Ed Piskor and Figure Drawing

Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor discuss the importance of figure drawing in my work (transcribed from Cartoonists Kayfabe videos):

The Ballad of Lise and Drake: A Taboo Space Opera

How a Marvel Freelance Assignment Inspired a Notorious Anton Drek Character

Elsewhere, I posted scans of a freelance assignment I illustrated in 1990, "Home is a Hard Place," from a script by Will Shetterly, for the Marvel Graphics anthology Open Space.

1989: A Transition Year for Drawing Clarissa

This is a sketch of Clarissa James in 1989, and one of the very first sketches putting her in the Ms. Megaton Man uniform that would become her trademark. Originally a minor character from the ten-issue Megaton Man comic book series (issue #4, to be exact), Clarissa became a core cast member with #11 (otherwise known as The Return of Megaton Man #1). After that three-issue series ended, she gained Megapowers of her own in Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1. This sketch was a tryout of sorts to see if her transition to megahero, and specifically a female version of Megaton Man, would work.

Who's the Greatest Artist Alive Today? Meet Arne the Android!

I've written elsewhere on the death of drawing; suffice it to say, over the course of my lifetime, I've watched hand drawing go from just about its midcentury peak in Western Civiliation to its virtual extinction in the twenty-first century. Hand drawing (and its offshoot, painting) once appeared in and on everything including newspapers, magazines, hardcover dustjackets, paperback, editorial illustration, advertising, album covers, billboards, signs on the sides buildings, and everywhere else. Except for a few specialty purposes like children's books, comics, and The New Yorker, imagery of the hand has almost completely disappeared as photography and digital technologies have conquered every realm.

Conan the Uncorrupted: Pure Robert E. Howard, Belatedly

Two books came in the mail today: The Conan Chronicles volumes I and II by Robert E. Howard. Originally published in the UK in the early 2000s, I must have missed their debut. I still can't figure out if there ever were counterpart editions in the United States, but if there were, they have evaded me.

Thirty Years of Ms. Megaton Man: 1989 to 2019!

Here is the first page of sketches I did of Clarissa James in 1989 - up to that point a minor Civilian (Megapowerless) character in the cast of my Megaton Man comics - as Ms. Megaton Man. It was in an old hardbound sketchbook I took around to shows to collect sketches of interpretations of my characters from fellow pros (I've posted some of the more memorable ones here and there).

PCAM: 21st C. "Arts" .org Too Ashamed to Mention Drawing, Painting, or Sculpture by Name

If you want another sign of how completely debased the word "art" has become in our twenty-first century civilization (not to mention the intellectually corrosive effects of an MFA in the visual arts), herewith the Friday, February 8, 2019 email announcing a new local arts .org (note the words drawing, painting, and sculpture are completely absent):

Spectrum Disorder: Whither Drawing? Part 2

Another sign that drawing is withering away from our culture: The newly-rebranded Pittsburgh Center for Arts and Media, ostensibly a fine arts .org composed of the ashes of Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, issued a press release today touting its "agenda for advancing excellence in film, digital video, photography and the spectrum of visual arts." Drawing, painting, and sculpture, once a mainstay of classes at the old PCA are never mentioned by name, presumably falling under the "spectrum" category.

Presumably, such quaint traditional arts too insignificant anymore to break out individually.

Update: read the entirety of their press release here. 

Full disclosure: I took all three kinds of classes and taught several cartooning workshops there myself over the decades.

Some latter-day student work from the Carnegie Museum of Art adult studio program, before 2014.

This demotion of actual art in favor of recording media follows the news of the closing of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, flagship for a chain of design schools that abandoned traditional art in favor of digital animation and other newfangled media at the turn of the millennium. (I once attended and taught there as well.)

Less than a year ago, the Toonseum shuttered its downtown gallery location and entered what was described as a year-long "curtains drawn" hiatus. Whether it will ever draw anything again besides curtains remains to be seen. (I was shown there and participated in a drawing workshop.)

Less than six years ago, Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art discontinued its adult studio art classes, including drawing. (I taught several cartooning, drawing, and sketching workshops there.)

As I remarked on Facebook, Pittsburgh, once a haven of culture, is becoming a drawing desert.

More: Whither Drawing? Part I

Whither Drawing?

Here's what the 2016-2017 Handbook of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design has to say about a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in drawing (p. 103-104):

a. Understanding of basic design principles, concepts, media, and formats. The ability to place organization of design elements and the effective use of drawing media at the service of producing a specific aesthetic intent and a conceptual position. The development of solutions to aesthetic and design problems should continue throughout the degree program.
b. Understanding of the possibilities and limitations of the drawing medium.
c. Knowledge and skills in the use of basic tools and techniques sufficient to work from concept to finished product. This includes mastery of the traditional technical and conceptual approaches to drawing.
d. Functional knowledge of the history of drawing.
e. Extensive exploration of the many possibilities for innovative imagery and the manipulation of techniques available to the draftsman.
f. The completion of a final project related to the exhibition of original work.

Note that there is no mention of human anatomy, figure drawing, or manual perspective drawing (although computer-aided perspective is an advised competency).

From "Teaching Cartooning" in Streetwise (Two Morrows, 2000).

Here's what the handbook says about computers in general (p. 101):

Digital Media. The Bachelor of Fine Arts is appropriate as the undergraduate degree in which digital technology serves as the primary tool, medium, or environment for visual work. Titles of majors for these degrees include, but are not limited to: digital media, media arts, media design, multimedia, computer arts, digital arts, digital design, interactive design, Web design, and computer animation.

No mention of mastery of traditional fundamental drawing principals, and digital technology is the "primary tool."

This is why I am a self-taught figurative artist, and why I advise students to make the most of their college tuition pursuing a well-rounded "book-learning" liberal arts curriculum (English, languages, history, philosophy, sociology, etc.), and skip the BFA.

Art school in the broadest sense only makes sense for a profession that requires actual accreditation, such as architecture or interior design.

See also: The Withering Away of Drawing

Whirled Building: The Working Out of Megaton Man's Megaverse

This is an unpublished page from 1984. Megaton Man #1 had already been accepted for publication by Kitchen Sink Press in April of that year, but a series of hang-ups with printers and promotion would delay the release until December. Over the spring and summer, asked if I could turn the one-shot into an ongoing series, I struggled to envision a series for the satire, producing dozens of stream-of-consciousness pages, none of which added up to a coherent whole. Later that summer, on a nice sunny day, I went for a long walk around Midtown Detroit (from my off-campus apartment near Wayne State University around the General Motors and Fisher Building in the so-called New Center area, rumored to be Ground Zero in case of Soviet missile attack), and got the idea for the second issue, which I drew from scratch in about five weeks. Of the 64 aborted pages, several made it into subsequent issues as set pieces and dream sequences. Other pages, like the one here, penciled in a manic emulation of Neal Adams, was never inked, but many of the narrative ideas were later redrawn, and still resonate in the new Megaton Man material I have been dreaming up!

Fans familiar with the original series will recognize the landing scene from issue #9, when the Partyers from Mars finally land in Megatropolis Central Park, albeit in a more primitive form. Uncle Farley, the Golden Age Megaton Man appears, along with Stella Starlight, Megaton Man's estranged girlfriend, now emphatically pregnant. While Stella appeared in civilian clothes in the published comic, here she appears as The Earth Mother, a persona she will not take in the Megaton Man narrative until Bizarre Heroes, the series I self-published in 1994 through 1996. The Devengers also appear (they appear for the first time in Megaton Man #8), except that the Angel of Death (not penciled in yet) is referred to as the Corpse Lady. In fact, Bad Guy hadn't even appeared in the series yet (he would not appear until #3), and yet here he is already a long-time nemesis of Megaton Man, and turning into Good Guy! Captain Androgynous has never appeared in any of my comics.

What is remarkable is how consistent my ideas have proven to be over the years. This piece of art would have been buried in storage when I was drawing Bizarre Heroes ten years later, and essentially forgotten, and yet the Earth Mother persona still resided in my imagination, her basic costume design (a kind of maillot unitard with gloves and boots) remaining intact, although the logo I would later give her looked more like the symbol for ecology. Colonel Turtle looks like an actual in this first draft; later he would be decidedly a middle-aged guy in a cumbersome costume.

 
There have been numerous other instances over the years of making notes, sketches, and misfired pages, and either misplacing them or simply never referring to them again, and yet when I finally get to putting an idea in a comic book story, I somehow manage to realize the original idea in most of its main its essentials, Later, when I unearth the original conception, I am surprised at how consistent my imagination is. I have also found this to be true for particular characterizations of such characters as Rex Rigid and Pamela Jointly. When I've written them into new storylines, I think I'm having them behaving in new, selfish, or malevolent ways, but then I go back and reread earlier comics, and realize that that has always been a part of their conception. It is reassuring to know that when I imagine something and establish it as "real" in my mind, it seldom gets lost just because I can no longer locate the original note or sketch.

As for this page, the new graphic novel I am working on, Megaton Man: Return to Megatropolis, still draws upon themes established in my mind practically when I came up with the name Megaton Man. Nuclear terror, psychotic machismo, extended non-traditional family arrangements, and in fact Simon Phloog, the son of Megaton Man and the Earth Mother, are all intrinsic elements in the ongoing storyline. Rest assured that as I have been elaborating new storylines (and endeavoring to retroactively World-Build), I have reread all the old comics so as to preserve established character history, which is how I've realized how consistent my notions are. (Or maybe I just don't have as many new, original ideas as I thought I had!) Previews of this new material can be seen in abundance almost as it is coming off the ol' drawing  board on the Megaton Man blog, with further publication details to be announced soon!

American Moebius: The Fosterian Kingdom of Jack Katz

The Space Explorer's Club, the fifth volume in Titan Comics' complete First Kingdom by Jack Katz, is out. Not only is it another handsome volume in the series, but my favorite so far, offering the first new installment of the cosmic saga in a quarter century. His cosmic vision might best be described as that of an American Moebius (Jean Giraud), except that rather than the intermittent and ecstatic burst of insight of his French counterpart, Katz has been carefully constructing an epic he has been committed to for more than 40 years: part Hugo Gernsback old-school sci-fi, part Jack T. Chick New Age Hell-and-Brimstone gospel tract.

I have been a fan of Katz since the original First Kingdom was issued as 24 single issues by Comics and Comix and later Bud Plant in the 70s and 80s, and completed my collection only belatedly in the 1990s. In the late 70s when the work began to appear, it would have been described as groundlevel, a term suggesting something in between underground and mainstream. Other titles that were grouped in that amorphous genre were Cerebus, Elfquest, Star*Reach, otherwise underground titles such as No Ducks, and titles from that Michigan company Power Comics like Kevin Hyde and Mike Gustovich's Cobalt Blue as well as other creators such as T. Casey Brennan. Steve Gerber's Howard the Duck and Marvel's adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, particularly as illustrated by Barry Smith, seemed to offer a mainstream bridge from superheroes to that quasi-illicit world of the slightly-more risque material.

Katz' work was never explicitly sexual, although the nude figure was and is central to his conception, with particular emphasis placed on the covered pubic region (I have always called his work groinal). I have to admit I have never read much of it; a self-described "Fosterian," Katz adopted a practice of pasting on huge chunks of text that appear to have been generated by an IBM Selectric typewriter, in a not-particularly attractive face, and pasted those onto his artwork, degrading what would otherwise be quite beautiful tableaux, in emulation of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant. Aside from the aesthetic or formal objection I have to this practice (it is just hard to digest unrelieved blocks of text coupled with little else but mise en scene master shots), both Foster and Katz assume a pretentious, pseudo-literary voice which makes their text not only difficult to process with the images, but almost impossible to comprehend in any case. Titan has wisely upgraded the text in their reprints, but have chosen a pseudo-hand-lettered font that emulates comics lettering, instead of an attractive typeface. If you're going for bookishness, why not go all the way? Also, the new lettering is extremely small.

The Space Explorer's Club, however, has much bigger type, which is easier to read, and far more attractive. I still haven't read it all, but I have dipped into it extensively. It is the somewhat Gnostic story of a human couple who are journeying through the universe and perhaps more than one reality to discover their demiurgic programmer's intentions, and the meaning of life. This has always been Katz's obsession, and part of the mystique and grandiose ambitions that even fans of First Kingdom, like myself, who actually have only looked at the art, admire about the series.

The new volume also demonstrates an improvement over the earlier work in that the art is drastically simplified. Katz's imagery was always as dense as his prose, and here the claustrophobic backgrounds and rich textures give way to offer a clearer view of his compositional strengths. His figure drawing, never exactly graceful but always majestic (an anatomically-obsessed combination of the stumpy George Bridgman and the elongated El Greco), manages here to be at least more fluid and free; it's some of his best work ever. The first 90 pages or so appear to be either scanned pencils that have been darkened to a higher contrast digitally, or inked with something like a Uni-Ball roller-tip pen, rather than the crowquill or brush of the earlier work. For the remainder of the book, Katz seems to revert to a brush, spotting blacks more frequently along with employing a thicker outline, but refrains from congesting his visuals to the degree of previous decades. Certainly this is as much a symptom of Katz's advancing years as it is a conscious streamlining, but nevertheless it is a welcome development.

Not everyone will like the new, more simplified Katz, but Katz is an acquired taste anyway. The art of The Space Explorer's Club evokes large-scale cartoons for WPA murals, and his multi-figure compositions and especially his spaceships (which resemble the mobiles of Lee Bontecou) are incomparable. There is nothing like Katz in comics, or for that matter in American or contemporary art, and it is great to have more of his work available now more than ever.

The Colors of Shakespeare!

Okay, so I lied. I couldn't sketch Romeo and Juliet just once, so I went back Saturday for a longer rehearsal, using Prismacolor sticks and pencils to capture the Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks' production. It was another, final, glorious summer afternoon in Frick Park, and it was a privilege to draw these talented performers. Sketching is such sweet sorrow! But students flock to Oakland, and it is time to bid summer's follies and frolics adieu!

(Actually, I suggested that the Capulets and Montagues be updated to rival Mexican drug cartels, who off the Prince in Act I, but this idea was rejected, so you could say I am parting ways with the production over creative differences!! Just kidding.)

Warm ups: 50 jumping jacks!

More circle warm-ups.

The personalities of Chuck and Jeff emerge.

Street brawl in fair Verona!

Pre-rehearsal notes.

Chuck as a Falstaffian Mercutio.

Jeff Chips as the Prince following the script; Danielle Powell wondering, "Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"; and Mike Magliocca as Paris.

Ron Siebert as the Friar, harvesting his narcotizing blossoms.

Andy as Romeo; Andy and Chuck after Mercutio gets sliced.

Andy Miller as Romeo, Danielle Powell as Juliet, in the bedroom scene.
Previously, the Friar tells the banished Romeo to pull himself together!

Juliet dies, then Romeo dies, then Juliet dies again!

Michael Mykita and an overworked sketch of Danielle during notes.

Andy stretching out during notes.

Danielle during notes.

See also: Romeo ... Banish-ed!

"Romeo...Banish-ed!"

Last evening I was invited to sketch the rehearsal of Pittsburgh Shakespeare in the Parks' forthcoming production of Romeo and Juliet by Danielle Powell, who plays Juliet. It would take longer than two hours to get to know the various personalities involved in this intricate production, and these miserable scribbles barely scratch the surface or do justice to what I witnessed, but it was fascinating to watch the creative process unfold.

I used light blue and graphite pencil on white paper, and darkened the scans, giving some of them a greenish tinge, but you get the idea. I had barely gotten warmed up when darkness descended upon Frick Park, enshrouding us in the tender embrace of a warm summer's eve (okay, I'm no Shakespeare). Unfortunately, the school year beckons, and I won't get a chance to do this again, but I look forward to catching a performance! Thanks to the cast and crew for letting me sit in. (And the cookies were wonderful!)

A park bench serves as a balcony.

Jeff Chips runs lines for a scene in the Capulet household.

Juliet learns that Romeo is banished from fair Verona.

The agony and the ecstasy of the young couple.

Juliet warming up.

Performers warming up before rehearsal, and a cart.

Juliet laid out in the crypt.

A maid drops to her knees in grief; Juliet; Mercutio.

Danielle Powell warming up prior to rehearsal.

Helen Meade directs Yvonne Hudson as the Nurse.

Danielle going over how to drink the poison.