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drawing comics down the middle
Aug. 24th, 2017 08:16 pm"I try to draw so convincingly that the reader won't notice."
-- Hank Ketcham, The Merchant of Dennis
I read this statement in Ketcham's autobiography years ago, and it stuck with me hard ever since. Over time, it shaped the way I view the comics medium and my own work within it.
My paraphrase of how he described the process is this: if something is drawn badly, so that it doesn't look right, it pulls the reader's attention away from the story and interrupts the flow. The story world ceases to be a convincing, immersive experience. However, as I thought about this, I took it further... and came to believe that if things in a comic are drawn too well, they have the same effect. The reader stops to admire the expertise of the rendering, and focuses their attention on the drawing as a drawing. Once again, they are pulled out of the story world at that point.
As I became devoted to the idea of telling the story as the prime goal of a comic, I grew toward the idea of drawing down the middle -- drawing well enough. That became my ideal. And I gained a deeper appreciation for artists who seemed to me to embody that ideal. The ones who draw well but don't overdraw. These are the artists I study today and strive to learn from. (For me, Tonči Zonjić is the prime exponent of this approach still working today -- I admire his work so much.)
Recently, though, I have grown aware of a strange dynamic involved in my studies. I find such comic art difficult to study fruitfully, because: by its very nature, this art is designed to propel you through the story rather than have you stop and pay attention to it -- so, when I try to study the techniques of this art, I keep getting sucked back into the story and re-reading the comic instead! It's really surprising how much intense focus it takes me to resist the lure of the story world! That's exactly the kind of power I want to harness in my own work... but I can see that it is going to be a struggle!
-- Hank Ketcham, The Merchant of Dennis
I read this statement in Ketcham's autobiography years ago, and it stuck with me hard ever since. Over time, it shaped the way I view the comics medium and my own work within it.
My paraphrase of how he described the process is this: if something is drawn badly, so that it doesn't look right, it pulls the reader's attention away from the story and interrupts the flow. The story world ceases to be a convincing, immersive experience. However, as I thought about this, I took it further... and came to believe that if things in a comic are drawn too well, they have the same effect. The reader stops to admire the expertise of the rendering, and focuses their attention on the drawing as a drawing. Once again, they are pulled out of the story world at that point.
As I became devoted to the idea of telling the story as the prime goal of a comic, I grew toward the idea of drawing down the middle -- drawing well enough. That became my ideal. And I gained a deeper appreciation for artists who seemed to me to embody that ideal. The ones who draw well but don't overdraw. These are the artists I study today and strive to learn from. (For me, Tonči Zonjić is the prime exponent of this approach still working today -- I admire his work so much.)
Recently, though, I have grown aware of a strange dynamic involved in my studies. I find such comic art difficult to study fruitfully, because: by its very nature, this art is designed to propel you through the story rather than have you stop and pay attention to it -- so, when I try to study the techniques of this art, I keep getting sucked back into the story and re-reading the comic instead! It's really surprising how much intense focus it takes me to resist the lure of the story world! That's exactly the kind of power I want to harness in my own work... but I can see that it is going to be a struggle!
