a thought on my current methods
Jan. 10th, 2007 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashWhen I find myself making a random mark on the paper to function as a "seed crystal" for an image, something's definitely working differently.
The random input may not even be visible in the final drawing, but it's there. It's a start. What balances it? What creates an interesting contrast? Another mark. What's that one look like? Does it evoke a shape, does it remind me of something? Start drawing that.
As it takes shape on the paper it begins to grow.
Yeah, the construction's there when I need it. But I can hold a lot of it in my head. And pull the mental library of shortcuts out: I want a hand here. Slash, scribble slash. There it is, there's a placeholder.
What it looks like changes. Details emerge from all the pattern-matching and extrapolation; some make it to the paper. Some get lost. It's a virtuous feedback cycle, and it makes for lots of rapid pretty things. All those years of practice went another layer back into instinct now; I don't have to worry about the small bits much.
The drawings aren't flowing through me; I'm wholly engaged in the process. Most of my brain, except for the parts that need to be distracted, is holding onto the image. It's like a muscle I've just learnt to notice, and I can feel it being used. I can exercise it and make it stronger.
I've read that Jack Kirby, late in life, would just start at one corner of the illustration board and fill in the page - no preliminary sketches, no forethought, just working from one side to the other and making art. I understand this now. I've seen my hand make the exact same kind of marks I see in his pencils, without any attempt on my part to mirror his style. A fast, bold hand and a relatively soft pencil will get some of the things I've previously thought of as affectations. In my smaller marks I see other cartoonists. I see the same motion in Kurtzman's lumpy, spastic-sharp hands. I see it in Frazetta, in people following Barry Winsdor-Smith's lead.
It's kinetic and it's lively and if you follow it closely in the finishing stages it's wonderful and baroque. But it's really just simple and fast.
If I do it for another year maybe I'll be able to explain it better. It's all in the image parts of the brain, not in the words. I've always done this to a degree - I remember my figure drawing teacher in school pointing out that I held half the drawing in my head, not on the paper, and there was a consistent point in time where the drawing would either snap into focus, or I'd snarl and scribble it out and start again. But over the last year, all the dazed drawing direct in pen has exercised this, and now I can keep it going for a whole picture's length.
And when I finish, sit back, and let go of the image, it's like stopping after a burst of exercise. A gasp for breath, mental and physical, flexing and stretching. Holding on to an image while I scratch it onto paper is like holding still too long, and it's hard.
anyone who gets me to do a sketchbook at FC had better be prepared for it to sprawl across two pages. Give me an interesting seed crystal and watch the show. It might be flowing, it might be scratchy. But it should be interesting.
The random input may not even be visible in the final drawing, but it's there. It's a start. What balances it? What creates an interesting contrast? Another mark. What's that one look like? Does it evoke a shape, does it remind me of something? Start drawing that.
As it takes shape on the paper it begins to grow.
Yeah, the construction's there when I need it. But I can hold a lot of it in my head. And pull the mental library of shortcuts out: I want a hand here. Slash, scribble slash. There it is, there's a placeholder.
What it looks like changes. Details emerge from all the pattern-matching and extrapolation; some make it to the paper. Some get lost. It's a virtuous feedback cycle, and it makes for lots of rapid pretty things. All those years of practice went another layer back into instinct now; I don't have to worry about the small bits much.
The drawings aren't flowing through me; I'm wholly engaged in the process. Most of my brain, except for the parts that need to be distracted, is holding onto the image. It's like a muscle I've just learnt to notice, and I can feel it being used. I can exercise it and make it stronger.
I've read that Jack Kirby, late in life, would just start at one corner of the illustration board and fill in the page - no preliminary sketches, no forethought, just working from one side to the other and making art. I understand this now. I've seen my hand make the exact same kind of marks I see in his pencils, without any attempt on my part to mirror his style. A fast, bold hand and a relatively soft pencil will get some of the things I've previously thought of as affectations. In my smaller marks I see other cartoonists. I see the same motion in Kurtzman's lumpy, spastic-sharp hands. I see it in Frazetta, in people following Barry Winsdor-Smith's lead.
It's kinetic and it's lively and if you follow it closely in the finishing stages it's wonderful and baroque. But it's really just simple and fast.
If I do it for another year maybe I'll be able to explain it better. It's all in the image parts of the brain, not in the words. I've always done this to a degree - I remember my figure drawing teacher in school pointing out that I held half the drawing in my head, not on the paper, and there was a consistent point in time where the drawing would either snap into focus, or I'd snarl and scribble it out and start again. But over the last year, all the dazed drawing direct in pen has exercised this, and now I can keep it going for a whole picture's length.
And when I finish, sit back, and let go of the image, it's like stopping after a burst of exercise. A gasp for breath, mental and physical, flexing and stretching. Holding on to an image while I scratch it onto paper is like holding still too long, and it's hard.
anyone who gets me to do a sketchbook at FC had better be prepared for it to sprawl across two pages. Give me an interesting seed crystal and watch the show. It might be flowing, it might be scratchy. But it should be interesting.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 06:32 pm (UTC)That shark sketch is one of my favorites, when I snagged it from you at AC couple years ago. Wish I was going to FC, I'd totally be up for it again.
You are one of those people that use the WHOLE paper...the story expands outside the papers border. Like there is just too much to contain in one space.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 06:57 pm (UTC)Must clone your speed and refine to injectable form. ♥
no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 07:05 pm (UTC)It's extremely neat to read your 'meditations on drawing', btw. One of the things I enjoy most about your entries.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 04:20 am (UTC)