Plop

Proper plops and flops are almost nonexistent now.  Mastering this beautiful and prominent mainstay from old comics will be a challenge.

Drawing with a brush pen

I recently bought the Kuretake No. 40 brush pen. The first few days were pretty sketchy as it took some time to begin to get comfortable with a totally different approach to drawing. But after a lot of bad, poorly controlled drawings, I finally started getting a bit more comfortable with each new page in my sketch book.

As with the fountain previous pen drawings, I’ll start publishing some pages from my recent brush pen drawings.

A few sketches

No story today – just a few quick images to post.

First, from George Herriman’s The Family Upstairs:

 [image removed]

That’s a snake peeping down.

Study of panel from The Family Upstairs

And a panel from Fred Opper’s Happy Hooligan…

Study of Happy Hooligan

Day 4 of Learning to Draw Comics

A month ago, before I had my hands on a copy of Fantagraphics’ 1st volume of Popeye, I thought E. C. Segar‘s Popeye was going to be a really boring comic strip.  Boy was I wrong.  I was a full convert by the 5th strip (on the first page) printed in that book.

I had no idea what an African Escape Hen was until a few weeks ago.  If you aren’t already acquainted, meet Bernice.  She is an Escape Hen from Africa.  She can vanish; she can reappear; she can not be captured or killed; and she is the only member of her species ever to be held in captivity.

Segar’s was a genius to introduce such an unlikely character into what in almost all other regards seems like a very natural world – and he does this numerous times with a great array of wonderful characters.  I can’t wait to read the entire run.

He won me over immediately and I’ll always be glad of it.

And my sketch of Bernice…  It yams what it yams.

Study of Bernice the African Escape Hen

Day 3 of Learning to Draw Comics

Billy de Beck created Barney Google long before I was born.  Eventually, Barney Google became Snuffy Smith.

Snuffy Smith (no longer penned by De Beck) was the strip’s title when I was a child and I remember that my grandfather (who always read the Sunday comic strips to me) would often call Snuffy Smith, ‘Barney Google’.  I didn’t realize at the time why he would continually make that mistake, but I think I just accepted that Snuffy Smith was also called Barney Google somehow.

Bill Blackbeard’s Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics has several terrific Barney Google strips.  The following two sketches were made from de Beck’s panels.

I should say that I’m just drawing directly in pen with no pencil sketch done first.  Barney’s face is a wreck in this one…

study of Barney Google

I think this little sketch turned out OK. De Beck, like Herriman and H.C. “Bud” Fisher was a master with a fountain pen.

study of Barney Google

Day 2 of Learning to Draw Comics

Maud - my study of panel by Fred Opper

I just got Bill Blackbeard’s Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics.  I wish I’d found this book when I was in art school way back.  Nevertheless, I have it now and I’m loving it.

This brings me to day two of studies from master works by great comic artists of the past. Today: Fred Opper.  Blackbeard’s book has all too few of these precious jewels and I hope to find more soon.  This little sketch was made right after reading one of Opper’s strips called Maud.

With any of these studies – even ones that i’ll be posting later, my intention isn’t to reproduce the original work – or even to find a new way of drawing it… It’s basically just a good excuse for looking longer, trying to learn as much as possible, and keeping my pen on the paper.

Re-learning to Draw and Learning to Draw Comics

I went to art school a long time ago and was once very comfortable drawing.  I was never great – and couldn’t draw a person’s portrait to save my life – but drawing always felt very natural to me.

When I was very young (maybe 9), a neighbor gave me a book about the Peanuts newspaper comic strip.  I read it continuously.  Eventually, I had become so attached to those little drawings that I had to try drawing them myself.  My efforts were pretty bad – and I soon resorted to tracing (ahh – admitting that hurts)

It’s been about 10 years since I last drew (not traced) regularly - and now that I’m beginning to draw again, I’m noticing that not only does it take a lot of time and patience to teach myself how to draw all over again – but that I never knew how to draw comic strip type images.  Though my paintings did have a narrative and told stories in one image, I’ve never done sequential art.  I’ve thought about it many times over the years – and have dreamed of sequences and characters… but produced nothing.

So now I know that I have to re-learn how to draw.  I also have to learn how to draw comics.  In art school, we drew from life (trees, buildings, people, fruit).  That does teach you a lot.  I think the most important thing is that it teaches you how to look.  So with that in mind, I plan on doing a lot of looking at the great newspaper comic strips that I love.  I’ll be posting my drawings of them along side the originals — just for fun.

I’ll try to post them in some basic order…

I’ve only read a precious few strips of Mutt and Jeff by H.C. “Bud” Fisher – but they’re already near the top of my list of favorites.

Mutt and Jeff - study of panel by H.C. "Bud" Fisher