So another Thursday is upon us.
I really don’t like Thursdays.
For one thing, it’s the equivalent of my Sunday, meaning that it’s my last day off before going back to work.
And I don’t hate my job or anything, it’s just seems to me that it’s a natural reaction to dread, at least a little, going back to work.
So for that reason alone I would resent Thursdays.
However, due to the nature of my sleep schedule, Thursdays tend to be sort of wasted days.
I mean, I get up sometime after 8. Because I’ll go to bed as early as possible in order to get the maximum amount of sleep before getting up a little after 4 am, that means that I have less than 11 hours in which to accomplish anything.
Typically, that means that I reserve Thursdays for less creative pursuits. I do things like clean the apartment, do the laundry, etc.
Usually, though, sometime early in the afternoon I’ll finish the domestic tasks and sit down at the computer to do something. I’ll putter around for a while, not doing much of anything, and then suddenly at 5:00 I’ll hit on some idea, or I’ll start making progress on a picture, or something, and I’ll get totally caught up in it, making the last two hours of consciousness I have remaining fly by quickly.
By the end of this little creative rush hour I’ll have failed to finish whatever it is I started on, and, regretfully, I’ll pop my sleeping pills and go to bed.
The odds tend to favor me NOT getting back to whatever I was doing once my weekend starts.I have a folder on my hard drive that’s positively loaded with half-finished pictures that came to life following this pattern.
So obviously it’s hardly worth bothering with even starting on some sort of creative pursuit on Thursday, and yet, if I don’t, I’ll feel as though I’m wasting the precious few hours available to me.
Still, you’d think that after pretty much wasting 30+ years I’d be used to it by now. I guess the guilt just never really goes away…
Anyway, on this particular Thursday I’ve done very little that’s creative.
I got up, sat around wasting time (and feeling guilty about it) for about an hour, and then finally took a shower.
I got dressed and headed out to do run a few errands, the first of which was getting a haircut.
Accomplishing that I went to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple of things, then came home, baked some more peanut butter cookies so that I’ll have enough to bring in to work to snack on all weekend.
And that brings us up to date.
Exciting, huh?
I did start on a different picture (Jessica Simpson once again), but I just wasn’t feeling it. I’ve been playing around with that other image (the striped dress), trying to render it in a more refined version of that Nagel-ish/Comic Book style, but so far the results have been less than encouraging.
I’ve never actually had any formal art education, since there were no art classes offered at my high school, and I was too self-conscious and plagued with doubts about my talent to even THINK about taking any art classes in college.
So what I know about art I’ve pieced together myself, mostly off the backs of sugar packets.
Okay, only kidding about the sugar packets thing (that’s a line from “The Simpsons,” by the way).
But the point remains that as “an artist,” I’m almost entirely self-taught. Most of what I know about art comes from studying (and emulating) the works of artists who appeal to me.
Obviously you know that Nagel is one of those artists, but some others include Olivia, Luis Royo, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, and Jennifer Janesko.
(One thing all of them have in common, which should come as no surprise, is that their subjects, more often than not, are women.)
However, those are just the more commercially successful artists, the people whose works the average person is likely to have encountered somewhere along the line, whether on the cover of a paperback, or in a calendar, or whatever.
In the medium of comic books, though, there is a much broader palette for me to choose from in terms of influences.
For as far back as I can remember comic books, to some extent at least, have been a part of my life.
So in my time I’ve looked at the works of hundreds of talented artists. Some of the big names that stand our are George Perez, John Byrne, Alex Ross, Neal Adams, Mike Grell, Jerry Ordway, Greg Horn, Frank Miller, Jim Lee, Art Adams, Jim Starlin, Wendy Pini, and so many others.
Because I have no formal art education, I really don’t know that much about art history, or some of the “big names” in the more conventional artistic circles. I mean, in general terms I know a little about some of the big movements like Impressionism, or Cubism, and some of the big names, like Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and so forth.
And sure, I could probably recognize a Matisse if I saw it, or a Goya, and yes, I do love the works of Botticelli, but for me, “art” is primarily found in the four-color pages of the funny books.
And in that area, I know a lot. Ask anyone who’s ever seen me, from across a room, glance at a panel from a comic and identify the artist.
Sure, ANYONE can spot the work of Jack Kirby (they didn’t call him “King” for nothing, after all), but how many people could spot, say, Kerry Gammill? Or Bret Blevins?
Is that Trina Robbins over there? Why yes it is…
And my knowledge of comic book artists is nothing compared to what I know about the stories themselves. I’m not one of those total freaks who can spout issue number and title, page, and panel, but it would be fair to say that I pretty much have an encyclopedic knowledge about comic books in general.
So what, you ask?
So…nothing, actually.
I fully realize that it’s entirely useless. Recognizing the work of Dan Jurgens at a hundred paces while mentioning that Jim Sternanko frequently hid his signature in some background art and that an issue of “Swamp Thing” entitled “Rites of Spring” was the first comic to be published by a major company without the approval of the Comics Code Authority since the CCA’s inception is sort of neat, kind of, in a sad, and geeky way, but it’s not really a marketable skill.
Hell, even in the bounds of the comic book industry it wouldn’t be worth that much.
And I’m sure you can only imagine what a turn-on it is for the ladies.
“Oooh, baby, tell me again about the time that Superman and Batman teamed up to defeat the Mockingbird! Mmmmm…. was ‘Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch’ REALLY John Byrne’s first professional job? Oh! Oh! Oh God, I’m almost there! Tell me more about Duotone ™! What’s the secret origin of the Silver Surfer? OH GOD! Faster! Faster! Tell me about the Flash! Oh baby, YOU’RE the World’s Mightiest Mortal!”
…and so forth…
So yeah, the one thing I do/know better than most anyone else is utterly and completely pointless. It’s like being the world’s greatest authority on the history of the fork. I’m sure what you know about the history of the fork could be kind of interesting to some people, but it’s bound to be a pretty small demographic, and apart from maybe writing a coffee table book on the subject, it’s knowledge that has very little in the way of practical applications.
Yeah, I could probably do something along those lines myself, but the idea really doesn’t appeal to me, and I’m not really looking for suggestions for potential uses for my knowledge, I’m just…well, I don’t really know what I’m doing. Mourning my misspent youth, perhaps? Who knows?
In any case, while I do have a healthy sense of the line between reality and fantasy (for the most part, at least, but even on those rare occasions when the line does blur a little it never has anything to do with comic books, and it’s not something I want to get into right now), there’s no escaping the fact that, in some ways, comic books have colored my perceptions of the world.
Undoubtedly it’s impacted me in ways that I’m not even consciously aware of, though one of the most obvious ways is how I see people.
Quite frequently I’ll see a person whose features are such that they are oddly reminiscent of a particular artist’s style.
I’ll be out in the world and suddenly I’ll see someone who makes me think, “Oh look, a John Byrne.” Or, “Hey, she looks like an Alan Davis drawing come to life.”
By far, the most common are the “John Byrnes,” though I’m not sure why that’s the case.
It’s an odd way of looking at the world, I’ll admit, but it makes a great deal of sense to me, given how much of an influence comics, and the artists who drew them, had on my life.
I suppose it’s more a matter of art imitating life than anything else. Obviously the artists need to use some sort of reference, even if they’re only drawing on their memories for reference. Maybe Byrne just draws more heavily from “the common man” for his style.
It’s hard to say, but I should point out that actress Alyson Hannigan (Who played Willow on ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” and the “band camp” girl from “American Pie”), who is absolutely adorable, by the way (and her husband, Alexis Denisof, is luckier than any man named “Alexis” has a right to be), is the most obvious example of this phenomenon.
She’s basically like an Art Adams drawing that walked right off the pages of a comic book, and I think anyone could be able to see the obvious similarities.
(I had hoped to find some pictures that would demonstrate my point, but no luck. You would think it’d be easier, considering that Adams did some work for the “Buffy” comic book, but I only found one image of Willow, as rendered by Adams, and it was at an odd angle, and so didn’t look much like Willow, or really Adams’ style. So I guess you’ll have to take my word for it on this one. Maybe some day I devote some more time to this.)
As another example, I realized today as I was working on a Jessica Simpson picture that she is a total “Adam Hughes,” whom I neglected to mention earlier in my list of favorites. No one draws voluptuous babes the way that Mr. Hughes does, and with her soft, round curves, Jessica Simpson could easily be his work.
Anyway, I’ve probably rambled on more than enough. It’s actually an unfortunate side effect of having so much knowledge about comics to have an overwhelming desire to SHARE that knowledge, whether the person I’m sharing it wants to hear it or not, so I extend my apologies to any of you who’ve ever been bored to tears by my constant yammering on the subject, whether as the person I was sharing my knowledge with, or just an innocent bystander getting hit by some geek overflow.
But, just to round things out, here are some links to some sites related to some of the artists I’ve mentioned. Be forewarned that some of these sites contain nudity.
I hope that those of you who aren’t working have a good weekend.
George Perez:
http://www.georgeperez.com/
Adam Hughes:
http://www.comicbookpros.com/adamhughes/
John Byrne:
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/
Alex Ross (This guy is FREAKIN’ AMAZING):
http://www.alexrossart.com/
Greg Horn (I have a love/hate relationship with this guy. His work is so amazing that I’m floored by it. It’s absolutely phenomenal, and I just love it…then the jealousy kicks in and I hate him.):
http://www.greghornjudge.com/
Luis Royo:
http://www.luisroyo.com/ihomeroyo.htm
Olivia:
http://www.eolivia.com/
Jennifer Janesko:
http://www.janesko.com/
Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell:
http://www.imaginistix.com/
This isn’t an official site, but if you search on pretty much any of the comics artists I mentioned you’ll find examples of their work:
http://comicartcommunity.com/gallery/index.php
This is obviously a less than comprehensive list of artists whose work I admire, and there are a lot of talented, new artists on the comics scene (in relative terms, Horn and Ross are “new”) , but these are some of the major ones whose work I’ve been a fan of for a long time. In any case, I hope you’ll check their sites out and that you’ll be as amazed by their talent as I am.
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