Hi, My Name Is Simon!

Do you like to do drawrings? Have you ever wanted to be a comic book artist, or know someone who does? If so, then you are no doubt familiar with the many, many how-to drawing books that are out there. Thinking this might make for an interesting post, and, I hope, to help a few people out, I am going to provide capsule reviews of the how-to drawing books that I feel are the most helpful to the would-be comic book artist

I even took out the profanity so you can share this post with the kiddies. Am I a swell guy, or what?

Warning: This is a long post.

A fellow Curmudgeon and I once shared the observation that the folks still reading comics (whom I like to call "Those Who Remain") are all really wannabe comics creators or used to be at one point. In the interest of serving that constituency, I thought I might try something different for this Curmudgeons post. I know that wannabe comic book artists (and I was certainly one for a long time) buy a lot of books -- everything from How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way to Dynamic Anatomy. I took the full load of figure drawing and anatomy classes in art school, and have bought or read a ridiculous number of books related to those topics in general and comic book art in specific. So what I want to do is to talk about some of these books and which ones helped me the most, and why.

It should go without saying that other people, including those who know far more than I, will have opinions that differ from mine, but one of the most important lessons any artist must learn is that you have to find your own way. Something the pro you most respect in the world says is a stupid thing to do may be exactly the approach you need to draw the things you want to draw the way you want to draw them, so never rule anything out. But my hope is to point artists who want to draw or paint figurative artwork, but are still learning or struggling with their skills, in directions they may not have considered before. What worked for me may not work for you -- but then again, it just might. Never hurts to explore.

You hear the old chestnut all the time that you should draw as much as humanly possible, especially from life. If you want to draw people, draw real people at life drawing sessions. That's good advice (especially the "draw all the time" part), but it's also true that doing so will only help you so much if you are reinforcing bad habits that you've developed because of a lack of proper training, or if you don't know what you should be looking for when you draw a live model. There's no substitute, in my opinion, for the sort of formal training one can receive at a legit art school (especially one that offers Illustration classes and not just Fine Arts classes), but books can help fill in some of the gaps and help you train yourself more effectively.

In fact, that's how you need to look at how-to art books, I think. They're not magic tomes that contain tiny pieces of arcane lore that will transform you into the next hot artist overnight. But they may help you focus attention on specific areas that you haven't worked on before, or make you aware of conceptual approaches of which you were previously unaware.

A brief aside as I illuminate Chris' Best Advice to Fellow Artists:

• Work the Opposites
  
  
• Give Yourself Permission to Suck

Let's see if I can explain the first one. As would-be comic book artists growing up, I think the common trend is to spend most of our time drawing small, tightly-penciled little figures on small sketchpads or small panels on Bristol board pages. We spend a long time on nearly every drawing trying to make it as good as possible. If you go and take a general drawing class from a university or art school, however, chances are that they're going to want you to go out and buy some charcoal and a giant-sized pad of cheap newsprint, and then they're going to make you stand up at an easel and draw fast, sloppy, big, and loose.

I can't tell you how many wannabe cartoonists and comic book artists I've seen flinch at this. They want to sit down and draw in their sketchbooks with mechanical pencils, and they want to draw as tightly as humanly possible. Hey, I understand only too well where that impulse is coming from, believe me, but you would be amazed at how much you can learn and improve at one thing by doing the opposite, which is what my "Work the Opposites" advice is about. Drawing big, sloppy, fast, and loose will help you immeasurably when you sit down to draw small and tight.

Similarly, I can't tell you how much I learned about drawing from my painting classes. I wasn't really all that excited about learning how to paint. I hadn't grown up doing it, I sucked at it, the brush felt clumsy and awkward in my hand, and it didn't have anything to do with what I wanted to do artistically. But when you draw something realistically or naturalistically, what you're really trying to do is to model a three-dimensional form in space via the interplay of light and shade on the form. Even if you're cartooning, even if you're just contouring, that's what it's really all about, and painting is one of the best ways to learn and adapt to that mental process. By the same token, once I started to develop a little skill with the brush, I was amazed at how much my drawing skills helped my painting.

Speaking of cartooning, I read an interview with Will Eisner and Neal Adams in which they talk about how beneficial it is to the "serious" comic book artist to learn to draw what Eisner calls "big foot style" -- cartoon style (because in cartoony artwork the characters usually have disproportionately large feet). I couldn't agree more, and once again it may be a case of exploring and learning from something that isn't what you really want to do, but it's another amazingly helpful exercise. If you're going to draw comic book stuff, for example, one of the issues you are faced with is cartooning -- that is, simplifying figures from a photorealistic level to one appropriate to the comic you're drawing. Taking that approach to an extreme where you go from photorealistic to completely cartoony is an incredibly helpful learning tool.

Opposites don't just attract, they stimulate and expand each other in generally very positive ways. Work the opposites!

This leads nicely to my second bit of advice: Give Yourself Permission to Suck. A lot of the resistance to trying new and different things comes from not wanting to do things that we're bad at. As a visual artist, putting yourself out there for judgment through your work is hard enough with the stuff that you think you're good at! It's a lot harder and lot less comfortable to expose yourself through work that you don't think is any good to begin with.

But if you're going to be a visual artist -- especially if you plan on ever selling or distributing your work in any fashion -- there are some things you have to keep in mind:

• Fear and anxiety are normal and common components of the artist's psyche.
  
  
• You're almost certainly never going to be as good as you want to be -- at least, not for a long time.
  
  
• There's almost always going to be someone better than you in your immediate peer group.
  
  
• You are not your artwork.
  
  
• You are still a good and valuable artist even if you're not as good as you want to be or if you're not the best artist in your class/studio/art students league/whatever.
  
  
• Art is fun. Have fun, darn it! :-)

That last point is at the heart of giving yourself permission to suck, and it ties in directly to working the opposites. Lots of times we, as developing artists, shy away from things that aren't fun for us. Often what's not fun are things that are hard for us to draw or that we don't feel we draw very well. Part of working the opposites includes throwing yourself enthusiastically into those things as well. What's more, it's really the only way you'll stretch yourself to grow and develop as an artist to the point where you'll be professional caliber. And that development will be a lot more fun, a lot smoother, and a lot less stressful if you give yourself permission to suck.

You don't have to be good at everything, and you don't have to be good all the time. The stuff that you don't like you can always choose to throw away later or not show anyone. If someone in a class comes along and looks over your shoulder at your easel and observes some of your work that sucks, you can always bust out the sketchbook that has the stuff that you think rocks in it to prove you don't suck if you want to. Besides, most of your fellow artists, students, and casual observers of art are going to be a lot more supportive than not. And if they're not supportive, hey, that's why God gave you a middle finger. Don't be afraid to use it! [That piece of advice not applicable to children.]

The point is, bust out that giant, sucky pad of newsprint once in a while and go crazy. Draw big, rushed, sloppy figures or firetrucks or whatever on it. If perspective is what you fear, forget your ruler, bust out some paper you don't care about, and draw the worst perspective scenes anyone has ever seen. I guarantee that once you get over the cringe factor, you'll relax and you'll start developing an eye for the things that look wrong, for the angles that are just a little bit off, for the volumes that are a little too squashed, for the proportions that aren't quite right, and so forth. That's how you grow as an artist!

Okay, now for the actual books. I have linked each book to Amazon so you can check it out, but of course you are encouraged to support your locally owned, non-chain bookstore if possible.

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema

Let me go ahead and get this one out of the way first. Let me also go ahead and admit up front that this is the first real how-to art book I bought and one that had a huge impact on my development from "little kid who likes to draw" to "early teen trying seriously to draw good comic books." But what this book is really good for is a light introduction to concepts and approaches that you will probably use and rely on once you learn how to put them into practice with more depth and more craft.

I think that it's a book that's worth revisiting from time to time as your skill and awareness of your craft grows, because you'll realize how little you knew then in comparison to what you know now, which I find is usually a worthwhile realization. :-) But I don't think that this book is good as your primary tool for learning how to draw. The comics-specific information it contains is good stuff but stuff that you really don't need to worry about until down the road when your drawing skills are pretty solid. (Which isn't to say you can't have fun in the meantime drawing actual comic book pages even though your drawing skills overall aren't very impressive, but I'm speaking in terms of a somewhat organized path to developing overall drawing skills.)

Drawing From the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

The first chapter goes on about the scientific basis upon which her book is based, that creativity comes from the right side of the brain. My understanding is that there is still much debate about the scientific credibility of this simplification, but it's not really important as far as the actual drawing exercises go, so just ignore it unless you're really interested. But the drawing exercises are excellent. To my mind there's no question that you get into a different mental zone when you're drawing well, a different zone than you need to be in for just about any other pursuit. The exercises in this book will help you get into that zone, recognize it, and get used to how it feels and learn how to work with it. That's huge.

Just as important, the exercises break down and will make you focus on and appreciate what your drawing skill is really all about it: Seeing things, mentally envisioning things, and then directly translating those visualizations through your arm and your hand onto the page. It's a type of eye-hand and brain-hand coordination that is different from eye-hand coordination as you normally think of it, and it's a tough skill to master. Any progress you can make along these lines will form an enormously helpful foundation upon which to build or improve your drawing skills. And the things Edwards covers in these exercises are all things you can use and build on when you get the opportunity to draw from life.

Additionally, many of the exercises will help train you to develop the knack for being able to quickly and reliably tell when the angle of a line is a little bit off, to sense correct proportions as you're drawing them, and other very helpful skills that normally only come through long experience.

If you read this book you must do the exercises described in it, because those are what will help you. This is a good book to start with.

(Note: I haven't really looked at the Workbook that is now out as a complimentary volume to this text, nor have I ever seen the video that is also out. My only experience is with the original book itself.)

The Vilppu Drawing Manual by Glenn Vilppu

This is the best hidden gem on my list, a book that not a lot of people have heard of but is extremely helpful (the only reason I ever heard of it is that my Illustration department head went to school with Vilppu back in the day). Glenn Vilppu has worked off and on for Disney as the guy they bring in to teach their animators how to draw. This book provides a nice, step-by-step method for developing solid drawing skills in general and figure drawing in specific. And don't just sort-of read the text while paying attention to the drawings. The text itself contains lots of useful information and advice.

He starts with gesture drawing, moves to simple volumes and how to combine them, and then progresses from there. It's really an excellent drawing course in one book, and you should work your way through the lessons and do the exercises. Spend good, long, leisurely time working on them, and work through them multiple times. This is a fantastic book with a lot of good information. Highly recommended.

Human Anatomy for Artists: The Elements of Form by Eliot Goldfinger

Forget the rest, this is the best. By far the best book on anatomy for visual artists, this one has the information that you need to know: What the muscles look like under the skin, what they look like on the surface, what their origins and insertions are (where they anchor and attach), and what they do, how, and why. On top of that, the book is loaded with great information on understanding how the body is put together in three dimensions, how to conceptualize the forms of the body as simple volumes that are less daunting than the whole. It also has a much easier-to-read writing style than most anatomy texts of any sort.

I do have a few other anatomy texts near my drafting table (Artistic Anatomy by Paul Richer and Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck in particular). They have some good information on topics like the effects of aging and differences between races that are interesting and sometimes helpful. They also offer nice illustrations of muscles in different poses than the Goldfinger book, as well as more illustrations of what the muscles look like on the surface (an area that a lot of anatomy texts tend to short change).

Fun with a Pencil, Figure Drawing for all It's Worth, Creative Illustration, Drawing the Head and Hands, and Successful Drawing by Andrew Loomis

If you're interested in comic book art and you've spent any time at all on the web searching for tips and advice, it's hard to imagine that you haven't encountered numerous recommendations for the Loomis books. The good news is that, yes, they're that good. The bad news is that they've been out of print for a long time now and have to be purchased via the used book market at prices in the one to three hundred dollar range. Yikes!

I purchased these books at great expense back when I was making serious money and before the advent of digital file sharing. Now you can easily download all of these books via the internet, possibly from the links above -- but of course you should not do that.

As for the books themselves, they are quite wonderful. Loomis is an old school, pre-television illustrator, an illustrator's illustrator, and an effective writer on things artistic. These books are a treasure trove of incredibly helpful information, good advice, and tips and techniques. As with any how-to art book, this is stuff that will only help you if you read and actually practice it, but if you do you will get a lot out of it.

Should you go and shell out hundreds of dollars to get these books? I would say that you should not until and unless you are actually a working professional artist (or your parents are loaded and will buy them for you). I think that if you were to actually read and practice the techniques and approaches in the other books that I am recommending, and really dedicate yourself to the craft and to broadening and improving your skills, you will advance your abilities to a professional level regardless. But if you're able to do that and to start making a regular paycheck as an artist, it's definitely worth the time and expense to hunt down and study the Loomis books (and if you wait until you're a working artist, they'll be tax deductible!).

The books provide the usual how-to formula of rough sketch to blocks-spheres-cylinders, to finished drawing, and tips on things like perspective, reviews of basic anatomy and volume issues, and so forth -- although Loomis has a knack for explaining these things that few can match. Plus he sprinkles these topics with numerous tricks and tips that are otherwise hard to find. Better still, the Loomis books, Creative Illustration in particular, offer a great deal of advice and information on high level design issues, an area that is sadly ignored or glossed over in most other how-to drawing texts.

On top of all that, I think the real strength of these books is that if you read them cover-to-cover (no small feat -- the Loomis books have a lot of text) and actually practice the techniques contained within, you'll start to think like an illustrator. It's like that problem-solving visual artist mindset just rubs off on you after a while. Although wordy (like me), Loomis' text explains, quite deftly (unlike me), the thought process and the approach to visual problem solving that is, I think, the mark of a true professional. And that is what makes the Loomis books so great in comparison to all the other how-to art books out there.

Drawing the Head and Figure, and Cartooning the Head and Figure by Jack Hamm

Like Loomis, Hamm is an old school, pre-TV illustrator. Man, those guys had some serious drawing chops! Unlike Loomis, Hamm's books are still and print and extremely inexpensive.

In Drawing the Head and Figure, Hamm offers the usual "draw stick figures first, sketch in volumes (blocks, spheres, cylinders), and then finish off the drawing" approach you've encountered many times before. What makes this book worth buying and studying, even if you have all the others, is that Hamm also provides many little tricks, tips, and alternative approaches to solving different figure drawing problems ranging from aging, to figure perspective, to hair, to clothing wrinkles.

The importance of alternative approaches to solving different drawing problems can't be stated strongly enough. Vilppu likes to say that "there are no rules, just tools." Indeed, the best approach is whatever approach enables you, the visual artist, to produce the work you are striving to achieve. If you were to read through all of the books that I discuss, you would see several different approaches to the simple "stick figure as basis for figure drawing" technique. Which one is "best?" No such thing. The best one is whichever one works best for you at the time. The same is true with anything drawing-related. There have been many times when I've been having trouble with a particular figure drawing because of the angle, or the staging, or just for a random mental block reason, when suddenly I'll remember one of Hamm's tricks, give it a shot, and [snaps fingers] the drawing quickly comes together.

As for Cartooning the Head and Figure, I mentioned earlier about how learning to cartoon is a huge help for learning to draw comic book art, and Hamm's book on cartooning is a cornucopia of techniques and approaches to cartooning people. There are many techniques in this book that, drawn more realistically, can be directly applied to solving comic book figure problems.

Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing, Drawing Dynamic Hands, Drawing the Human Head, Dynamic Light and Shade, and Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery by Burne Hogarth

Ah, Burne Hogarth. Seems like several years ago the whole line of Burne Hogarth books suddenly popped up in comic book shops across this great land of ours, and I can now spot an artist who learned from Hogarth's books but otherwise knows little about anatomy or figure drawing from a mile away (not a good thing).

My opinion on the Hogarth books is that they aren't very good books to learn drawing, anatomy, or figuring drawing from. Hogarth's style is exaggerated and highly stylized, and he doesn't ground what he's showing in the reality of the human body. And in terms of writing he's not very good at explaining things. There's also something about his style that leads learning-by-copying artists to draw very tightly (too tightly).

That having been said, I think the books on anatomy and figure drawing are fun if you already know your anatomy and figure drawing pretty well, and Hogarth's style of exaggeration and figure distortion is handy to consider if one is drawing over-muscled superheroic types. Dynamic Light and Shade has a few nice tidbits in it, although it doesn't really instruct the fundamentals of light and shade that make the tidbits really useful. Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery has some solid info, but I don't know that Hamm doesn't tell you everything you need to know or that the subject warrants an entire book at twenty-two bucks.

My advice on the Hogarth books is that you should just ignore them until after you are already a capable figure artist, and then take a look at the ones that are of greatest interest to you to see if you can adapt any aspects of his style and approach to your work.

Constructive Anatomy, The Human Machine, Bridgman's Life Drawing, and Heads, Features and Faces by George Bridgman

About the same time that the Hogarth books started popping up in comic book shops, so did the George Bridgman books. Let me say first that I have the small versions of the books mentioned above. The quality of the reproductions of Bridgman's drawings in these books is faint and not very good in general. There is a newer volume out now called Drawing From Life that appears to be a collection of the above works, and the quality of the reproductions is much, much higher. As near as I have been able to tell by flipping through the book at Barnes & Noble, this new volume seems to contain all of the text and drawings from the little books. If this is not the case, please let me know.

The information and approach in the Bridgman books is excellent and far superior to the Hogarth books. Bridgman advocates and engenders a looser, more painterly style, and that's a very good thing.

Brief Aside: You should keep your drawing as loose and as lively as possible for as long as possible. If the work needs to be tight, or tighter, you can and should tighten it up at the inking stage. If Rich is right and Marvel is pressuring pencilers to turn in tighter work so that it can be scanned and Photoshop-inked, then that's a tragedy and comic book fans should storm Marvel's offices with pitchforks and torches in their hands.

Anyway, even if you have the other books that I have recommended, you definitely should add Bridgman to your library. Although he's a much dryer writer than Loomis, he's still extremely informative and his approach of conceiving the human figure as a bunch of blocky masses that click together and move and function in machine-like ways is extremely useful, particularly to someone drawing big, muscular figures.

The next two books that I'm going to recommend are my other little gems.

Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Unless you are already a professionally successful and beloved artist, chances are that you have a lot of anxiety about your work and its quality. You are probably plagued by uncertainty and self-doubt about whether or not you're good enough or whether or not you'll ever be good enough. In fact, if you're not, even if you are a success, then I suspect that there's something wrong with you (*koff!* John Byrne *koff!*).

This excellent little book addresses those issues and is not only a nice warm-fuzzy pick-me-up, but it actually offers some practical considerations and advice for facing and dealing with the fear and doubt that are likely to be your constant companions as an artist. I recommend this book to any artist in any field.

Action! Cartooning by Ben Caldwell

This is a very nice little book that just recently came out and gives you tremendous value for the price. It's sort of an intermediate step between Hamm's book on cartooning and more "realistic" comic book art. There are a lot of beautiful drawings in this book that you should really study, because Caldwell's problem solving skills are exceptional. In addition, there is excellent information and techniques for simplifying the human figure.

If you are sketching for purposes of thumbnailing, storyboarding, or generating ideas, and you're struggling some while drawing more realistically, it's often extremely helpful to downshift and work the problem from a more cartoony approach (if you haven't tried this at all, you'll be amazed at how helpful it is). Caldwell's book gives you lots of good fuel for that approach. Highly recommended.

I'm now going to briefly address a series of books that have become omnipresent in comic book shops and regular chain bookstores across the land:

How to Draw Manga by the Society for the Study of Manga Techniques

Briefly, I feel the same way about these books that I do about Hogarth or, to a lesser extent, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way: Do not try to learn to draw from these books. Learn to draw, and draw well, and then come back and check out these books later if you are wanting to draw manga or adapt manga techniques and approaches to your work. In that context these books are very useful. But please, in the name of Kirby, don't learn to draw manga (because you think it's simpler or easier than learning to draw realistically), learn to draw the figure and then adapt that to drawing manga or anime later on if that's what you want to do. Trust me, you will be far, far better off if you take my advice.

Finally, I want to mention a couple of books, one that has been released and one that hasn't yet, that I am excited and intrigued by but haven't had a chance to read. If I can get my hands on them, I'll do separate, full-blown reviews of them. The books are:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel by Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber

Acting With a Pencil: Effective Drawing for Comics and Animation by James Blevins and Michael Manley

So that's all I got. Let me know what you think and if any of this was interesting or helpful for you.

Posted by Chris M. at September 22, 2004 4:23 PM | TrackBack