Shadows, a collection of Meskin comics which I haven't read but looks promising.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Sat, 19 May 2012 15:41:07 GMT

Been awhile! Some recent stuff:

Moebius.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:05:07 GMT

Saturday left us without Moebius, one of my favorite artists. Cancer, cancer... there goes Dave Stevens, Dylan Williams, Moebius, and so on.

But let's discuss the good.

CRAFT

The thing which first attracted me to Moebius's work, and which I still admire most about it, was that he combined unfettered imagination with a strong grounding in realism.

Many artists fall into one of two camps: either art is about perfecting your craft, and the subject is a trivial means to that end, or art is about expressing your personal vision, and craft is a trivial means to that end. Artists in the first camp tend to create art that's convincingly executed, but lacking imagination. Artists in the second camp are more alive to their imaginations, but their art often fails to convince. The reasoning behind this dichotomy of imagination vs. craft seems to proceed along the following lines. Either:

1. The part of a task which requires the most effort is the point of that task.
2. Mastering craft requires most of our effort in art.
Therefore:
3. Mastering craft is the point of art.

Or:

1. The part of a task which requires the most effort is the point of that task.
2. Mastering craft is not the point of art.
Therefore:
3. Most of our effort in art should not be spent on mastering craft.

I think that the minor premises (2) in both lines of reasoning are true, but that both conclusions are false, since they share a false major premise (1). I believe a correct line of reasoning could be stated as follows:

1. Mastering craft requires most of our effort in art.
2. Mastering craft is not the point of art.
Therefore:
3. The part of a task which requires the most effort is not necessarily the point of that task.

This conclusion is somewhat counterintuitive, but it frees us to master craft without being enslaved to it. More to the point, we see its truth when we look at the art of Moebius.

Moebius devoted considerable time to mastering his craft -- probably far more time than it took him to dream up his amazing visions. (He estimated once that he spent 80% of his time drawing the technically rigorous Blueberry comics, and 20% on his fanciful stuff; he also said Blueberry required more concentration and technical facility.) But he nevertheless subordinated his craft to the higher goal of expressing his fancies. To his fans, that latter claim needs no illustration, so let's take a look at his devotion to craft.

These first two images are from 1999 and 2007, respectively. I'm including the published images along with versions that I graphed to reveal Moebius's use of perspective.

Now, when most comic book artists draw a page, they tend to guestimate the perspective lines (i.e., lines that would be parallel in reality, but that are seen from an angle which makes them appear to converge). As long as the lines converge in the vicinity of our eye level, and there aren't glaring disparities, the cartoonist figures he's on safe ground.

But when we graph Moebius's perspective lines, we see that he didn't guess. All of the parallel lines in these drawings converge on shared vanishing points, meaning that he established these points at the outset and made sure to angle every line to its appropriate point. Even that little row of sticks at the bottom center of the first image is lined up properly. Notice too, in the first image, that he established the proper distance between the columns, represented here by the blue lines. (I won't bore you with the perspective rules he's following here, but basically that big blue X proves that he accurately calculated the columns' placement.) I'll repeat that: he bothered to geometrically plot the placement of background columns in a fantasy environment. Also notice that the vanishing point on the left occupies the same horizon line (that horizontal green line stretching across the image) as the point on the right. This rule is typically violated when artists guess; Moebius wasn't guessing.

Similarly, in the second image, he repeatedly places and follows vanishing points, even when they occur way off the page and he could have gotten away with guesses. Remember folks: this was an established celebrity with nothing left to prove. He was old, he was sick, he was known for his imagination rather than for a strict commitment to realism -- in other words, he had every excuse NOT to plot out the perspective this carefully. And yet he went through with it -- not only here, in these pages I picked at random, but throughout his oeuvre and throughout his career.

A quick look now at his figure drawing. Here are a couple of pages from a story that appeared in Heavy Metal in the '70s. At the right are the photos he used for reference, to ensure anatomical accuracy. Now consider this: the character he's drawing is a whimsical wood fairy, and in neither image do we get a close look at her. She doesn't HAVE to be 100% accurate. Moebius was a skilled pro who could easily have fudged/guessed the anatomy in these drawings... but he didn't. He dug out the reference photos and gave it that extra ten percent.

One final example of his devotion to craft. Check out this watercolor sketch of an L.A. street, and ask yourself how many fantasy artists would bother recreating so faithfully such a mundane scene:

Why did an artist who was so clearly preoccupied with UNreality devote so much time and effort to mimicking reality? I think it was because he knew that to command his audience's fanciful side, he first had to quiet their rational side, satisfying their subconscious B.S.-detector with the assurance that "this is real." ("How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man?" ~JC) At every opportunity he threw in a little something extra -- a well-plotted vanishing point, a well-turned arm -- to assure we dreamers that we were not dreaming. And it worked. Moebius is known worldwide for bringing fantasies to life, because he was willing to do the mundane work of bringing life to fantasy.

DEPTH INDICATORS

Another thing I appreciate in the work of Moebius is his use of depth. He was able to indicate depth in a scene by including depth indicators: objects and textures that alert our minds to the fact that distances are being represented.

Below is a prime example of Moebius's approach to depth, along with a rough diagram of how a viewer sees the image. The depth indicators -- rocks, boats, ripples in the water, birds, overlapping clouds of mist -- each read as occupying a different plane in the drawing, thereby alerting the viewer to the existence of those otherwise invisible planes. The viewer pictured at the left in my diagram can imagine the space in the scene because the depth indicators (here stacked roughly in the order of their nearness to her, like a diorama) give her clues to the layers of space between her and the horizon.

Here's a version I made of the above image, but with most of the depth indicators removed. (Their absence here mimics a similar absence of depth indicators in the work of most artists who aren't Moebius.) Make no mistake: the amount of depth pictured here -- that is, the distance from the viewer to farthest object in the background, as indicated by the size and placement of the bird-riding human and the horizon -- is the same amount of depth that we see in the original version of the image. The only difference is that the depth indicators are missing. The result is diagrammed farther below, where the girl is looking at the image. One depth indicator -- the large bird -- suggests one plane of depth, but since the other depth indicators are absent, the girl has no impetus to imagine/acknowledge the planes of depth which they represented.

Minus the boats, ripples, and overlapping cliffs, the expanse of water reads as a flat blue wall.

LOCATION STAGING

Moebius's approach to depth was also uncommon in that he avoided the "television" approach to entering and exiting scenes.

In television, and often in movies, it's budget-friendly to film interior scenes and exterior scenes at separate times and locations. The first camera unit shoots a scene between two actors on a set representing the inside of a farmhouse; meanwhile, the second unit goes out to get exterior shots of a real farmhouse and the land surrounding it. Later, the shots are edited together, such that you begin the scene with a wide shot of the farm, and then cut to medium shots of the characters speaking, inside the house. The problem with this approach, aesthetically, is that it creates a subtle disconnect in the mind of the viewer between the characters and their exterior location. Even without realizing it, viewers sense that the characters don't TRULY occupy the world outside their window.

The economic advantages outweigh this disadvantage for most film productions, but unfortunately cartoonists have also adopted this approach (perhaps unwittingly) to no advantage whatsoever. Again and again in comics, we see exterior shots of buildings and landscapes, followed by waist-up shots of characters who seem oddly separated from their surroundings. But Moebius overcame this tendency, successfully integrating his characters into their world with shots of varying distances that show them moving through their environments:

The result is that the worlds in his stories feel real and whole in a way that's rare in comics. They're uncommonly immersive.

That's all I have time for today. I'm hoping for a chance later to draw a tribute pic of Arzach. (Cliché?)

Process

jessehamm@frontier.com — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 11:10:27 GMT

Here are some prelims for recent pics I've done, starting with the "Witch Hazel" pic from my Cartoon Redheads blog.

This first one is a rough to get the feel of the overall shape of the figure. I establish the simplest outside edges first, and then carve out the negative spaces (such as where her legs part), like cutting into a pie.

I did this next one to give myself an idea of what the main lines would look like. As you can see, her feet didn't line up at first. I later decided that it would look better if the toes of both her feet all followed the same arc (which you can see in the diagram of the final version at the left).

Here's my first attempt at her head, followed by the version I ended up with, in which I tried to make her look less "Sabrina" and more mischievous.

Here are a couple of hat designs. Chuck Jones's original design was more cartoony, so he got away with placing the hat on her head like a coin on an egg, but since my version is slightly more realistic, I had to figure out a sensible way to fit her hat onto the dome of her skull, without intruding on her bangs or ponytail.

And here's the rough of my Viveca Lindfors portrait. (I didn't end up doing a rough for the Lisbeth Salander portrait. The final versions of realistic portraits take longer than the finals of cartoon drawings, so I don't always have time to mess around with roughs beforehand.) In this rough, I'm getting a feel for the three-dimensional shape of her head, and the shadow pattern.

And that's that!

Common parlance.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:46:56 GMT

Yesterday I read this article by Heidi MacDonald, in which she discusses the enormity of the current market for fan art (that is, art which features trademarked characters without permission). Various interesting points were raised, but what struck me most was this reply from artist Ulises Farinas, whose fan art sales Heidi mentioned in her piece:

"After reading this article, i have to admit i feel a little weird. But my only response is, nobody looked at my work until i started drawing black-market licensed work. It is sad, but i gotta pay bills. And if i draw a lego-dude as Green Lantern, everyone is impressed. But if i just draw my own work, everyone’s just 'eh'."

With uncommon frankness, Ulises describes a problem that has troubled artists throughout history: the disparity between what patrons want drawn and what artists want to draw.

Artists don't like to admit it (brave Ulises notwithstanding), but on the list of reasons to buy a work of art, few patrons place quality and originality at the top. What tops the list is familiarity -- that the work articulates something the patron already knows and values. The trouble is that the job of art -- the primary and most noble and most satisfying and most artistic reason to make art, even beyond displays of skill -- is to express the as-yet-unexpressed. In other words: to produce the unfamiliar. So we have a business where people who were born to create the unfamiliar and who spend their lives learning to create the unfamiliar are hired to create the familiar. We're like a mining company whose market consists mainly of people seeking lost coins.

Thankfully, the art world has found a solution to this problem:

THE DAY JOB.

Just kidding. The solution is familiar subject matter. The artist and patron agree to a compromise in which the artist creates a thing familiar to the patron, but does so in a way that speaks the unfamiliar. Thus we have the popular and oft-repeated account of Creation, but as envisioned for the first time by Michelangelo. Or the oft-told bio-pic as envisioned by Orson Welles, or a nude by Duchamp, or a space opera by Douglas Adams, or Batman by Frank Miller. Familiar subjects are the sugar that helps the medicine of Art go down. The more familiar the subject (the sweeter the sugar), the greater the patron's willingness to imbibe. Shakespeare knew this when he re-wrote King Lear; Lucas knew this when he revisited movie serials and the Hero's Journey in Star Wars and Raiders; Moore knew this when he borrowed from Charlton's roster to create Watchmen.

Which brings us back to comics. More than any modern artform, the business of comics depends on the endless rehashing of minutely familiar subject matter. No novel or film or TV show has generated as many subsequent stories as Superman or Dick Tracy or fill-in-the-blank. Thousands of creators telling thousands of stories, faithful to the originals right down to the hero's alter ego and the color of his cape and his first pet's middle name, for decades. Not even Christmas carols have been re-recorded as often and as faithfully as comic characters are revisited. What's the creator's reward for fidelity to this massive tide of familiar subject matter? The reader's openness to a massive tide of unfamiliar ideas. How many different opinions, worldviews and moods have been expressed through Batman to his faithful monthly followers? Compare Morrison's Batman to Sprang's for an idea of the gamut, and that's not even counting fan portrayals. (I recall an internet meme here on LiveJournal in which a thousand different artists drew and posted a thousand very different pictures of Batgirl within a few days. For fun.) The gamut of outlooks Batman's readers accept is much broader than what those same people will accept from unfamiliar characters. Like the Grimms' fairytales, Batman has escaped into the wild to become a folk narrative -- a familiar vessel for (potentially) unfamiliar ideas.

But Heidi's article indicates that a reckoning is at hand. Recent power shifts and legal scuffles suggest that we may be approaching a crossroads:

The American comics industry could go the way of the Japanese comics market, where fan comics (or doujinshi) proliferate uncontrollably, taking their place as folk culture while serving as a seed bed for the "legitimate" comics industry. (Heidi mentioned that Japan's doujinshi convention, Comiket, attracts over a million people a year. For an idea of doujinshi's prevalence, note that that's roughly eight times as many as the San Diego Comic-Con.)

Alternatively, American publishers could crack down on fan efforts, forcing fan artists to limit their output to their own original characters. Presumably artists would still be free to create fan art without selling it... but since money makes the world go 'round, this arrangement would greatly curb the production of fan art. But that's OK, because it would encourage originality, right? And originality is good, right? Sure... to other artists. Again, patrons crave subjects that are familiar -- the moreso, the better. Departures from the familiar will limit their openness to art. As Ulises put it: "if i just draw my own work, everyone’s just 'eh'."

Some will object at this point that Ulises must not be a very good artist if his fans don't embrace his drawings of original characters. "Good art will sell no matter how popular the subject!" I'd like to see them explain that to the Playboy photographer who prefers snapping shots of tree mold... but I'll settle for a more readily observed experiment, which I'm conducting on Tumblr.

THE EXPERIMENT

I recently uploaded to my Tumblr blog a drawing I did of Viveca Lindfors, an attractive Swedish actress whose career peaked in the 1950s. It received precisely one "like" (Tumblr's version of a thumbs-up), and that was from a fellow artist.

My next post, a day later, was a portrait I drew of an another attractive Swedish actress. This portrait was drawn in the same manner, is of the same size and arguably the same quality, and is in most respects the same. The difference is that the woman featured in the second portrait is Noomi Rapace, star of the currently popular "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" franchise, who co-starred in the recent Sherlock Holmes film, and will appear in Ridley Scott's upcoming Alien prequel.

Within minutes of its appearance on Tumblr, in the wee hours of this morning, the second portrait had garnered three "likes." The first was from a person called "women-with-knives," demonstrating an affinity for the heroine of the TGWTDT franchise. A fourth "like" followed later in the morning, from the same artist who liked my previous portrait. Curiously, he was the only one of the four who "liked" both drawings. I'll presume the other three viewers had no interest in viewing my non-TGWTDT drawings, or viewed them and disdained their lack of Noomi Rapace. I'll also presume that the aforementioned artist has no special regard for Noomi or Viveca, or at least not for both of them, and in fact likes one or both of the drawings for the art's sake. Finally, and most cautiously, I'll presume that even though the other three didn't like the rest of my drawings, something unique of my mind managed to rub off on their minds -- the goal of art -- when they saw and liked this familiar one.

So that's where things stand at the moment. The arithmetically gifted among you will note that the Rapace drawing is exactly 4 times as popular as the Lindfors drawing. However, the day is young, and the sampling is currently too small to be representative, so it will be interesting to see if the numbers increase enough to confirm my hypothesis that people find familiarity more attractive than quality. Of course, were this a scientific experiment, I would have had to take more steps to ensure accuracy (such as not inviting meddling by telling everyone I'm conducting an experiment), so let's just call it a friendly bet.

Specifically, I'm betting you can see the value fan art has to achieving art's primary goal.

UPDATE, 2:30PM: The Rapace drawing now has 52 likes; the Lindfors drawing holds at 1. Incidentally, the Rapace drawing got a boost from a reblog by a blogger named "f***yeahnoomirapace," who hasn't seen fit to like any of my other, Noomi-less drawings.

UPDATE, 12AM: The Lindfors drawing now has 2 votes. The second "like" came from a reader of this LJ blog, who did not "like" the Rapace drawing. The Rapace drawing, at 20+ hours in, has 71 notes -- about a third are "reblogs," the rest are "likes."

I perused the Tumblr galleries of several of the rebloggers, and they tend to be women, ages 17-21, who are into romance, sadness, death, natural scenery and cats, for what that's worth. The real issue here is the 71/2 ratio -- this is the edge IP grants a work over other works of equal merit.

UPDATE 5:30PM, Feb 25th:

UPDATE 10PM, Mar 5th: The Lindfors drawing has held at 4 notes for several days. The Rapace drawing reached 104 notes today, including reblogs, which suggests there will be more notes coming. I probably won't continue these updates, but you get the idea.

Part of my hope in choosing Rapace/TGWTDT was that, though popular, she's not overexposed. I do wonder whether a more famous celeb like Britney Spears, Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga, or Kim Kardashian would have received more notes, or if their media saturation would have prevented that. I just did a quick search on each of those names, and I saw 3 notes, 6 notes... so I assume the latter is the case.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:42:12 GMT

Debating whether to devote the requisite free time to that next Toth post. All in favor...?

Grammi Bear

jessehamm@frontier.com — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:41:13 GMT

Bouncing here and there and everywhere...

jessehamm@frontier.com — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 04:25:15 GMT

Cathy Gale

jessehamm@frontier.com — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:36:22 GMT

A recent commission.

What if...?

jessehamm@frontier.com — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:31:14 GMT

Here's my entry for the What If? blog, a fun collection of Marvel fan art:

I hope you'll browse the other entries... my fave is hardcore '80s Ghost Rider.

Trekker

jessehamm@frontier.com — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:11:34 GMT

Emma

jessehamm@frontier.com — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:16:34 GMT

Comparison

jessehamm@frontier.com — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 03:16:40 GMT

So, yeah, sort of an improvement, but now the lion's head doesn't fit the cartoonier style of the rest of the drawing. Hmm.

Random stuff.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:52:19 GMT

Saw this recently:

Looking for an artist Comics (Miami FL USA)
À procura de um artista de Comics, esta é uma grande oportunidade para estudantes de arte para anúncio de sua carteira! Sci-Fi/post Comic apocalíptico com um tema Western (10 + páginas) Vai pagar 8,00 dólares por página (lápis e tintas), através WestrnUnion Por favor, responda com links carteira ou exemplos de seu trabalho: dennis******@**********studio.com para que eu possa ter uma idéia do seu nível de habilidade. estou procurando estilos semelhantes a estes: http://mysite.ncnetwork.net/resr4gc2/alien.legion.inked.toned.jpg http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/4875/hellsing08219zx3.jpg Eu prefiro comunicar por e-mail e estou procurando alguém que a possa ler em espanhol ou Inglês, porque as escrituras está escrito nessas línguas. Serious inquéritos apenas POR FAVOR!

Basically, he's looking for someone to draw a comic in a style that resembles mine (he links to one of my pieces as an example) for eight dollars per page. The best part is at the end: "Serious inquiries only PLEASE!" My eight-buck-a-page offer is only for CLOSERS! Should I send him my samples and ask for nine?

Speaking of mimicking me, last night I re-drew this lion, since I was unhappy with my previous version:

'Sgood to re-work stuff until you iron out the kinks. Try this at home, kids!

Finally, to start your morning off right:

Dylan Williams (1970 - 2011)

jessehamm@frontier.com — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 18:32:38 GMT

The first time I saw Dylan Williams was at a bay area comics show in the early '90s. He was peddling minicomics at the Puppy Toss co-op booth, sporting cargo pants and blond dreadlocks, and a forest-green T-shirt emblazoned with the "Puppy Toss" logo and its iconic dead puppy. As I watched him and his green-clad teammates truckin' around the Dealers Room, schmoozing folks and doing business, it occurred to me that this was a new breed of comics person. Not like the mainstream freelancers, nor the lone self-publishers, but a weird combination of counterculture spirit and business acumen. He and his pals were dressed like self-publishers, but they wore MATCHING SHIRTS. And sold OTHER PEOPLE'S MINICOMICS. Their unified approach earned them a higher profile than the rest of the small-pressers, but what did they get out of it?

Years later, a mutual friend took me to visit Dylan at his home in Portland, and I recognized him from his Puppy Toss days. But now his hair was cropped short, he dressed "business casual," and he occupied a nice apartment in a downtown high-rise. Had he sold out? No, I discovered that beneath that shell of respectability he remained a hardcore comics evangelist: the Bruce Wayne of turning-you-on-to-obscure-cartoonists. While we perused his art collection (Jesse Marsh pages?! Alex Toth?), he rhapsodized about the under-appreciated genius of Mort Meskin.

Through our mutual affinity for various artists, I got to know Dylan better over the years, and a pattern emerged. He'd load me up with with photocopies of rare art by some obscure genius, I'd offer him money in exchange, and he'd grimace and purse his lips in the patented Dylan Williams squint/frown/grin, waving me away like an uncle refusing thanks after slipping you extra cash for the prom. How much of the rare, out-of-print art sitting on my shelves came from Dylan's giftings? Off the top of my head, I recall samples by Lyonel Feininger, Emil Gershwin, Ogden Whitney, Jesse Marsh, Mort Meskin, Austin Briggs, Noel Sickles, Fred Guardineer, '50s Jack Kirby, Jorge Zaffino, Bud Blake, Gluyas Williams... works spanning a century, from diverse corners of the medium, all generously photocopied and passed around by Portland's own Johnny Comicseed. Around this time, he also founded Spark Plug Comics, in order to promote obscure new treasures by publishing them outright. Later, with Tim Goodyear, he founded Bad Apple, a book & DVD shop with the highest quality-to-crap ratio I've ever seen. (Imagine a tiny Borders with nothing but cool stuff -- the bookstore version of licking the frosting out of an Oreo.) And between everything else, he drew his own comics (which he was brave enough to send to Toth now and then for advice and pummelings), managed a couple of websites devoted to underrated cartoonists, tracked down and interviewed old pro's and their relatives, wrote criticism (including a post-mortem appreciation of Zaffino, who also passed away in his early forties), hosted art shows, and more. I wasn't kidding about the Bruce Wayne comparison.

As I mused earlier: what did he get out of these efforts? Here's Dylan's answer, from an interview he gave last year: "Things I love: Dealing with lots of people. Selling distro books to people. Publishing good comics, especially ones that other people wouldn't publish. Not having to work for a shitty big company. Sending books out to people who order them. Going to Zine shows. Working with other publishers. Working with young/new comix people. ... I'd have to say my favorite part is doing/distroing weird ass comix." Notice how often the word "people" turns up in his reasons. Unlike the many misanthropic hermits of the comics field, Dylan understood that comics are really for and about people -- that people are what give comics value. Like he said elsewhere in that interview: "Encouraging people is like the greatest feeling in the world." And he did encourage people. One blogger recalls: "He was able to say ...the things I needed to hear in a way that I actually heard them. [H]is support and encouragement changed my life."

So Dylan will be missed. But I hate that phrase, with its passive remove, so let me replace it with "I will miss Dylan." I'll miss him later, when I recall his wry complaints about the system, or his chuckled quotations of Toth, or his exuberant praise for this or that forgotten genius, and I miss him now.

Narbonic.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:03:45 GMT

A pin-up for the upcoming NARBONIC omnibus:

jessehamm@frontier.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:10:20 GMT

Some retailers around the web have complained about customers who reserve monthly comics in hold boxes and never stop in to buy them.

At any other business, a hold or reservation would require a credit card number, or a deposit, or the item would only be held for a day or two, "as a courtesy."

The problem with comics retail is that customer loyalty is often based on a vague sentimental attachment to a series, or on force of habit, rather than interest in current storylines. Many customers don't care to read the books they buy every month; they just buy them because "I've always bought that series," and a no-pressure hold box makes it easy to continue that habit.

So the retailer's dilemma is whether to disturb that somnambulant buying pattern by enforcing stricter hold policies. Policies typical to other businesses would ensure the sales of held books, but such policies could also awaken customer-zombies to the fact that they're no longer interested in those books. "I have to come up with a deposit? Wait -- why am I still buying a series that I haven't read since I was fifteen? And where am I? How did I get this beard?"

The comic dealer's business is fragile because, to much of his customer base, he's not selling products, he's selling memories. The memory of being young, and of biking down to the LCS to follow the lives of these characters who were still exciting. Turning his house of dreams into a real-life store -- one that places adult responsibilities on its patrons -- could blow away all the dreams. He'll be left with that small handful of customers who still enjoy their favorite characters' adventures, and he'll go out of business.

Branding.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 17:28:11 GMT

Some old news that continues to charm me. In brief: there was a recall of three brands of dog food, including (here's the great part) "Old Yeller" brand dog food.

That's right: someone named a dog food after Old Yeller, the dog who famously contracted rabies and had to be shot to death in the classic Disney film. And not only did they name a dog food after him, but that very food was recalled last year due to concerns that it would sicken your pet. Proof that real life is just better than what we could come up with on our own.

Speaking of what we come up with on our own, here again is Disney's prize pooch posing with Uncle Walt and the gang:

Yet More On Toth

jessehamm@frontier.com — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 13:14:15 GMT

I had intended to follow up my last Toth article sooner, but deadlines got in the way, and then there were those YouTube kittens.... Anyway, my copy of Setting The Standard just arrived, and inspired me to get back to work on this stuff. So:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Alex slowly became one of the best."
~Irwin Hasen
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In my previous post on Toth, I described the learning style by which I believe he acquired his skills. Here I'll continue to trace his early development, followed by some discussion of his techniques.

EARLY DOMINANCE

As we saw last time, Toth at age 19 didn't stand out from his peers. Can you tell which page is his?

But within three years, changes had occurred in his work that pushed him to the head of the pack:

"Toreador From Texas" (1950). In addition to sharper draftsmanship, the compositions are bolder and more sophisticated.

I lauded Toth's late '50s work in my previous post, but even his less-accomplished work in the early '50s sparked a small revolution in comics. It was like when Royce Gracie introduced submission holds to mixed martial arts in the '90s: swift ascent, followed by widespread imitation. Gil Kane recalls,"By 1950 he had transcended all of his influences and had become the finest artist that comics ever had. Toth introduced the techniques of magazine illustration into comic books... he lifted the craftsmanship level of the entire field." John Romita confirms this: "Toth led an entire new movement. When I got into comics in the late ’40s, and then in the early ’50s I went over to DC to do love stories, Toth had changed the whole approach to DC Comics."

So how did the improvement seen above occur in only three years? As Kane observed, Toth seemed to be cribbing techniques from the era's skilled magazine illustrators. More than that: it's as though he was trained by them.

THE FAMOUS ARTISTS SCHOOL

Fast forward to 1994. In the "Alex Toth" book published that year by Kitchen Sink, Toth said:

"The 'Famous Artists' course was conceived by [Al Dorne] and best pal Fred Ludekens and fleshed out by Rockwell, Helck, Parker, Whitcomb, an even dozen, as I recall. The text- and workbooks were the best ever! I signed up in its first year, 1951. Sent in two lessons before my freelance accounts demanded too much waking and working time, then a move back to the West Coast disrupted my lessons, open-ended as they were. However, the books' lessons served me well through many years' rereadings, long after the school was phased out."

Toth even sent his friend Dave Cook a sheaf of copies from the Famous Artists School workbooks decades after taking the course, which shows that the books were still on hand and on his mind. As he says, those books probably were the best ever. Most art teachers' "real world" credentials are unimpressive, but the designers of the FAS course were all illustration rockstars. The knowledge in those massive books had been honed over decades of work -- not in the ivory towers of fine art, but in popular media: a pass-or-fail market where methods are proved or discarded. Whether they realized it or not, the "Famous Artists" were experts in the psychology of visual perception. Their books offered the means to attract and hold readers' attention through pictures. Toth's absorption of their teaching was key to his ascent.

But if Toth took the course in '51, as he says, then what accounts for the rapid growth we see in his work by 1950?

A curious detail about Toth's reminiscence is that the Famous Artists School was not founded in 1951, but in 1948. Also curious is his claim that his lessons were interrupted by his increasing workload. In fact, the only increases in his workload during this period occurred prior to 1951; he drew fewer pages in '51 than in '50, and even fewer in '52. (Incidentally, he was also mistaken when he said the FAS course was defunct.)

I suspect that, four decades after the fact, Toth misremembered when he took the course. I suspect he did enroll during the school's first year, in '48 or '49, and that his lessons were interrupted not by his return to California in '52, as he recalls, but by his initial move to California in 1950. This would jibe with his remark that his increasing workload interfered with his lessons (his page output increased by 28% in '49, and again by 18% in '50). More to the point, it would explain the sudden advances we see in his work in '49 - '50, and account for the similarity between the techniques taught in the course books and the those seen in his work post-'48. I wouldn't suggest that Toth's early progress was wholly due to the FAS books, but do I believe they landed like gasoline on the lit match of his fierce learning style, rocketing him from rookie to game-changer in two years.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Think -- experiment -- move your objects around in depth
until you arrive at arrangements that are different and
interesting. That is what the best artists do."
~FAS
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Compare these lessons on overlapping, cropping, and indicating depth with pages from the 1950 story cited above. I've color-coded the methods and where they appear in Toth's panels. Orange lines show where he overlapped figures for interest & depth rather than by necessity, green arrows show where he has cropped figures for interest, and blue lines show where he has included depth cues, angling objects or lines into the scene on the Z axis (more on that below).

Similar comparisons could be made between Toth's work and numerous FAS lessons. Anatomy, clothing, perspective, storytelling -- in every area, the FAS provided a thorough grounding for Toth's eager mind.

FOREGROUND OBJECTS AND PROSPECT/REFUGE

Let's take a closer look at the FAS lesson on indicating depth. Even amateur artists know that accurate perspective makes drawings appear more convincing. However, the FAS doesn't recommend depth only for realism's sake, but also to affect readers on an emotional level: "It is not enough to create depth in a picture. We must do it in an interesting way."

For example, we tend to favor views that offer something theorists call "prospect/refuge." Prospect/refuge views are those which reveal the most surroundings while hiding the viewer. So, a skybox at a football game offers prospect/refuge, because it's placed high enough to reveal the whole field, but its walls and windows hide its occupants from others. A high-riding SUV with tinted windows offers a similar advantage. In art, prospect/refuge is achieved by showing as far into the distance as possible, and including foreground detail that seems to offer the viewer refuge.

Toth intuited this preference, as seen often in his work. In each of the panels below, objects in the near foreground help frame the scene, increase the sense of depth, indicate the period and locale, and offer the viewer a potential hiding place, or refuge:

This bold use of near-foreground elements was uncommon in comics before Toth popularized it. Compare the four pages at the top of this post with the samples above and you'll see what I mean. It's counter-intuitive to block your scene with intrusive props, burying your characters in the distant middle ground, but Toth soldiered past his natural aversion to that approach, resulting in sophisticated compositions that lure the reader in.

POSITIONING FOR DEPTH

Toth also went out of his way to angle objects toward the Z axis (the space between the viewer and the distance) rather than leaving them on the X and Y axes (the flat horizontal/vertical space in a picture).

Other artists tend to leave objects on the X/Y axes, because this calls for less linear perspective and foreshortening. This is perfectly acceptable from the standpoint of accuracy: there's nothing inaccurate about a flat wall or a horizontal row of objects. However, the result is a flat, stagebound quality that lacks the appeal of deeper compositions. Notice the flatness of the backgrounds in this page by Toth's friend and colleague Pete Morisi:

I added pink lines to highlight objects that are organized along the X & Y axes. Compare Morisi's three figures in panel 4 with this FAS example (at upper left) of what NOT to do.

Morisi was a skilled draftsman, able to draw people simply and accurately, but he was content to take shortcuts that deprived his work of depth. Comparing Toth's work to Morisi's, I'm reminded of this comment about Rembrandt's The Night Watch: "It is so picturesque, so beautiful in its arrangement, and so powerful, that, by its side, in the opinion of many, other canvases look like playing cards."
~Samuel van Hoogstraten (emphases mine)

Witness Toth's effort to grow beyond the sort of shortcuts Morisi took. Compare the cars in the first batch of panels with the cars in the second batch:

I've colored the cars orange here because Toth seems so eager to hide them.

This first batch of images was culled from three pages of a story Toth drew at age 19. In five instances, he opts to draw the car directly from the front or back, avoiding tricky perspectives. Cars that do appear at an angle in this story are usually obscured by characters or panel borders, further sparing Toth the challenges of perspective.

This second batch of images was culled from four pages of a story Toth drew four years later:

In each of seven instances, he angles the car to the side. This approach required the use of foreshortening and sometimes a vanishing point -- complexities he could have avoided, as he had before -- but the benefits are clear. As in Al Parker's FAS lesson above, the angled objects add a greater sense of depth, and avoid the monotonous symmetry of a frontal view.

Toth went on to use this technique countless times with countless objects throughout his career. Note these examples, in which he could have used an X or Y axis side view, but chose instead a Z axis angle:

POSITIONING FOR SIMPLICITY

Not only did the above approach offer greater depth, it also helps explain how Toth got away with using fewer lines. Much of the "hay" that Toth condemned is made up of shading lines that are intended to show depth. Artists often need that shading to show depth because their objects are positioned on the X/Y axes:

They may try to emulate Toth by leaving the shading out of their drawings, but then their drawings end up looking flat:

But if they were to position objects along the Z axis, as Toth often did, the need for that shading would disappear:

...which gives you this Batman (thighs and feet on Z axis, arm overlapping face; no shading required),
instead of that Tarzan (spread-eagle on X/Y axes; shading needed to prevent flatness):

That's all I have time for now. Next time, I'll cover Toth's use of line.

Cartoon Redheads

jessehamm@frontier.com — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 19:56:35 GMT

I've started a new sketch blog, to showcase nothing but my drawings of red-headed female cartoon characters:

http://cartoonredheads.blogspot.com/

Within a couple of months I hope to have enough material to collect into a sketchbook.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 19:26:38 GMT

Commission rough.

jessehamm@frontier.com — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:11:09 GMT