Art Philosophy: Silhouettes, The Penultimate in Minimalism

I'm currently working on a new graphic novel I hope to release in October. I'm a little over halfway finished drawing, inking, and lettering it. While working on it, I try to make each panel as interesting as possible and say as much with as little as possible. One great way to do this is thru silhouettes.

There is a principle of design called "Less is More". The idea is the average person tries to put too much into a work, and by stripping it down to its essential parts, one strips away the competing elements so only those that convey the message are left. The result is a clearer, stronger message without static or noise. In principle this is a good idea, but like anything else, it can be taken too far. (I'm talking to you Jon Ives and your recent iOS redesign and a few other things you've stripped too far down.)

Silhouettes are one common and powerful result of this principle. As with the example above, there is basically a large black shape with a few lines for the candles (ok, I did cheat by adding lines for the candles, but it made the panel so much more atmospheric). Even without seeing most of the details, it's clear who the proprietor is and the sense of the macabre and creepy comes thru clearly. In fact, blacking out his features may be even creepier.

Another form of this principle is chiaroscuro, or lights and darks. This was quite popular with painters in Rembrandt's day. The idea is to push the darks extra dark and the lights extra light so the image almost appears to be black and white shapes but with a few important details. Flemish painters tended to use color, but I like the modern uses in film noir and Frank Miller Sin City comics that use strictly black and white shapes with a few lines. I, of course, had to use a little chiaroscuro in my graphic novel as well.

Another advantage of minimalism is it adds to the stylization of the work. Stylization is nice, because it adds interest and uniqueness. I used to think only photorealistic renderings were good, but now I realize that the further one abstracts or stylizes a work from the way it appears in ordinary sunlight, the better (again to a point because any virtue taken too far is a vice).

You probably noticed the title says penultimate, which means one away from the ultimate. So what is the ultimate in minimalism? That's a revelation for another day.

What almost was or used to be: Archived Web Design

A few months ago I was hired to design a site for a new breastfeeding coalition. I created an initial design which was heartily praised (and I was paid for it), but then the coalition never happened. It's too bad, because the site would have looked really cool. But that's the way of commercial art. What do you think of the look?

Recently, I went thru old files when I came across this and other websites that have either been replaced by newer versions or sites that were designed but for one reason or another never launched. I thought it a shame for them to languish in obscurity. They say nothing posted on the Internet is ever permanently lost, but I think that only applies to information, pictures, and video you DON'T want to get out. Otherwise once a website is redesigned, the old version may never see the light of day. So I added a new section to my website featuring Archived Web Designs--site designs that are no longer with us, but were too good to be lost to the ravages of time. So here you go!

Let me know what you think!

Using Color Wisely in Art

It's amazing the difference changing just one element, color, can make. A few months ago I finished the text of my latest story, and I intended to illustrate it and have it released before the summer.

It didn't happen.

I'm really looking for a unique style that both stands out and is enjoyable, and even a little addictive, to look at. And I want it to be a little classic, meaning it isn't immediately and easily identified to a specific time period.

I also find myself wondering about picking a genre for my stories and sticking a little more closely to it. Looking over the Wandering Koala tales, there is romance, adventure, science fiction, fantasy, supernatural, horror, drama, and the list goes on. While I love stories that jump genres, there does need to be some sort of focus and consistency so fans know what they are getting into and are not shocked in a bad way at a new story.

So that's why I'm taking so long with this latest story. I really want it to be a paradigm example of what one can expect from a Wandering Koala tale.

The above sketches are a study of a style and technique for the illustrations. I actually drew the picture in pencil a couple of weeks ago and meant to ink it, but didn't, because I wasn't sure how. I've always loved my stick work (a willow stick dipped in Sumi ink), but for some reason I worry it won't be commercial enough, so I almost never use it. But it really does create a nice line. I'm still not sure about what to do with the color. I love color, but I also love black and white, and black and white tends to draw the reader in more once they start reading. But it is harder to get a reader to start, so there is the challenge. I decided to try the same image in three styles and put them next to each other to see which works best.

What do you think?

Other People's Characters: Wonder Woman

My favorite superhero is Wonder Woman (when she's done right, which is rare). Done right, Wonder Woman is confident and strong and yet very kind, polite, and encouraging. Too many people see kindness and a weakness and think the only way to have a strong female character is for her to be ornery, bossy, in charge, and brag about how wonderful she is while belittling others. Wonder Woman (when done right) is confident in her abilities and in herself so she doesn't need to act like an edgy witch to be strong or a positive role model. She can encourage, support, and lift others and see it as a strength instead of being demeaning.

This is a sketch I did with a Japanese brush pen based on the New 52 design with a few modifications. The background consists of several photos my brother and I have taken manipulated in Photoshop.

Let me know what you think.

Art Philosophy: The Use of Color

Color is an interesting animal. It is one of the Elements of Art (which include Line, Shape, Form, Value, Space, Texture, Color, and Motion), and probably the most powerful element. Differences in color will override any other design elements or ideas and immediately draw the eye to it.

Because it's so powerful, it needs to be used judiciously to gain maximum impact. In the early days of printing, this was forced onto artists, because of the difficulty and limitations they had. Artists were forced to design with color and really consider and plan for its use.

In the current digital era, color is so easy to add and print, it too often is overdone with form and shading meticulously rendered on every last hair. Just pick up a comic book from 2005 and compare it to a comic from 1995 and one from 1985. You'll see the approach and use of colors is completely different. In 1985, colors were created from hand cut film with each plate (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black) being a value of the whole divisible by four (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%). This limited the number of colors, made multiple colors more difficult and expensive, and so forced good colorists to make the most of a few hues. The results were really amazing. The 1995 comic shows the beginning of computer coloring with every color under the sun thrown in as a gradation with chaotic patterns of lights and darks and photoshop filters thrown in just because you could. Comics from 2005 seem to forget there were multiple colors and use mostly browns and greys with every value of each to create a very bland and muddy look.

This is just one of thousands of examples how the ease of adding color has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because an artist can now use any color he so chooses. But that creates the temptation to use every color just because you can. There is no longer the technical restraints to force an artist to plan his color design--he has to rely on self discipline, something creative people tend to lack.

The two works I've posted are different color treatments of the same image. The first followed my current move in color to use black & white plus one color. The second is a more traditionally colored version with flat shadows added. I like both, but the first on just seems to look more like art while the second looks more like commercial pandering. Not that there's anything wrong with commercial pandering, but it is nice to have a break from it. After all, we're faced with it everyday nearly everywhere we look.

These were drawn with a Zebra disposable brush pen and colored in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. I'm still not sure which I like better, because each has things going for it, and each have places they could be improved.

What do you think?

Character Sketch: Jungle Boy

This drawing is unusual. Usually when I create an image in this style, it's 100% digital. But for some reason I pulled out my brush and Sumi ink and drew it by hand before scanning it in and adding the colors and textures in Adobe Photoshop. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I thought it turned out really well. I got a lot of great comments from it (and one really pointless one, but that's all part of the game).

What do you think?

Other People's Characters: Hawkman

You've probably noticed most of my artwork is of original creations. That's not by accident. While I love watching, reading, playing, whatevering other people's creations, I don't really enjoy writing or drawing them. At least not most of the time. But every once in a while I wonder what my interpretation of another's creation might look like. You probably caught a previous serious of Wandering Koala meeting up with other famous characters like The Spider, The Phantom, Jak Phoenix, Lobster Johnson, Todd McFarlane's Spawn, and The Heckler by Keith Giffen. Those were really fun to do. So I decided to try another set, but this time just focusing on the characters from others.

Hawkman is a character I never liked until DC Comics' big Zero Hour event. They transformed Hawkman into a really cool character, and I picked up several issues. It was written by William Mesner-Loebs and drawn by Steve Lieber, both people whose work I usually enjoy. In their version, Hawkman was actually the combination of generations of Hawkmen and had supernatural powers. I'm not sure why others didn't enjoy it as much as me, because it's become a pretty forgotten chapter in the character's history.

I drew this work with my usual Staedtler 2B pencil, inked it with a Crayola marker (the original broad stroke kind) on Strathmore Sketching paper, and colored it in Adobe Photoshop with a few textures in Corel Painter. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm also amazed at the line quality one can get with a Crayola maker. Who says Jamba Juice isn't an inspiration for the arts!

As always, let me know what you think!

Good Intentions

This is the cover is for a short story about the near future when government decides to take scientists' fears of an asteroid hitting the Earth seriously and one very likely course of action. I used a photo by Petr Kratochvil and recolored, retoned, and cropped it. I also added the fire from the sky, prison bars, and typography. It's the third version for this story, but I think the best. And it definitely fits the feel and tone of the tale.

You can read it for free at Smashwords or one of the many fine eRetailers around.

It's Done!

And it is done! The first draft of the latest Wandering Koala tale (currently titled Modest Proposal) is finished!

It's an apocalypse virus story that I've been kicking around for a while (I even started writing a version a few years thinking it would be my third novel, but the story didn't go anywhere). I was inspired to write this when I started reading Contagion (a story arc in Batman comics) when I was a teenager. There was a TV movie with a similar theme soon after that solidified it.

The title Modest Proposal is an interesting one, because while I've read the famous Jonathan Swift essay, it didn't even cross my mind until I was almost finished with the first draft and looking for a title. The working title was Disease, but that just didn't sound compelling enough. I also thought about calling it The Third Horseman (or Fourth or Fifth) but that sounded too unoriginal. Then I thought of Final Solution since that sort of fits the plot, but World War II and Nazis have been so overdone that I try to avoid them. That's when A Modest Proposal popped into my head. The prologue definitely has some similarities and parallels, so I decided to go with it for now. (And anyone searching for the essay may 'accidentally' stumble onto my book, a bonus.)

Of course, now I have to revise, revise, revise, so the title could change. I doubt the story will, because it's already been thru so many drafts and versions that I'm pretty sure this is the one. It reads and feels like a Wandering Koala story. The last one, The Green Bull, didn't. That's why it didn't make it into paperback and why the site wasn't redesigned using artwork from that story.

And the image above has nothing to do with it other than they both feature everyone's favorite Silent Wanderer. The inking was a Zebra disposable brush pen and the background is a Google Sketch Up model that has been heavily painted over in Corel Painter.

Inspiration

The Universe wasn't created from nothing. God didn't point his figure at a void and boom! everything came into being. There was existing matter that God organized to create "worlds without number".

Art is no different; it doesn't come from a vacuum. Every work is inspired and informed by something else. When I was in Art School, one of my instructors after an Art Seminar pointed to a speaker and mentioned how it was patterned after the golden section the visiting artist had talked about, and how the golden ratio was based on proportions Jesus had used to create the Earth. Ultimately everything an artist "creates" is a reinterpretation of part or parts of the world around us.

And that doesn't apply to just visual art. How many times have you read a book, seen a TV show, or watched a movie that reminded you of another story? Probably quite often. There are only so many plots and characters out there.

The wall hanging to the left was inspired by Japanese and Chinese prints. I know what you're saying--it doesn't look very Japanese. And I agree. But the approach was very much inspired by oriental art, but with my western and personal interpretation. It's that unique interpretation which makes a work "creative" or "original" when everything in it came from an already existing world around us.

And in case you were curious, I drew the figures with a Zebra disposable brush pen and then colored them and designed the backgrounds in Corel Painter.

Let me know what you think!