Draw #7

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DAN BRERETONZACH TRENHOLM

ALBERTO RUIZBRET BLEVINS PAUL RIVOCHEANDE PARKS

DAN BRERETONZACH TRENHOLM

ALBERTO RUIZBRET BLEVINSPAUL RIVOCHEANDE PARKS

NUMBER 7FALL 2003

THE “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS

AND CARTOONING

CONTAINS NUDITY FOR THE PURPOSE OF FIGURE DRAWING AND ART INSTRUCTION—INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

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FALL 2003 • VOL. 1, NO. 7

THE PROFESSIONAL”HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & CARTOONING

Editor-in Chief/Designer • Michael ManleyPublisher • John MorrowLogo Design • John CostanzaProofreaders • John Morrow & Eric Nolen-WeathingtonTranscription • Steven Tice

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ADVERTISE IN DRAW! See page 2 for ad rates and specifications.DRAW! FALL 2003, Vol. 1, No. 7 was produced by Action Planet Inc. andpublished by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor, John Morrow,Publisher. Editorial Address is PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082.Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Dr., Raleigh, NC27605. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet Inc. All contributionsherein are copyright 2003 by their respective contributors. Action Planet Inc. andTwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. Allartwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, theentity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork aretrademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artworkor other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of thecopyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational and historical purposes withno infringement intended or implied. Batman, Superman, Birds of Prey,Aquaman, Joker, Batgirl are TM and ©2003 DC Comics • Devil Dinosaur, Spider-Man, Blade, The New Mutants, Sleepwalker, Wolverine TM and ©2003 MarvelCharacters, Inc. • The Crow is TM and ©2003 Fallen Bird Productions Inc. Thisentire issue is ©2003 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and maynot be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyrightholders. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

COVER STORY FROM THE MACABRE TO THE SUPER-HERO WITHDAN BRERETON3

Front and Back CoverIllustrations by

DAN BRERETON

CARICATURESA STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL BYZACH TRENHOLM

THE CRUSTY CRITICDRAWING SUPPLIES AND PRODUCTREVIEWS BY ANDE PARKS

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ILLUSTRATOR TECHNIQUESA STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL ON ILLUSTRATING INADOBE ILLUSTRATOR BY ALBERTO RUIZ

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2 DRAW! • FALL 2003

Welcome to DRAW! #7. As the autumn breeze sweeps the first hints of the coolerseason past my home office window, it also brings with it the usual change and hec-tic pace my life seems to take every fall. This August, I started teaching a class onstoryboarding and storytelling at the Delaware College of Art and Design, inWilmington, Delaware. I’m also busy storyboarding on The Venture Bros. for NoodleSoup Productions in NYC. The pilot has already been shown on Cartoon Network’sAdult Swim. I plan on covering the show production in-depth with a trip to the stu-dio in DRAW! #9.

Next year I also plan a crossover with our sister book Write Now!, edited by oldDarkhawk partner, Danny Fingeroth. We will do a crossover between DRAW! andWrite Now! which will cover the complete process of creating a comic characterfrom designs, plot, pencils, and script to final art and printed comic.

It was also great to see so many regular DRAW! readers at this summer’s annualComic-Con International: San Diego. Once again I shared a table with DRAW! con-tributor and best pal Bret Blevins, Chris Bailey, John Gallagher, and Randy and Jean-Marc Lofficier. Our table was busy all show long with both Bret and myself sellingour new sketchbooks as well as art and copies of DRAW! It’s always a hectic showand there was just too much to see this year, as the show somehow grew even bigger.Surf over to the drawmagazine.com web site and check out the pics I posted fromthis year’s summer shindig. Once again I’d like to extend another heartfelt thanks tothis issue’s contributors, Bret, Paul, Ande, Dan Brereton, Alberto Ruiz (a.k.a. Dr.

Cyberfunken), and Zach Trenholm. What a diversity of talent here—something I plan to keep striving for in DRAW!

I’d like to leave you with two quotes: “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” —Michelangelo; and “An artist is notpaid for his labor but for his vision.” —James McNeill Whistler.

Best,

Mike Manley, Editor

The DRAW! message board is up and running, so please post feedback and ask questions at: http://66.36.6.76/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

FROM THE EDITOR

E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.drawmagazine.comSnail mail: PO Box 2129, Upper Darby, PA 19082

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DRAW!: So what got you inter-ested in drawing and paintingmonsters and horror material?Were you into that as a kid?

DAN BRERETON: I starteddrawing monsters as soon as Icould draw. They were the firstthings I felt I could draw, peoplenever interested me as subjects,nor machines or architecture. I’ddraw a hillside full of cavesin profile and then fill the caveswith reclining monsters. I don’thave a recollection of doing this,but my mom has shown me somepaintings that I did when I wastwo, two-and-a-half years old.She has one that’s a blue, pinkand red watercolor. My mompainted a lot back then, andshe’d set me up sometimes withbrushes and paints. The paintingis entitled ‘Pecos Bill’ because itreminded me, for some reason,

of the Disney character. I think just the colors, because there’s really nothing going on in the painting, it’s just a bunch of colorssmashed on there. It’s probably one of the first examples of painting that I have. But as soon as I got to the point where I couldactually sit down and think about what I was going to draw, it was monsters. I drew horned monsters with big teeth. Little morethan stick figures, you know? One day in kindergarten we had an hour to kill and the teacher asked us what we wanted to do, so Ipiped up and suggested we draw monsters! She wanted to encourage me, I guess, so she indulged the request and the whole classhad a ball. I was like the expert and I remember classmates coming to me with their drawings for approval and advice. It was likemy first comic book convention appearance in a way. That day must have sparked something. It surely reinforced my love of crea-tures and the idea of excelling at something. I’ll never forget that day.

DRAW!: So you liked things like the Godzilla movies, I take it? Things like that?

DRAW! • FALL 2003 3

INTERVIEW BY MIKE MANLEYTRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN TICE

NOCTURNALMISSIONSFrom hard boiled detectives,giant monsters and super-heroes to the macabre, illus-trator Dan Brereton coversit all with his lush andevocative brush strokes. Thebusy artist shares some ofhis working techniques.

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ILLUSTRATION DAN BRERETON


You know what? This is reallyweird, but I watched Ultraman ona daily basis. I watched SpeedRacer, I loved the WarnerBrothers cartoons, I loved theGroovy Ghoulies and Scooby-Dooand stuff like that, but Godzilla Icould not get into. Because it wasjust a big rubber suit with a guy init, and it just seemed really fake tome. And a lot of the Godzillamovies that were out when I wasa kid were the ones with littleMinya, and the more friendlyGodzilla stuff was just lame. Itwasn’t cool like Ultraman. I did-n’t draw monsters from films orTV, most movie monsters scaredme too much. I had what I guessyou could call night terrors orsomething. I was scared to walkdown the hall to use the bathroomat night and would imagine things wanting to get me in thedarkness. My parents didn’t leave a single light on in the houseat night and it was creepy. Years later when Poltergeist cameout, I could totally relate to the scene with the clown, toys andclothing that always looked like devils and creatures in the dark.I would spook the hell out of myself. Its not like I had a badchildhood, either. My parents are great people and they encour-aged my imagination. I just had this over-active imagination,like, to a fault. Comic books were my salvation, I loved super-heroes instantly and I loved stories where they triumphed overthe villains. The first comic I ever saw was Captain Americabattling the Red Skull, drawn by Kirby, I knew I was home. Theonly time I wasn’t drawing monsters or aliens was when I wastrying to draw Cap.

DRAW!: So were you into the Gamera movies at all?

DB: I hadn’t really seen Gamera when I was a kid. See, I gotinto all this stuff later, when someone in ’95 or ’96 sent me sometapes of the more recent Godzilla movies of the early Nineties,and I was like, “Oh, this is cool!” They’re somewhat low budget,but they’re pretty well done for being low budget, and I reallyliked what they were doing. And I totally got into them. I com-pletely fell in love with the Godzilla stuff. Old, new, you nameit. I bought a Japanese laser-disc of the original movie, the

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OBRERETON: This piece started with a color rough (center right) that I did as ascribble of a sketch with washes of color, then scanned in. I don’t do color roughsoften, but I wanted them to see the color treatment I had in mind because it wasimportant to the composition, which is rather simple. I really liked the pencil sketchfor the finish (left)—something about the Baroness’ face really appealed to me. Butwhen I got into the painting stages, I started to feel that, since she is a villain, sheought not to be so cute—it really didn’t fit the feel of the illustration, so she endedup looking much more evil. The tilt of her torso and where I had to crop her chestmakes her end up looking much chestier than she would if you could see her entiretorso line—believe me, I wasn’t trying to go crazy there.



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(ABOVE) BRERETON: For this coverto Nocturnals: The Dark Forever, I workedout a pleasing montage and I instantly knewwhat the color scheme would look like. Thisis not unusual for me, I tend to get an imagein mind in color and rather than try and nailit down on a comp, I let it come naturally.There have been times when this approachhasn’t worked out, but 99% of the time, Ihave the palette well in mind. If you lookclosely, you can see I made few changes.

(LEFT) BRERETON: The painting of therawhide ghost town character, Digger Payne,was something I could have done off the cuffquite easily. The comp for it—done in mono-chromatic blues and ink washes—was kindof pleasing when it was done, but theyneeded a higher level of finish and warm,autumnal tones, so I gave that to them. I’mstill partial to the rough.

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DB: I always wonder about something: look at Walt Kelly, whostarted drawing Pogo in the Fifties? Forties? Look at the funnyanimal stuff that Frazetta was doing when he was younger andthen look at Pogo. Is there a correlation there? Was somebodylooking at someone else’s stuff? Was Frazetta looking at WaltKelly at one point? I don’t know. And then you look atBuscema, and there’s so many similarities between Buscema’swork and Frazetta, and you think, was Buscema influenced byFrazetta? And I met John Buscema—I was really lucky to meethim that one year he went to San Diego—and I had a nice talkwith him. And I asked him about Frazetta. He liked Frazetta’swork, but he didn’t go on about it like, “Oh, he was so great!”But you got the feeling that he was looking at his work. Ialways used to wonder if Buscema was inspired by Frazetta. Ireally don’t know.

DRAW!: I think all of his peers were. It’s hard not to be, be-cause Frazetta was so huge, so popular, but I somehow think


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The CrowBRERETON: Theassignment for thisCrow image gave mean opportunity to do alittle portraiture ofBrandon Lee. I startedwith the prismacolorsketch on the farright—which wasoriginally just the pre-lim sketch—and endedup being the drawing Iphysically paintedover. I fixed the pen-cils with acrylic mattemedium, then paintedover it with watercolorand acrylic washes,sometimes mixing

acrylic gesso with the watercolor. (I do this a lot to get an opaque or pastelshade) the effect of the water-based medium on the matte medium createda very painterly look without sacrificing a bit of the drawing, which is thebackbone of the piece. I also loved how the fixative “bleeds” the prisma-color, making it more brilliant in hue and creating a “soft focus” sort ofline. Matte medium is a great way to create an instant surface for paintingover a drawing, while protecting the drawing if the painting isn’t going sohot and needs to be wiped off—something I learned from Barron, whooften fixed sketches to paint later, or add to a larger piece.

Halloween Girl—BRERETON: Evening is one of my favorite characters todraw. Imagine, after all those years of super-heroes and monsters, first readingabout them in comics and then illustrating them, she is really refreshing. The draw-ing is watercolor over black prismacolor, done at the table of a comic book show. Iprobably did some clean-up in photoshop, which I’ve taken to doing after scanningart in. I’m never interested in relying heavily on digital tools—they’re just tools.The drawing and painting is always done in the physical world, with digital toolshelping to come in at the finish. Maybe after I’ve come to learn it better I’ll be ableto do more, but to honest, I don’t mind having a limited knowledge, because I’dhate to become dependent on it.


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Buscema was more inspired by Alex Raymond and Hal Fosterthan Frazetta. And Frazetta was heavily influenced by them aswell. It all goes back to the same well.

DB: Yeah, I think he was inspired by the guys that Frazettaliked, too. Raymond and Foster and Wally Wood... the adven-ture strip artists. Burne Hogarth, Foster....

DRAW!: I think those artists of that generation all wereinspired by the strip artists; that’s the material that they read askids. Milt Caniff or Foster or Raymond... the great illustratorsin the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, etc.

DB: Yeah. I always thought Conan was all Buscema, and I real-ly like his Conan. And then you discover, oh, there’s this guynamed Frazetta who painted these Conan covers, and you lookat those and you think, “Wow! These are pretty cool, too!What’s going on here? These guys, do they know each other?”No, they didn’t, but they’re all in the same family. They havethe same fathers and uncles.

DRAW!: Right. That’s a very good way of putting it.

DB: If you look at, say, the Image house style...when I say thatI mean back when Image first started, you had Jim Lee, ToddMcFarlane... who was the other guy?

DRAW!: Liefeld?

DB: Liefeld, yeah. You look at their work and you see that theyestablished this house look that is still so heavily prevalent incomics.

DRAW!: Well, it basically replaced the de facto JackKirby/John Buscema Marvel Comics style that was the sort of

house style of comics. The ’60s erastyle.

DB: Well, look at DC Comics. DCand Marvel, you’re looking at the

house styles of John Romita and John Buscema, Jack Kirby.And then at DC you’ve got Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino—

DRAW!: Curt Swan....

DB: And Dick Giordano, those kinds of looks. I know I’m leav-ing out a bunch of awesome guys. José Luis Garcia-Lopez. Youname it. And they’re being replaced by this other look. And atDC, especially, forget about the Image style, there’s this DChouse style now. It’s this sort of really realistic, rendered style.And I just look at this stuff sometimes and it just boggles mymind. John Cassaday and Bryan Hitch, those two guys, I look attheir work and I go, “Holy Christ. I’m in the same business asthese guys?” They’re incredible! But, at the same time, asincredible as these guys are, their work leaves me.... From atechnical point of view, I’m stunned, but I get weary looking atit. I think, “I can’t draw, I stink.” [Mike laughs] But the stuffleaves me cold, emotionally. So from a technical point of view,I’m stunned, I’m in awe.

DRAW!: Well, there’s not much humor in it... the way therewas in Kirby’s stuff.

DB: No animation in it.

DRAW!: Yeah, there was a bit of humor—the old Spider-Manstuff had a lot of humor in it.

DB: They’re British.

DRAW!: British? Can you explain that?

DB: Not really. But it’s rendered heavily, worked endlessly. If you look at a lot of the other British stuff that was coming outin the late Eighties, early Nineties, guys like Steve Pugh and...


Tarzan’s Jane BRERETON: Colored pencil with water-color wash. I did this piece in a sketchbookfull of depictions of Tarzan’s girl. I wasblown away by many of the pieces in thebook, but inspired too. This was originallya two-page spread, something I enjoydoing in sketchbooks. After scanning thepiece, I used photoshop to play with it, andtouch-up the area where the two pagesmet. The winding trunk shapes and twist-ing vines are prime material for creating astrong composition that carries the eyethrough the piece from left to right, frombackground to foreground. Simpler compo-sitions are best—if it’s strong enough, youcan build off it and it remains powerful.


who drew Grant Morrison’s first book over there? He has a realgreat style... Steve Yeowell. He had some animation, somehumor, some opinion to it. And that’s the stuff that really getsmy juices. That’s why I think I like Bruce Timm’s work somuch. People who are working on his end of the spectrum getme a lot more excited. I’m juiced to it.

DRAW!: That’s why I really liked what Darwyn Cooke wasdoing on Catwoman.

DB: Yeah! In fact, I was just looking at that stuff. I actually hap-pen to have a copy of it someone gave me, and I was just look-ing at that stuff. I love the way he draws figures. There’s someopinion to it, there’s some juice to it, and there’s also this senseof... you’re not just going to be super caught up in rendering.You know what I mean?

DRAW!: Yes. But I think, as an artist... it’s all so personal. It’syour taste, some like detail, some like exaggeration, some sim-plicity. It reminds me of the old Alex Toth argument. Manyartists hold up a guy like Alex Toth as being the artist’s artist.Sort of the artist’s ultimate goal/example of less equals more.Yet fans’ taste is often reversed—more equals more, or better. Ithink, if you’re an artist, your interest in the comic is morebased upon your desire, in a way, to emulate your art heroes,your influences—to be able to draw as good as them. In yourcase, it would be somebody like Frazetta.

DB: Yeah.

DRAW!: Where I think, to the average comic-reading fan orperson looking at art, they look at most modern cartoonistsdrawing super-hero books today and they see all this attention todetail, and to the average person, they equate detail with sinceri-ty and quality. That means if the artist was really, really ren-dered up, his drawing is really good. It’s easy and obvious andlays there and requires the reader to do little work to completethe connections. There it all is. Not much mystery.

DB: It means, “Wow, he put a lot of work into this.”

DRAW!: So there’s always this eternal argument going, this lit-tle battle going back and forth, within some artists in the indus-try. Maybe not huge, but I certainly talk with many artists aboutthis, because the fans never raise up an artist like Toth. Theartists raise up a guy like Toth as sort of the ultimate—an artistwho got really close to perfection in the medium.

DB: Well, you have to get to a certain level as an artist to beable to understand why it is that Toth is a genius. Just like whenyou’re studying art, and your teachers are pushing Picasso onyou, and you’re like, Picasso, Van Gogh, these guys sucked!They couldn’t even friggin’ draw! Give me a break! Picassodraws a nostril in the middle of the face? Well, then you come torealize, well, okay, Pablo Picasso mastered drawing the figurewhen he was a boy. He transcended and went up into the stratos-phere artwise. And most people don’t get that stuff. They justdon’t have the education, they don’t have the patience to under-

stand why it’s important or what makes it great. And Van Gogh,oh my God. I couldn’t have cared less about Van Gogh before Igot into school, and now I look at his stuff and it isso simply beautiful. It burns with emotion and passion. It has allthese things that I guess just took people a while to figure outwere there, just like it took me a while.

DRAW!: Well, if you go into an art gallery, the work that theaverage person would buy is work by someone like ThomasKincaid, because to them, they look at it and it’s very detailedand it’s got all the glowy light and everything—that’s good.

DB: That’s “good” artwork. That’s like my great-uncle. One dayhe comes over and he shows me this painting of a boat in a har-bor. It was totally photo-realistic. The watercolor painter hadobviously taken a photo and tried to do as photo-realistic a jobon it as possible. And he shows it to me and goes, “See that?That’s Art.” [Mike laughs] He was basically telling me that whatI do is not ’good’ art because I don’t make it look real. And thenof course I show him a panel of my comic where I had takensome reference and done a portrait of someone’s face, and I said,“What about that? Does that look real enough for you?” and henods and says, “Well, that’s good. That’s good, right there.” Butbasically anything where you use too much imagination is not


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ABOVE—Gatchaman—BRERETON: This piece might have workedbetter for me if I’d played with the value more, there needs to be more pushand pull in the art so that some of the montage elements don’t conflict withothers for dominance. The only thing that saves it is the varying sizes of thefigures. At the same time, it has a crazy anime feel to it that I kind of getfrom watching the shows the card is based on, so its not a total disaster.


Greeting, fellow Draw-ers! Your humble critic returns thisissue to give you the rundown on your choices in pen nibs andIndia inks. I have to admit that I’ve been in a rut for severalyears when it comes to these tools… using pretty much thesame products, and finding myself fairly satisfied with theresults. When I hit the art supply store shelves to refresh myknowledge of what’s available in today’s market, I was shockedby what I found. There were more choices regarding inks than Ihad imagined, and I was equally surprised to find that, in theAmerican market, a single company holds a near-monopolywhen it comes to pen nibs. Even so, I found some revelationsawaiting me when I put these products to the test.

PENSSince I started slinging ink for a living, I’ve used dozens of

different pen nibs… pens made by Brause, Gillott, Esterbrook,Soennecken, and Hunt. At times, I’ve preferred a number of dif-ferent pens, but the one I’ve found myself using most often isthe popular Hunt 102. When I hit the Internet to see what’s cur-rently available, I found that Hunt dominates the marketplace. Idid find Gillott pens at one source in the US, www.aoeart-world.com, but the Gillotts I tested were not as well made asthe Hunts, and did not offer any unique properties. I’d encour-age you to try the Gillotts, but since Hunt pens are so much eas-ier to find, and I prefer them, I will not be reviewing the Gillottsin depth.

The good news is that Hunt makes some excellent pens, andthey are widely available. You should be able to find them atany arts and crafts store, not to mention a number of internetretailers. Unfortunately, a lot of crafts stores carry only packagesof a variety of points. That’s fine if you want to try them all, butnot practical if you use the same pen or pens every day. TheCritic’s favorite internet source, www.misterart.com, offers allof the Hunt pens in bulk. If you buy a dozen pen points, youshould pay well less than a dollar per nib.

For my purposes, I bought a couple of packs of nibs, whichcame with holders. I had some old pens on hand, but I thought itmight be a good idea to buy new stuff, in case Hunt had changedthem since I stocked up a decade ago. By the end of the testing,I was really thankful for that decision… one of the pens hadchanged dramatically, and it has become my new favorite nib.

Hunt makes a wide variety of nibs, which I quickly nar-rowed down to pens that I thought appropriate for comic bookwork. Pens were eliminated for being too blunt, or for not beinglarge enough to carry a good amount of ink. A useful pen needsto be capable of detail, and I don’t intend to waste my workingday dipping my pen every couple of lines. Here’s a breakdownof the pens that made the final cut:

100—A flexible nib, for use with Hunt’s 104 pen holder, butcan be used with the 102 holder, as well.

102—A stiff nib, for use with the Hunt 102 pen holder. This isprobably the most popular nib amongst comic book artists. It’scapable of very fine detail, but can be pushed into making somefairly wide lines. This is the pen used by Terry Austin, ErikLarsen, Kevin Nowlan, Jerry Ordway, and yours truly, to namejust a few.

103—A very flexible pen, for use with Hunt’s 104 pen holder.This bouncy pen can almost be used like a brush. You can get awide variety of lines, but it takes a gentle touch. Beware of inkblobs!

107—A very stiff pen, for use with Hunt’s 102 pen holder.This pen is even stiffer than the 102. It’s wonderful for back-grounds or for ruling lines with a raised straight-edge.

108—A flexible, bronze-finished pen, to be used with the Hunt102 holder. This is the pen I was most surprised, and pleased,with. When I used this pen in the past, it was very bouncy…even more so than the 103. The new version, though, is stifferand easier to control. This pen is used by Al Williamson and P.Craig Russell, among others.

I know… it may look like your humble critic is slacking off,only reviewing 5 pens. If you search, I’m sure you’ll find otheroptions, and you may prefer one of those alternatives. My focus,though, is on tools that are widely available. I’m confident thatyou’ll be able to find a pen that will suit your purposes amongthese choices. As always, I encourage you to contact me if youlove a pen that I haven’t mentioned. I’m always looking for newproducts.

I’ve provided a visual example which should help demon-strate what lines each pen is capable of, but I’ll give you a briefrundown here, as well.

I found the Hunt 100 handy, but I prefer the 108 or 103.This pen falls between those two in terms of flexibility. It han-dles well, and ink flows well from its tip. If I want a pen withthis much flex, though, I’d probably just jump to the 103.

The 102 is an old standby. I’ve been using this pen prettyexclusively for years. It handles well, and you can get it to pro-duce an amazing variety of lines. It’s not especially durable,especially if you press down hard. I snap the tips off of thesepens several times each year, and it’s never fun. At best, you canend up with a small ink splatter on your page. At worst, the ink,

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©2003 ANDE PARKS

THE CRUSTY CRITIC ANDE PARKS


STEP ONEI asked my pal Will Rosado to provide a copyof a panel for this demo. Will’s stuff is amaz-ingly rich and textural. Check him out thesedays at CrossGen. Anyway, Will was niceenough to provide several examples, and Ichose this one to demonstrate how I mightuse several different Hunt pens to approach adrawing.

PEN INKING DEMO

STEP TWOI first hit the drawing with the Hunt 108,using the pen on the main contours of the fig-ures. The pen’s flexibility allowed me to pro-duce some very heavy lines. It’s fine enoughfor some detail work, but I save the finestfigure work for the 102. I plan on doing mostof the hair with a brush, but I providedmyself some guidelines with the pen.

STEP THREEI did the face on the background characterwith the Hunt 102, along with the papers.This pen is great for fine work where somevariation of line weight is called for. I want touse a dead line for the background elements,so I saved them for an even stiffer nib.

THE CRUSTY CRITIC ANDE PARKS

A DIGITAL LIKENESSAn interview and demo with caricaturist

ZACH TRENHOLM

This interview was conducted over the phone, transcribed by Steven Tice and copy editedby Zach Trenholm.

DRAW!: SoFortune maga-zine calledyou up thismorning andgave you aquick assign-ment to draw,an illustrationfeaturing....

ZachTrenholm:Larry Ellison,CEO of thesoftware firmOracle.Basically theywanted ’emhim pointingdirectly at theviewer or thereader andholding a fist-ful of bills—pretty straight-forward. Ithought Icould knock itout by therequestedfive o’clock East Coast deadline (I’m here in California) anddid. After e-mailing the illo over, I guess an editor got...

DRAW!: Got a brainstorm?

ZT: Yeah, exactly. After getting the art, the art director, RobertDominguez, got back to me immediately with an editor’srequest that Ellison now be turned into the Incredible Hulk. He

wanted himappearing angri-er then had beendone and as theHulk it could beaccomplished ina timely, popcultural refer-ence sort of way.I guess the bar-rage of summermovie promo-tionals reallydoes have animpact. So nowI needed to ditchthe body I hadjust spent thelast few hoursdoing and quick-ly redo him asthe Hulk. To behonest, I’m notmuch of a super-hero artist (evenan anti-hero likethe Hulk). Buthere’s what Itypically do in asituation like

this: I go straight to the masters, and the master in this casewould be none other than Jack Kirby.

DRAW!: [laughs] Go find some cool, old Jack Kirby Hulkexamples....

San Franciscan Zach Trenholm is a busy artist. He’s not only a top, in-demand caricaturist, but is also a scholar of the

art form. This interview had to be slightly delayed because Trenholm was fighting a tight deadline for Fortune maga-

zine the very day DRAW! Editor Mike Manley called to conduct it via phone. Trenholm’s easy going demeanor and laugh

definitely kept him from “hulking out” over the last minute changes to the illustration he had just e-mailed over to the

art director....



ZT: Exactly. Find a Kirby take on the Hulk. Which incidentallyI was able to easily do online.

DRAW!: Did you try to incorporate Kirby into your style?

ZT: Oh, that’s impossible.That wouldn’t work atall. For starters, heexcels at fore-shortening,and I’venever beenable towrapmymindaroundthat tooterriblywell.

DRAW!: Whendid Fortune origi-nally call you withthe assignment?

ZT: I got a call around9:30 this morning here inSan Francisco, so it wasaround 12:30 there in NewYork. And the art directorneeded it by 4:00 or 5:00New York time, so I need-ed to really knock it out.

DRAW!: What’s yourfirst step? Do you drawup a rough and then... doyou go on the web and tryto find as many pictures ofthe person you are going todraw as possible?

ZT: It depends on the art director. In thiscase, he supplied me with two pictures basically from one of thesame sources that I would have gone to, which is Corbis (anonline public access photo archive). Another is Google’s searchengine for images.

DRAW!: Right. So you could go to Google, and search under“Larry Ellison” and hope to find some pictures of the subject.

ZT: Google’s my last-ditch place to go actually, because if whatyou’re looking for has a common name, such as “Larry

Ellison”—you’re going to bring up a lot of image files titled“Larry” or “Ellison” or both that won’t necessarily be him....

DRAW!: So you need to try and narrow the search criteria.

ZT: Right, so even though the art director sent me refer-ence, I still always go online myself to see if I can conjureup anything better, especially any type of candid or off-guard reference. That’s always ideal when striving for the

most definitive likeness.

DRAW!: Do you draw something quicklyin pencil and scan it in, just so you can

mess around with the shapes of hisface, to get down the caricature, the

likeness?

ZT: No, no... I pretty much do a tightsketch. Particularly with the face. Therest I can approach like that, such as

the body and background aspects....

DRAW!: Now, is this in pencil, or is this onthe Wacom tablet in Photoshop or...?

ZT: No, it’s done in pencil on paper, and after scan-ning the sketch into the computer, I convert it into a tem-

plate for tracing over in Adobe Illustrator.

DRAW!: Is that what you send to the art director first, or doyou send him the sketch?

ZT: No, I’m really bad about that. Unless they’ve worked withme before, I probably give ’em a slight case of hives the firsttime around [laughter]. What I do instead for my own creative

flexibility is, after making sure I’m clear on what’s neededconcept-wise, I simply just proceed with it and then provide the

more or less finished illo the first time as a proof. The clientthen has the option to make any fixes or revisions as theysee fit. Most of the time though, things are pretty much

accepted without any rework.

DRAW!: So there’s not a lot of back and forth changes, “movehis arm, move his leg”?

ZT: Well, never on that micro of a level, but as I mentioned ear-lier with Larry Ellison, he went from being simply himself in abusiness suit to needing to look like the Hulk, or to being theHulk.

DRAW!: Now, do you charge them extra to do that, becauseyou had essentially already finished the illustration?

ZT: [laughs] It’s interesting that you ask that. No, I never reallydo that—I lack the business cajonés I guess [laughter]. Themajority of my art directors are quite fair and in the particularcase of Fortune, they were already paying me a couple ofhundred dollars more than normal because of the shorter turn-

CARICATURE ZACH TRENHOLM

ABOVE: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison “Hulking out”from Fortune magazine.LEFT: Neo and Orpheus from The Matrix.


around. As a matter of fact, when I got the commission, he toldme they were going to compensate me X amount for it and as Ithought that sounded overly generous, told ’em to knock off$100 instead.

DRAW!: Really?

ZT: Yeah, but this was, of course, before I had to re-make himinto the Hulk. [laughs] So after spending another couplehours or so converting him into the Hulk, I then asked if hewouldn’t mind boosting it back up to the originally quoted fee.

DRAW!: Do you have a standard day rate for this, do you havean hourly rate that you figure for yourself in case things likethis happen, where they go haywire, or do you just have a stan-dard way of...?

ZT: No, I just sort of roll with it. Budgets are generally dictatedby the publications and I pretty much take on the jobs that Ido based on who’s calling.

DRAW!: And what interests you, I guess?

ZT: Yeah, that’s as equally important. It’s basically two things;the more esteemed the mag or newspaper, the more inclinedI am. And then of course it depends on how famous the individ-ual to be depicted is. The more well known the individual, themore timely the individual, then the more I want to take theassignment on.

DRAW!: So you can keep your portfolio fresh, so to speak?

ZT: Well, yeah, but it’s not entirely based on portfolio reason-ing. Speaking of such, I actually don’t even have one anymore. I’ve got my website, and then I have some folders that I slip tearsheets into, but I haven’t had a tangible portfolio, y’know,something you would show an art director, in probably about tenyears.

DRAW!: Wow. So most people, then, if they want to find outwhat you do, or to find out the kind of style you have, youare referring them to your website?

ZT: Right. Well, they usually find me—mostly by seeing mywork.

DRAW!: They’ll see your byline and then look you up onlineand give you a call?

ZT: Right, that’s usually how it works. I also send out a promo-tional postcard every couple of years or so. That way if they’renot already familiar with what I do, they’ll hopefully take thetime to visit my web portfolio and that will (once againhopefully) lead to a commission at some point. At least that’sthe idea behind the nefarious scheme.

DRAW!: So, most art directors who you have not worked withbefore are people who are either coming across your work

BELOW: Producer Weinstein and directors Scorsese,Rob Marshall and Stephen Daldry done for the WallStreet Journal.

CARICATUREZACH TRENHOLM

STEP 1: Zach’s first step in doing this spot illustration of Cybill Shepard was to compilephoto reference of Ms. Shepard. He does this by visiting an extensive clipping file of personal-ities that he has built up over the years and by the Internet, which has become an excellentsource for material with its thousands of celebrity shrine or fan sites. After studying the col-lection of pix of her, Zach lets his mind, rather than eye, take over. With regards to likenessand character, it is far more selective and interpretive—retaining what is essential and ignor-ing that which is inconsequential. He usually achieves his likenessess in anywhere from 1 to 5sketches, although it can sometimes take upwards of 50 sketches to obtain the same desiredeffect. He states that he knows when a likeness is successful: “It’s when the subject looksmore like the caricature rather than the other way around.”

STEP 2: After he gets the likeness where he more or less wants it, hethen moves on to the other elements of the illustration, sometimes doinga complete sketch (as he has here with Shepard), but more typicallydrawing each aspect separately (i.e., head, body, rocket, exhaust cloudsetc.) and then later composing the “parts” collage-like, on the computer.Zach finds this way not only faster than working out compositions onpaper but that it also allows for unlimited experimentation.

STEP 3: The sketch or sketches are then scanned into the computer for conversioninto templates for tracing in Adobe Illustrator. Since time was of the essence in thiscase, the treatment fairly straight-forward and the magazine familiar with his work,Zach proceeded directly to final art without providing a detailed sketch to the publi-cation. Working digitally makes this possible. He sends all his illustrations, finishedor otherwise, initially as “proofs.” If after seeing the artwork the client has anychanges or additions, he can easy make those corrections to the original file and sendthe illustration again.

From pencil sketch to Adobe Illustrator—THE PROCESS

The Power Of SketchingBY BRET BLEVINS

DRAW! #7Interview, cover, and demo with DAN BRERETON, ZACH TREN-HOLM on doing caricatures, “Drawing In Adobe Illustrator”step-by-step demo by ALBERTO RUIZ, “The Power ofSketching” by BRET BLEVINS, “Designing with light and shad-ow” by PAUL RIVOCHE, plus reviews of the best art supplies,links, a color section and more!

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital edition) $2.95

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=431

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW,CLICK THE COVER TO ORDER THIS

ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!


his time out, I have chosen to outline a few thoughts abouthow I approach lighting a design drawing, illustrated by variousanimation background renderings. My aim is to discuss some ofthe thinking process behind the choices which were made, not toprescribe an ironclad step-by-step procedure. As with otherareas of art, the topic is so large that it’s only possible to putdown some central ideas—in other words, to outline variousinteresting areas for further investigation. Regarding my com-ments and diagrams, I assume that the reader will have somebasic understanding of perspective theory and the geometry offorms, because these underly many of my statements.

ARTISTIC LIGHTING VS. NATURAL LIGHT AND SHADOW

In the real world around us, light and shadow behave accord-ing to inflexible laws. For example, a given geometric form—let’s say a cube—repeatedly lit from the same angle and withthe same intensity, will cast the same exact shadow every timethe experiment is attempted. The rules of light will not changeaccording to the day of the week, but instead act with utter pre-dictability. One can verify this for oneself by observation. Thisis the natural world which is recorded in candid photography,such as news photos—nothing is arranged or altered, but is allthere as nature allows it to unfold.

In contrast to this is what could be termed “artistic lighting.”Just as “artistic anatomy” is different than the anatomy which amedical student would study, so too does the lighting which anartist uses differ from the raw light and shadow seen around usor in spontaneous photos. The artist’s advantage is to be able to“edit” the elements of his picture carefully, to arrange andmanipulate light and shadow to suit a given artistic purpose,

while still remaining obedient to the rules of light and shadow.The artist strives to reveal or “explain” form to the viewer anddirect the viewer’s eye, not simply to record raw data as it hap-pens to unfold in nature.

An artist has limited means at his disposal, yet wishes maxi-mum results. His transmission device is a flat piece of paperand a relatively narrow range of tones. If he slavishly recordseverything everything he sees, unaltered, whether the source isin front of him or in a photo, he soon discovers that some sortof editing is required, that the paper has a two-dimensional lan-guage of its own that must be taken into account. He discoversthat the more marks he makes, the more he tries to copy everynuance of light and shadow, often the less form is described—paradoxically, form can get lost in the confusion and complexi-ty. Some alteration is required, some editing, to cut through theclutter. You could term the results of this editing process “artis-tic lighting.” It is a process of clearly revealing three-dimen-sional form by careful placement of light source(s), manipula-tion of highlights, halftones, core shadows, reflected light, andcast shadows, and also the removal of extraneous and distract-ing information.

Similarly, if an artist seeks to capture an internal vision seenin imagination (as opposed to drawing from an external modelor photograph), and describe it clearly and convincingly to theviewer, he also soon realizes the need to understand the rules oflight and shadow and the language of describing form on paper.Without a convincing play of light and shadow across hisinvented forms, the viewer’s eye will probably not “suspenddisbelief”—will not accept the artist’s invention as real or possi-ble. If the artist wantonly ignore how shadows really fall, stub-bornly calling any excess “style,” conviction will be lackingbecause even at a subconscious level, people know what ringstrue and what does not.

ALIEN COURTHOUSE: This was a development rough sketch done for a key scene in a Justice Leagueepisode. The setting was a vast alien courthouse under a dome, with an accused person on trial, a prosecu-tor on a floating pod, a giant viewscreen with alien judges, and an audience of aliens ringing the wholescene. Including all these elements in one angle was a juggling act, so to simplify things I used a surround-ing “frame” of aliens. I varied the lighting on them, with one alien in total silhouette, and the rest withincreasing lighting as we go upwards. This gave the viewer some information, but also kept some mysteryby not showing them completely clearly. And rather than showing thousands of aliens at once, which wouldbe impossible, I chose to show only these foreground eight up close, and suggested the rest in the far dis-tance by using specks. These foreground ones “explained” the distant ones. For the lighting in the arena, Ichose to use a harsh toplight, to create a feeling like a blinding noontime sun—the accused has nowhere tohide. The cast shadow below the accused’s floating pod gave a height indication, with just a little softeningat the edges to give a touch of realism. The screen unit where the judges are seen was rim-lit from behindand below, to create an ominous mood.

DESIGNING LIGHT and SSHHAADDOOWW

By Paul Rivoche

T

DRAWING AND DESIGN PAUL RIVOCHE

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