Friday, October 31, 2008

25 Words

1. Dynamic
2. Bold
3. Contrast
4. Black
5. White
6. Action
7. Battle
8. Science-Fiction
9. Comic-Book
10. Technology
11. Super-Hero
12. Costumes
13. Design
14. Anatomy
15. Animals
16. Architecture
17. Cityscapes
18. Punching
19. Women
20. Ink
21. Pencil
22. Portraits
23. Cars
24. Guns
25. Bravery

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Five Artists Drawings


John Romita Jr.


Jim Lee


Roy Lichtenstein


Frank Miller


Frank Miller


Jack Kirby


Jack Kirby

Five Hero Artists

Five artists that I admire and try to learn from are, Roy Lichtenstein, Jack Kirby, Frank Millar, John Romita Jr. and Jim Lee. Four of those five artists draw comic books, but they are still artists that I really look up to. Roy Lichtenstein is one of my favorite artists because of how bold and bright his paintings are. They are extremely simple, giant blow-ups of comic book panels, but the giant lines and glaring colors really bring them to life. His 3-D work is interesting too, such as the house sculpture that can be perceived as a room or as a house depending on how you view the central corner. I like work like his that is open to interpertation to the viewer. Jack Kirby is probably the most famous comic book artist of all time, his work on 1960s Marvel comics influenced the style for years to come. He also uses fairly simplistic lines with bright colors. Sometimes his environments can be intensely detailed, and so can his costumes but it still retains a sense of simplicity, regardless of all the minor details added in. He drew for the Fantastic Four and many other comic books during his long career. Frank Millar is another more contemporary comic book artist who is known for darker-themed books that he writes and usually illustrates as well. His style is extremely simplistic, almost bare-bones in its contrast. Alot of his work, like Sin City or the 300, has only a handful of colors and very blocky illustrations. I like that style though because as a reader, you still know exactly what is going on, and the way everything is drawn adds to the theme. John Romita Jr. is a modern comic-book artist, who currently draws a number of comic lines. He is not particularly amazing, but I respect typical comic art. It takes alot of work to draw 30 pages a month that cohesively tells a story, and he does a good job of telling a story with pictures. His style of art is fairly simplistic but his backgrounds are very well done. He keeps face simple as well as bodies, he does not draw bulky muscle with veins popping for his heroes, he draws men in costumes. Jim Lee is my final artist and I respect him simply for the fact that he draws intensely detailed people, faces, bodies, backgrounds, cars, and everything else. The level of detail in everything he draws is amazing because he does it for thrity pages a month just like Romita Jr. Lee has a perfect knowledge of facial structure and anatomy and his drawings look spot-on.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Artist Statement

Criteria 1 - I think that I am both a student and a practicing artist because I do both of those things with my time. I think that the student part of my life far outweighs the artist part but I do think that art is also an important part of my life. A person that inspires me is my girlfriend Samantha. We are dating and have been dating for a year which is a long time in high school. She motivates me to succeed by always pressing me to do my assignments and to draw.

Criteria 2 - I like to explore a comic book style universe when I draw. It is very interesting to me and keeps me interested in drawing. I prefer to work with cartooning but a more realistic type of cartooning that has correct proportions and good structure. I like to use either pencil or pens to draw and I like to leave my drawings black and white without any color.

Criteria 3 - I ended up in AP Art because I planned on taking it either junior or senior year at the beginning of high school. I expected a fairly straightforward class that would allow me to work on my drawings and not put too many extraneous assignments on my back. I initially set out to improve my style of art and to try and tweak it a little to make it better. This perpective did not change as my work took shape because my work ended up taking shape in a new and better style, exactly what I wanted from the class in the first place.

Criteria 4 - My background influences my work because my work is always based on some sort of imaginary fantasy I have had, either when I was young or a current fantasy. My background must have influenced these fantasies so I think it is safe to say that my background influences all my work. Past experiences govern everything I draw in my opinion. Also, of the three choices I would say that I am an observer.

Criteria 5 - I really have no idea what I will be like when I grow up. I doubt anyone in this school knows what they will be like when they are older. Some people might have an idea but noone knows what will happen to them in life. Ideally I would make a decent amount of money and have either a small house or an apartment. I might live in this area but I might live somewhere completely random also. I will probably live with my wife, whoever that will be. My house or apartment would be very clean and well-organized because that is the way I keep things. I don't know how many pets or children I will have and I don't even want to speculate because I personally don't want kids or pets but I'm sure I'll end up having some. I dream about being done with high school and that is the furthest extent of my fantasies.

Final Artist Statement - I think that I am both an artist and a student trying to balance the two different lives. I am influenced by my girlfriend, who motivates me to succeed and do well in school and at art. I draw in a comic book style, and I have drawn that way for my entire life because comic books were important to me when I was younger. I work in pencil or pen and ink and usually combine the two on pieces. I haved worked on honing my art style in AP art and that is exactly what I expected to do in the class. My style is better than it was at the beginning of the year, clearer-looking and more bold. My background influences my art, I used to live comic books and so that has influenced me to draw in the style of comic book artists. When I get older I hope to have a successful career and hope that I am able to make enough money to live comfortably. I hope that my art will be my career, maybe I'll be a comic-book artist and that would be a job that I would love.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Part I: Concentration

I wrote that my area of concentration was costume design and comic book style art. In my area of concentration I mostly use pencils and sometimes pens and all of the work reflects a comic-book influenced style of art. Half of the drawings are figure drawings with costume designs that I created myself. Four of my pieces are sequential art, to show that comic books are my main style of art and all of those pieces are done in pencil. I didn't want to reupload some pictures that are already on the blog that I used in my AP Portfolio but I did use the 3000 AD picture, the picture of all the teenagers fighting the three beasts and some other drawings of my girlfriend. My style is heavily influenced by the artists I have previously blogged about, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Miller, Dave Mazzuchelli, John Romita and Jim Lee. My area of concentration is definitely in the realm of comic-book style art and is all drawn similarly. These works are from a number of different years but remain a coherent theme that I always use.

Part I: Concentration 11-12


Part I: Concentration 6-10





Part I: Concentration 1-5





Part III: Lesson to the Class


For my lesson to the class I want to teach how to draw a person in a comic-book style way. My reference is a book at my house that I will bring to class on the day I'm teaching called "How to Draw the Marvel Way". It is the book that I use as a reference for drawing people and teaches you a simple way to draw a person. It starts with a stick figure that is anatomically correct. You draw the figure in any position you'd like and then begin to "pipe it up" by creating muscle-less joints with light pencil lines. After creating a pose and giving the figure some underlying structure you begin to add on muscle and smaller details. After adding muscle you use your eraser to get rid of excess lines that were used for your underlying structure. After doing this you can add whatever details you want and your figure should look good because you gave it a sort of scaffolding to draw around. With this "scaffolding" in place, it is easier to draw with correct proportions and anatomy.

Jim Lee

As you can see from the examples, Jim Lee is an extremely good renderer of anatomy and of superheroes. His art is very distinctive in its perfection and high attention to detail. He is very famous and his art is splashed all over merchandising such as the Playstation 2 game, Contra and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure box art. He has drawn many covers and is excellent at both drawing people and drawing backgrounds as evidenced in the Green Lantern and Batman drawings. In both those drawings there are very highly detailed cityscape backgrounds as well as well-drawn figures in the foreground. In my opinion, Jim Lee is the ultimate well-rounded artist. He really does not have any weak points and is excellent at rendering foregrounds, backgrounds and figures in space.



Jim Lee

Jim Lee is a Korean-American comic book artist and is one of the best and most influential of the modern comic book artists. He is 43 years old and has been drawing for Marvel and DC comics since the 1990s. Alot of his art of superheroes is used in marketing and on t-shirts. He draws in a very detailed style with hundreds of fine lines to detail muscles and clothes. He has drawn Superman, Batman, X-Men, and the Punisher. In the 1990s he founded his own comic book company with multiple other artists called Image comics. He was a co-writer on many of the different titles and an artist as well on many titles. He sold his division of Image comics, called Wildstorm to DC in 1998 and has been working on Batman and Superman ever since. Lee is known for redesigning the costumes of many of the X-Men into their current designs and for creating many X-men characters. Lee is one of the most influential modern comic artists and is very popular amoung people who regularly read comics because of his style of art. Many artists mimic him but none are as good as him.

Part II: Letter to Art III

To rising AP Studio Art students,

I wanted to give you some advice based on my experience in AP Studio Art this year. I think that the main focus of the class is the AP portfolio in May and you should centralize your year around this event. You may think at the beginning of the year that you have plenty of time to create your portfolio but it really isn't that long. I was underprepared for it this year and wasn't able to submit my best work. I think that you should focus on creating thirty or more pieces by May and even if they aren't the best in the world its better than submitting sketches. This year also helped me alot with developing a style. I think that if you find your area of concentration early on in the year it makes the rest of the year easy and managable. I found my area of concentration with pen and ink in October and was able to create those types of pieces for the rest of the year. I have one more year of AP Studio Art and I think next year I'll be able to develop my artistic style even more. It is important that you find a type of style that is distinct and separates you from the pack. It is important to be distinctive and unique and that is the advice that I have learned this year that I am giving to you.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Does the blog help?

The blog helps me to be more focused on this class as a whole. It is an easy objective assignment every month to add a new artist, to scan new images, and to make new artist statements. I really like when there are clear-cut assignments in a class that I know of and can finish and be done with. This usually doesn't occur in an art class because art is usually a subjective class. It is nice to have a little bit of objective work mixed in with the subjective work of creating new drawings. The blog allows me to create goals with artist statements and my hundred words that allow me to narrow down what my next work will be on. Without this guideline I wouldn't know what to draw some of the time. When I'm out of ideas on what to draw it's nice to be able to go back to this blog and see the artists who inspire me, my words that describe what I draw and previous works that I have created. These past experiences inspire me to create new work and create a cushion for me. I really like the blog alot more than I did last year and it should be kept as a requirement for this class.

Artist Statement

My concentration currently is on inking over pencilled drawings. I really like how ink makes the pencil look, much more defined and much cleaner. Pencil alone looks unfinished even when I'm done with a drawing, but when I'm done inking over a drawing I pencilled it looks polished and done. My focus this month is on finishing a large drawing of my girlfriend with ink and color and starting a new 8" by 11" drawing with ink and pencil. I think I will do another work involving multiple figures fighting each other in contorted positions.

The Amazing Spiderman 1960s Covers





As you can see from these comic covers, Romita's style is extremely bold and bright. His lines are well-defined, smooth and dynamic. There is no sketching in his style, his characters look like Saturday morning cartoons. I really like this simplistic style because it suits the subject matter which is silly and cartoonish. The stories are ridiculous and Romita's style of cartooning really makes them come to life. I like the way that characters are idealized and extremely stylized, but not too much so. John Romita Sr. is one of my favorite artists and the way he works reflects on the way I draw.

John Romita Sr.

John Romita Sr. is a famous comic book artist from the 1950s-1970s. He is Italian-American and was born in 1930. He is best-known for his extremely long run on the Amazing Spiderman in the 1960s and 1970s. He graduated from the School of Industrial Art in 1947 and got is first real work drawing comics for $20 a page and going uncredited. After that he met Stan Lee, the editor of Marvel Comics. Romita began to draw Captain America and Spiderman. Romita became an inker in the 1950s when he felt "burned out" from doing pencilling work on substandard romance comic books. Then after a while of inking Daredevil, another famous Marvel comic book, he was asked to pencil The Amazing Spiderman. Afte working for many years, Romita retired and now occasionally draws a page or two for special commerative comic books as a guest. He pencilled Daredevil from 1965-1966, Captain America in 1966, Spiderman in 1966-1970 and 1972-1973, The Fantastic Four in 1970-1971, and Captain America in 1971. Romita is known for a very bold style. His characters are very well-defined and their poses are very dynamic. Romita is very famous in comic-book circles for his contributions during the 1960s, when comic books were at the peak of their popularity.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Whaam!



This is Lichtenstein's most famous work. It is called "Whaam!" and was drawn directly from a comic book panel. This drawing is much larger than the original format though. The painting is five feet tall and about ten feet long. The colors are also bolder than they were in the original comic book. The dialogue and the positioning of all the objects remains the same though. The lines are all very accentuated and bold and make the image of the explosion and the plane look like they pop out of the page.

Roy Lichtenstein

My second artist for January is more famous than the last one. His name is Roy Lichenstein, he was born on October 27th, 1923 and died on September 29th, 1997. He was the most famous of all the "pop" artists of the 1950s and 1960s. His art was heavily influenced by comic artists. His paintings look very iconic, and the colors are bright and bold, with many of them looking like newsprint. He went to Ohio State University for a few years but was drafted into World War II from 1943-1946. After that he became a professor at Rutgers University. In 1964 he began to work on his famous works using oil and magna paint. His most famous work was "Whaam!" which he created in 1963. His most famous work was heavily influenced by 1960s comic books, and they were often large-scale recreations of comic book panels from comics of the time. In 1965 he largely stopped creating comic book influenced work and started work on more abstract media. In the 1970s his artwork was surreal and very abstract. He died in 1997 of pnuemonia.