Yes, but ever notice how you never see them in the same thread at the same time?Originally Posted by sengsterooney
Sort of like Superman and Clark Kent, or Michael Jackson and his sister, Janet.
Suspicious...
- Le Messor
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John, I was wondering how long it takes you to do a full page of artwork now. From thumbnail stage to finished artwork, how long would you guess?
I don't know since they were done it bits and pieces. If it's not done for cash it's 'hobby art', so they get an hour here, two hours there. Although I did the spidey background in a full day. I'd say about 4 days if I had to do them one and done.
These images are 24' x 17'. A tad larger than a double page spread. And they were done in an unconventional manner in that I did not do a sketch to begin them, but let them organically resolve themselves. I started with the figure roughed in, then designed an environment that would work. The figures were easy, maybe an hour to rough them out and an hour or two to finish them off. The backgrounds took all the work. Not so much the execution, but rather the idea.
With every image, I started with a nearly developed background only to have a better solution enter my head. Out came the eraser. I rather enjoy doing things over, so I'm hoping to translate this into comic pages that need to be more pre-planned. Even better, I'd like to reach a point where I can do 2 versions of every page and let the editor pick which ones they like more. But I'm not that fast. Every intelligent artist pre-plans the art, but there's something exciting about 'solving the puzzle' of an open ended composition. I like it A LOT.
Drawing is easy. Coming up with ideas/making choices is the rough work. A single comics page represents about 200 decisions easily. How large should this thing be? How much detail? Where to place things? Where are the blacks? What will the actors look like and do? The real skill of a comics artist is the artistic intelligence they bring to the page to make the story work. Guys like JohnPaul Leon, Mike Oeming, Bill Rheinhold, Ron Garney -I could go on and on- they AMAZE me with the brilliant choices they make. By comparison, I'm a hack. But hey, I'm a passionate hack got darn it. If I live to be half as smart as these guys I'll die a happy man.
Good art doesn't have to finish 'pretty.' There was a guy some time back, Trevor Von Eden, I loooooved that guy's work. It was rough, but there was an energy about it... and his choices were quirky, but some how spot on. If I have a limitation, it's that I tend to finish 'pretty' and that can limit a story that may need some edge to it. Carmine Infantino would have a heck of a time doing something dark. I suffer from that a bit as well. Although I love inkers that come in and scratch the heck out of it, as Vince Coletta did on Thor. People put him down for taking things out... fair enough. But he gave Thor's camp just the right amount of razor stubble. Trey butch. And those rocks looked really fun and crunchy!
I was surprised to learn that Romita Sr. had the worst time drawing a page. Opposite of Byrne or Kirby, it was like pulling teeth for him. One would think it was easy for him because his line was so prettified. Back when I was doing AF, it was certainly pulling teeth, but that was because I didn't know how to do anything.... That sliding ramp scene? As Alex Toth would say..."FFFFAAAAKKKKEEEE!" They were nice enough to mail me a shot of the thing, but my brain then could hardly wrap around the fixed view, let alone run above, below and around the thing. As Jim commented back then..."you give all your figures one body type..." Hell, it took me an hour just to get the eyes right. They'd print and still be wrong.
Ok, I'd better shut up now. I'm incredibly quiet in person, but on a keyboard it's like I completely transform into another personality. You can't shut me up. The best of my mind goes down on the page, I guess.
Personal opinion on creating art, and / or insight into one's method of madness isn't something that needs apologizing for. I asked a question and you more than answered. Interestingly enough, your tangent actually played directly into my reason for asking. I've been working on a six-page story written by a friendly of mine and noticed that it was quite difficult getting things as dark as I think he wanted them. The story wasn't the best, and I changed some layouts and things to make it work better in my eye, but I still think my style looks too clean for the story we're telling. *sigh*
I'll post that stuff up somewhere once it's been ok'd for public display.
Back to your post, I'd still take JR sr's art over JR jr's anytime. There's just something off about jr's work that makes it look wacky to me.
Anyone know if John's newer art referenced in this thread is available somewhere else?
John Calimee sent some scans of work he did during the summer. He was working on one specific thing and it gave him the urge to do a few more. There's these here and John says that if anyone wants to see more then just shout.
Any of you artistic types want to ink, colour etc, please feel free, maybe post the results here.
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