7 inspirational artists

[johncomic]

bevantor has asked me by way of her blog to talk about “7 artists that inspire me”. Since I can't resist verbalizing at length about such topics, even if I need to cheat in order to do so, I have decided to answer this quasi-question two ways: by talking about 7 artists who have directly, technically influenced my work, and then 7 artists who have inspired me in more general, spiritual ways.

7 Artists Who Have Directly Influenced My Art Technique

These I will list in the order that I first encountered their influence, so this will end up being a chronological tour through my growth as a cartoonist:

1) Curt Swan and George Klein: trust me, these guys count as one artist, because when Swan was drawing the 60s DC Comics I grew up on, he was always inked by Klein. Their teamwork formed an inseparable unit back then. (Although I didn't always know that...)

Because DC did not believe in creators' credits in their comics back in my day, I was a fan of Swan for years before I learned his name (when it came up in a letter column discussion). Once I learned it, he was The Man as far as I was concerned -- only many years after the fact did I learn that A) comics were inked as well as drawn and B) Swan didn't do his own inking, the gorgeous linework which I laboriously aped in my own comic attempts was the work of one George Klein.

Swan was far and away my favourite comic artist in the 60s. He was a master of clear, clean, classic depiction of solid form, and his work was instantly recognizable and unique. He had a grasp of roundness and realness and space that even future generations have found hard to equal. (I find it incredible that there was never a school of Swan wannabes -- Swannabes? --in the artists that came after him.) And I learned about what sorts of lines you use to render that solid form convincingly, by studying Klein's brushwork and trying to duplicate it in pencil.

2) Barry Windsor-Smith: although he was just plain “Barry Smith” back in 1970 when I first saw Conan the Barbarian #8. Marvel was advertising Conan in all their other books, and I was curious as to “why they'd want to bother publishing anything without superheroes” (which was all I cared about back then). When I finally got the chance to look at Conan, I opened the cover, saw the front page, and my life changed instantly.

By 1970 I had osmoted a number of the “rules” of how you draw things in comics (e.g., if you're drawing grass you don't draw every blade; men don't have nipples or eyelashes; etc.) Smith was breaking these rules by basing his work on what he could see in the real world around him. And he had spiffy new techniques for rendering textures and shadows and whatnot, the likes of which I had never seen before. The idea that he could base comic art on reality, and invent his own rules for how to depict it, was a revelation for me. Within weeks my work became filled with technical Smithisms.

I think it's pretty safe to say that I spent my time from about 1975 onward trying to prune the dense profusion of Windsor-Smith extreme-detail rendering out of my art. Not to say that I now think his is “a bad way to draw” (I don't), or that I was wrong to follow him so devotedly for so long (I wasn't) -- just that I gradually realized that his path wasn't really mine.

3) Jaime Hernandez: one of the first guys to steer me away from extreme-detail. For me, Love & Rockets #3 was as big a revelation as Conan the Barbarian #8. Jaime's whole approach to the medium was anarchic yet retro-classic, and he proclaimed “uncool” influences like Dan DeCarlo and Hank Ketcham. But his drawing, very clean and open -- and more so as he went along -- was capable of great naturalism. His figures had weight and breath in a way few guys in comics could manage, brought to life by a keen eye for the select, telling detail. He showed me that a drawing can live without being crammed full of life details, that you can create a solid mass with one line if it's the right, accurate line.

4) Steve Rude: re-taught me many of the same lessons as Jaime, but with a greater focus on classicism and photo-naturalism -- although still done with a clean, controlled, stripped-down line.

5) Osamu Tezuka: admittedly Scott McCloud provided a lot of guidance for me here, schooling me via our snailmail correspondence in how to “read” Tezuka and what to look for. When studied as the root of modern manga, Tezuka offers so many lessons in pretty much every basic aspect of comic art: page and panel layout, rendering, composition, pacing, atmosphere, light, form, daring...

6) Dik Browne: a master craftsman, capable of great beauty expressed in the simplest of lines. He taught me when less can be more, and that you can create real art while working within the “confines” of the most mainstream commercial kinds of work, if you can do that work well enough.

7) Nobuhiro Watsuki: it's primarily Watsuki's linework and inking that fire my imagination -- crisp clean and controlled, virtuoso technique and effects I've never seen before, but always reined in to serve the art. He keeps it stripped down and simple when that's best, and lets the pyrotechnics fly in their proper time.

7 Artists Who Inspire My Heart

These guys I will list alphabetically for simplicity's sake. And I will admit up front that most of them teach me the same few lessons over and over again... but those are the things that resonate with me, what can I tell ya:

1) Phoebe Buffay: a fictional artist, but inspirational all the same! Even though many people think Phoebe's music is “weird” and “no good”, and she generally has next to no success with it, she never gives up, never stops believing in the value of her work, and enjoys creating for its own sake.

2) Brent Butt: I love how Brent's work is populist without being dumbed down. It isn't overly elitist or avant garde (so that most people don't get it), but it's still smart -- clever, well-crafted, high-quality work! Proof that you can be commercial and still produce something of real merit.

3) Brian Crane: Brian stuck it out when “common wisdom” would have it that he was too old to be trying to break into his field... and he made it! His writing and drawing are very mainstream and old-school, yet unique and instantly recognizable and better than most.

4) Alex Harvey: another case of someone too old to be trying to make it, who succeeded against the odds. He also developed a distinctive and unique writing style, so his success, while not earthshaking, was on his own terms.

5) Scott McCloud: Scott has been inspirational to me, not so much by his art, but by his writing about art. He has inspired me to think more deeply about what I do and opened me up to new ways of appreciating my field.

6) Pat Metheny: The Mighty Pat has many interests and fearlessly pursues them all, following his own muse wherever it takes him. He has produced mainstream work of great commercial appeal (earning him criticisms from art-snobs), yet it's always well-crafted work of high quality and substantial content, never just pop fluff. He's also produced obscure avant garde work that no one will buy, that even frightens the art-snobs. And everything in between, but always top of the line. He feels no need to fit into anyone's pigeonhole, no need to worry about sales figures or maintain his artsy cred or fear “selling out”. He creates what he wants, does it well, and you're free to follow him there if you wish.

7) Thelonious Monk: Monk began almost as a real-life Phoebe Buffay -- most people dismissed him as a talentless lunatic, his compositions and playing style resembled nothing else that was happening at the time. But he always believed in the worth of his art, stuck with it through many lean years... and two decades later, doing things the same way he always had done, he was hailed as a genius and a giant. He is now the second most frequently covered jazz composer of all time.

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[bevantor.livejournal.com]

I knew I could count on you to give at least as thorough an answer as I would.