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.