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#36

WINTER 2020 $9.95 in the US

The Professional “How-To” Magazine on Comics, Cartooning and Animation Contains nudity for figure-drawing instruction; suggested for Mature Readers Only

FEATURING DEADPOOL & INFINITY COUNTDOWN ARTIST

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Deadpool TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

MIKE HAWTHORNE

YANICK PAQUETTE

ARTIST OF SWAMP THING & WONDER WOMAN: EARTH ONE MIKE MANLEY AND BRET BLEVINS’

PLUS! REGULAR COLUMNISTS

JERRY ORDWAY & JAMAR NICHOLAS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

WINTER 2020, VOL. 1, #36 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Mike Hawthorne with color by Mimi Simon DRAW! Winter 2020, Vol. 1, No. 36 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by Two-Morrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2019 by their respective contributors. Views expressed here by contributors and interviewees are not necessarily those of Action Planet, Inc., TwoMorrows Publishing, or its editors.

MIKE HAWTHORNE REDUX Mike Hawthorne returns to DRAW! to update Mike Manley on his career and his approach to making comics.

Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational, or historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied.

This entire issue is ©2019 Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

RIGHT WAY, WRONG WAY—ORDWAY! How to use photo reference the Ordway.

YANICK PAQUETTE

The artist takes us from Montreal to Earth One and back on his quest for artistic balance.

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP This month’s installment: Sparking your imagination!

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THE CRUSTY CRITIC

The Crusty Critic reviews the tools of the trade. This month: The ultimate art marker smackdown!

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DRAW! WINTER 2020

MIKE HAWTHORNE

ANATOMY OF AN ARTIST IN MOTION Interview by Mike Manley Transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington DRAW!: Hey, Mike, how are you? MIKE HAWTHORNE: Hey, Mike! Good! I can’t complain. How’ve you been? DRAW!: Good, busy, same like you. MH: Yeah, man. You’re probably substantially busier than me. It looks like you’re doing four or five things at once half of the time. DRAW!: Well, isn’t every artist sort of doing that? MH: I’m trying not to, but yeah. [laughs] DRAW!: I mean, you’re still teaching, you’re doing the Marvel book, and then you, I’m sure, have some other backburner thing, right? MH: [laughs] You’re right. I just did a little 16-page Kickstarter horror comic, and then I finally resold the graphic novel I did for Vertigo years back, and I want to beef it up. DRAW!: Which was that? MH: It was St. Michael’s Promise, but we’ve changed the title recently. I guess let’s call it my auto-bio book. I don’t know if you remember it. It was a long time ago, back when the New 52 kicked in [2011], and they were going to close down Vertigo. They didn’t put out the book, and I had to fight

a little bit to get the rights back. So it’s been a long time, and I just didn’t sell it. I sat on it for years. I tried to get an agent on it—I showed to maybe half a dozen agents. The last one to pass on it literally told me it looked too good so he couldn’t sell it. DRAW!: What!?! MH: I know, dude. I came full circle. I went from not being able to get gigs because I wasn’t good enough to now I can’t get gigs because I draw too well. [laughs] I couldn’t believe it. DRAW!: How does that even make sense? MH: I think what it is, in the bookstore market, they see graphic novels as kind of primitive. Even though my book was 128 pages, all drawn, agents would still talk in terms of, “Maybe if we can make the art like this or like that.” I was like, “That’s not happening. I’m not doing that.” DRAW!: So you have a book that’s already done, it looks good, DC was going to publish it…. MH: I’m adding another 20 pages to it. DRAW!: So he wanted it to have that “shoegazer” quality to it—that indie vibe. MH: Ha! Yeah. You know what I think it is, Mike? These people are all writer-centric, and the art itself is a little like if you give somebody a hamburger. They could care less about the bread; it’s just a way to deliver the meat to their mouth.

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We’re sort of the bread. The meat, to them, is the writing, and I think they almost like it better when the art is more primitive because it somehow makes it more “serious” than the mainstream comics. DRAW!: That’s such a poser idea. Would you want to eat a hamburger that has bugs in it? No.

MH: Exactly, or stale bread. It’s ridiculous. So I could not get an agent on that book. I had to sell it on my own, which is ironic. Even to the tried and true comics publishers—I tried to sell it to a more independently minded publisher who turned me down within 30 minutes. I don’t think people knew how to approach a book that was—whether I succeeded or not is not up for me to decide, but I genuinely tried to make it beautiful. And I think that is not a thing they know how to relate to. DRAW!: If it looks like an English major who decided to do a graphic novel, but didn’t really know how to draw, that’s okay, because they would prefer to make it a movie or TV show, and the comic is the lowest delivery form they can use. MH: I guess. Or if you take the same metaphor and use it for a novel—I think either one is interchangeable for them. It’s like, “Wait, the graphic novel market is growing, so I’ll take my crappy novel and put some ugly pictures to it and take advantage of that, then I’ll cash in on the exciting market that is graphic novels.” DRAW!: To me, the effectiveness of the prose in a novel is completely separate from the effectiveness of the prose in a graphic novel, because if the storytelling is not clear, and the pictures are not easy to follow, irrespective of style—it could be any style—if the narrative is not crafted, then you’re not actually doing a service to telling a good story. MH: Amen. I’m with you 100%. I’ve had this fight for years now. I also happen to think, to a lot of these folks, what is comics to them are the newspaper funnies. And let’s face it, most of them don’t look that good. They’re not going to the trouble you are with your strips to make the thing beautiful day in and day out. Most of the comic strips in the newspaper are rushed. DRAW!: You know who Jules Feiffer is, right? A couple of years ago at the Baltimore Comic-Con, he was there for the Harvey Awards or something, and I sat next to him. I introduced myself and told him what I did, and he goes, “Oh, I never look at the newspaper strips. They’re all crap!” [laughter] “Oh, thanks a lot, Mr. Feiffer. Nice meeting you.” MH: What you’re doing is like a whole other species of comic strip. The point is, that primitive drawing is all they can relate to when it comes to any kind of narrative art medium. It’s so short-sighted. The average audience can see if something is well drawn and if it’s appealing to them. I don’t think anybody’s going to look at my book and say, “I would really enjoy this book if the drawing was ten times worse,” you know? [laughs]

Mike’s inks for a variant cover of Black Science #32. Black Science © Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera

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DRAW!: Why do you think all the animated films today, in America at least, are still modeled after the

Inks for pages 4 and 5 of Mike’s auto-biographical graphic novel, as yet to be renamed. Artwork © Mike Hawthorne

rules of appeal that Disney established decades ago? You can tweak it a little bit, but the consumer of anything wants to be able to look at it and enjoy it. Ten, fifteen years ago, you still had the Love & Rockets style indie look. Now the market has changed quite a bit, and it’s actually broadened even more. MH: I agree. DRAW!: But they feel they should have some homegrown look to it. Like, back when record stores used to matter, you had Easy Listening and Adult Contemporary. What’s the difference between them? Where do you put Kenny G? Does he go in Adult Contemporary or Easy Listening? I think it’s because much of the editorial depth and experience just isn’t deep enough. They think it has to be drawn in a certain way or their audience will think, “That’s too macho,” or, “That’s too commercial” or something. I don’t think the mass audience cares about that. They just want something that looks good. MH: These guys don’t know what’s going to sell, they only know what’s sold in the past. They’re trying to find something that looks like the last thing that sold, and if we go by them and their tastes, we will only be making derivative books. I just can’t trust their opinions. Not that I don’t respect what they’re able to do, work out better deals and such. I’m all for representation at this point in my career, but when the representation becomes the dictator of style and taste, I just can’t trust them.

DRAW!: It’s like fashion trends. Whatever is hot this year, everyone tries to copy, but the next year, if that doesn’t sell, then anything that looks like that must not be good. MH: Absolutely. My goal at this point, if this book does well, the next time I approach an agent I’m going to go sort of the opposite route. I’m going to say, “You were short-sighted in wanting to sell only these ugly books. Here’s what this book could do by not going for the lowest common denominator visually, and here’s more of that kind of thing.” Maybe I’m just stupid, but I don’t think people have given up on beautiful art. And like you said, we have narrative tools these primitive artists don’t necessarily have, so I can walk you through a story in a more clear, concise way. This book is only 128 pages, but it’s denser than the last half-dozen autobiographical books I’ve seen, because I don’t need four pages to tell you something I can tell you in one. You’re going to understand everything, and hopefully have some nice pictures to look at to boot. My suspicion is that if this book goes well, I’ll be able to turn agents down, and pick one that makes me happy. That’s my hope. DRAW!: I talked with Jamar when he was pitching Leon. “You’ve gone out and done your Kickstarter, and you’ve made your book a success, and now you’ve got people coming up and telling you, ‘Well, that’s nice, but let’s not make him a superhero, and let’s not make him a kid, and let’s not

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Mike’s design drawings for a Venom-merged Wolverine for Marvel’s Venom crossover event. Venom, Wolverine © Marvel Characters, Inc.

head in a TV screen in a robot body.” [laughter] It’s fantastic stuff, and that’s the thing we can’t train for, and I don’t know if any level of beautiful drawing can make up that difference. I will probably never come up with a tenth of the crazy stuff he did. He experimented like hell, like with those crazy pastedup backgrounds he did in some books. It took me a while to figure out, but the guy is still untouchable. We can all pretend, but none of us will ever—and forget just comics culture, but American culture in general. It’s gotten so big now, that kids today are infatuated with characters this guy dreamt up. DRAW!: It’s fun to play with those toys, but do you feel the compulsion to become your own Kirby? MH: Oh, all the time. I always do a creator-owned book while I’m doing a mainstream book, it’s just nobody ever reads the creator-owned stuff. [laughs] Hysteria was that for me. There was so much more that never got published. I have a halfdrawn issue, I have all these bonkers characters I never got to use. And one of the things Marvel often comes to me for is character designs. I’ve probably designed 25, 30 different characters for them. It scratches that itch. If it were up to me, I’d make up new characters every issue to be frank. I think it’s cool they have this deep bench we can choose all these differ-

ent characters from and do cool stuff with, but if it were up to me I’d be making up new characters all the time. DRAW!: But wouldn’t it be better to be making them up for yourself rather than for them? MH: Sure, but the thing is, I’d be happy making them up both ways. I understand that making characters up for them, you don’t have any ownership and all that, but I don’t know. I feel, at least visually, like I could make up a new character every issue and not feel like I’m running out of ideas. I’ve gotten to create whole cloth a handful of characters for Marvel—the Machine Team characters, one of which they used in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. It was just a dude. That particular character wasn’t very exciting, but recently I got to create a new Wolverine villain, and I was on cloud nine. I went way above what I should have done with the designs. I kept going with it because it’s just something I enjoy doing. Usually though, it’s just a redesign. You have a character that already exists, and then you come up with something new. I did a handful of designs for the Venom event. They would say, “What if Wolverine and Rocket Raccoon combined with a symbiote? What would they look like?” And I love that stuff. I know it’s probably cheesy, but I love it.

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MH: I really appreciate that, Mike, especially coming from you. Early on, I would come to you and hit you up for advice. I think back to going through some storyboards with you early on. I’d done this bit with a king eating a chicken leg, and there was a peasant coming over to ask him something. I thought I’d done a good job, and you added this great bit where instead of just a regular transition from the king to the peasant, you had him rip off the meat from the bone and then toss the bone at the peasant in this snotty, crappy way. I remember thinking, “Jesus! That’s brilliant!” That’s an oddball lesson, and I doubt you even remember it, but it’s something that’s stuck with me. DRAW!: I remember going over your board, but not that specific drawing. MH: It was probably nothing to you, but it was a huge deal for me. You were probably the first storyboard professional I met, and it was very generous. Sometimes you get crits from people and you get a sense that they’re doing it, but they kind of half-hate you for asking them. [laughter] But you were very generous with your time, and I was always grateful. So thank you. DRAW!: I’ve always liked your stuff, and when you meet a fellow zealot, you know right away. [laughter] You meet people who like to do it, and then you meet people who really love to do it. So tomorrow you’re up and back at the board? MH: That’s it, first thing in the morning. I’m up at 6:30 to get the kids out the door, and it’s back to the board. I’ve got to get issue #6 done fairly soon. I want to keep a two-issue cushion so that I don’t feel rushed at any point, so I have to get that in the can. (above and next page) Pencils and inks for a Deadpool variant cover. Deadpool © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW!: When I did my little talk and demo at Artisticon, that was something I mentioned. Everyone sees that video of the three-year-old Chinese girl on YouTube, and she’s playing Rachmaninoff. I have never met an artist like that. Even the most talented people I’ve met all were people who applied themselves and worked to get where they were. What happens now is people see the YouTube videos of people doing all this stuff, but they don’t see the process that comes before, so it looks like a magic trick. “Oh, my God! This person is a genius!” But it’s not a magic trick. It’s application. You obviously love to draw, and that comes through. Not everybody has that.

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DRAW!: Once you fall off the horse, it’s hard to get back on. MH: Yeah, and I hate that feeling of finishing pages just to hit a deadline. You have to do that, but I like to avoid being too rushed so that I can still make decisions based on quality, not getting it in just to get it in. DRAW!: Which is always one of the hazards. I’ve got to letter this stuff tonight, get it in, and then turn around the next week’s worth of strips in pretty much a day. MH: Oof! That’s crazy, man. DRAW!: It’s going to be a rough day, but then I’ll be back on the right side.

THE RIGHT WAY, THE WRONG WAY, AND THE

ORDWAY ! REFERENCE POINTS by JERRY ORDWAY

Caricature by Rachel Ordway

ell, here we are, time for another hopefully help- had to draw some recognizable features to identify the setful segment on drawing comic book pages. I will ting, rather than a flat, devastated plain full of debris. While take you through the various steps I went through this story was one of several in the comic, I had no visuals on drawing a Firestorm story (“Last what the other features looked like, Christmas”) for DC’s Nuclear Winor how they handled the level of ter Special, which was published in destruction. I could have asked the December of 2018. editor, but I wanted to fully “own” I haven’t drawn the character my little corner of the future postof Firestorm much, if at all, in my nuclear world! many years doing comic books, but I I started out pulling theme park was offered the chance to work with reference I had collected over the a writer I had not previously worked years from my file folder reference with, Paul Dini, and I jumped at it. cabinets (see top of next page), and Paul is one of the best, and while I then checked out Paul Dini’s web knew the story was only eight pages, links. Once I saw what environment I figured it’d be a decent experience. settings he needed, I did my own He managed to do a heartfelt story web search on my iPad, saving phoabout a family of robot killers out tos I thought would help. I always to kill Firestorm before their power gather much more than I need, sources ran out. because it’s easier to copy reference My editor supplied me with a few when you first find it, rather than images of the current incarnation of thinking later, “I wish I had grabbed Firestorm and Professor Stein, with that shot. Where did I find that?” I whom he shares the Firestorm entity have already read through the script with. The script included some helpa few times by this point, so there ful web source links for specific are no surprises later, plus I can try reference, including theme park feato grab reference for later pages as tures such as a “house of the future” well, to be more prepared. from the 1960s. The story setting DC’s Nuclear Winter Special #1, with cover art by In drawing my super-loose Yanick Paquette, featured elsewhere in this issue. is a post-nuclear devastated theme thumbnails on the script, I am giving myself a template for the page, park, which needed to be my own All characters © DC Comics invention to prevent any legal issues. This was the most diffi- meaning, how many panels, how many dialogue balloons cult part of the assignment for me, wrapping my head around there are, and basic camera angles. With a script that includes what the place looked like. I had to cheat reality a bit, as I the dialogue balloons like this, it’s my key job to make sure

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(above) Some of Jerry’s reference for 1950s-era modern architecture and style, which helped him build the exterior and interior of his “Home of Tomorrow”. The retro postcard (and Jerry’s childhood memories) provided the inspiration for the Nuclear Family’s fireplace and silver tinsel Christmas tree in panel four. (right) Jerry’s preliminary pencils (with some marker inking) for page one of “Last Christmas”. Firestorm, Nuclear Family © DC Comics. All reference images © their respective owners.

I allow enough space to fit it all into each panel. Lettering can be reduced slightly, but it still takes up “real estate” on a page. A panel like the first one, with three twolines-each captions on it, has to be sized right. In looking at many current comics, it bothers me to see bad balloon placements, but it bothers me more when I see that the artist did not allot enough space for the dialogue. It’s an important skill, to be able to approximate the space covered by the dialogue on a panel. When in doubt, leave more than you think you need! As you will see later, the order of characters in a panel is often dictated by the dialogue in that panel. On the prelim I drew for page one (see above right), I worked in pencil first, and then refined the drawing with a fine-tipped marker. This is kind of like inking, and many think it’s an extra step, but it allows me to be very loose in my pencilling stage, and refining with the marker gives me a clear line quality that translates into an easy to read blueline printout on my two-ply drawing paper. Panel one is me map-

ping out the area the story takes place in. It’s an establishing shot for the reader, but also for me as well. I will build the environment off of this for the whole story. Panel three shows the house in the distance, which is also used many times in the story, so it’s good to know what you’re drawing, and get as much figured out early on. The last panel establishes the villains, who are called the Nuclear Family, and have appeared many times before in various comic books. The background establishes much of the main elements of the interior, with a 1950s modern design, specified by Paul in the script. I am old enough to understand the visuals, because my childhood memories of Christmas included that silver tinsel artificial tree!

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Panels one through three in their finished ink stage. The snow was all drawn during the inking. Firestorm, Nuclear Family ÂŠ DC Comics

When I scan the prelim, I place it in an official DC Comics template so as to be sure where the live copy margins are. At this stage I adjust scale, often reducing the images inside a panel border to insure space for those aforementioned dialogue balloons. The final line art is scanned and cleaned up. Note that another element to this story is snow on the ground. Snow is a tricky thing to draw, because you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t add it without doing the full perspective work on surfaces. It is a blanket,

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and it kind of drapes over surfaces, softening hard sharp corners, and the like. It should also not obliterate your background elements. The reader still needs to figure out what it is covering. In panel three, we can still see the remains of a Ferris wheel, and the house the villains are in. And drawing in black-&-white, I want it clear that there are lights on in only that house. The color artist will have problems of their own to solve, but I try to make it easier for them by overthinking my work.

YANICK PAQUETTE

Living in Paradise Interview conducted by Mike Manley Transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington DRAW!: Are you in Toronto? YANICK PAQUETTE: No, I’m in Montreal. DRAW!: What are you working on today? YP: I’m doing a Superman special with Brian Bendis. So far I know it’s called Superman Giant-Size Special. Beyond that I don’t know what it’s for. It’s not part of Action or Superman that he does; it’s a prelude to something else. Beyond that I

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can’t really comment. But I’m doing 22 pages of that, and I’m almost done. So that’s what’s on the program today, and by the beginning of February I’ll switch to Tom King’s Batman. DRAW!: Will you be doing Batman monthly for a while, or are you jumping around from project to project? YP: It’s a strange year for me. For the past four years almost, I was working on Wonder Woman: Earth One with Grant Morrison. It’s on a deadline, but it’s a very long-term type of deadline, like most of the Earth One books. So that was my life for a long time, but this year and part of 2018, I’ve been

trying to get into the fold of the proper DCU and do, not monthly, I’m getting too old for that, but almost monthly, producing three or four pages a week. DRAW!: Are you working seven days a week? YP: Well, I try to avoid working on the weekend, and sometimes I’m a good boy and I do all the work I need to do and don’t have to work on the weekend. But especially during Christmas time, things get messed up. I took a solid two weeks off at Christmas, which was nice, but now I’m paying for that, and I need to work on the weekend once and a while. By mid-February I’ll be done paying my debt, and I’ll go back to having an almost normal life. DRAW!: Is that something you thought about at the beginning? Nobody in comics works a normal nine-to-five, but to have some time off on the weekend for other things? YP: The plan was to work a lot less. I would say that my intention from the beginning was to get paid more to do less work. The ultimate goal would be to do one page a year and get paid a fortune for it. [laughter] I’ve never been really attached to the monthly structure. It requires so many artistic trade-offs and cutting corners to make sure stuff’s out on time. Because I’ve grown up in the European market where people will take two years to draw 44 pages, the monthly structure of the American industry has always felt weird. When I got to do the Earth One books, it allowed me to live a normal life, or at least closer to my aspiration. But starting last year and this year, I’m trying to Finished inks for page 75 of Wonder Woman: Earth One, vol. 1. be more productive. In a way, the Earth Wonder Woman © DC Comics One books were great artistically, but drawing one book for months, years at a time, I almost disap- they were just mind-bogglingly great! They were awesome. He peared from the map. This year I will try to have much more was not doing a monthly book, still he was on the map just of a presence on the shelf. by once in a while doing these massively grandiose annuals. I thought, “This is the type of path that fits what I want to do. DRAW!: So at the beginning of your career, you were think- I’d prefer to be Arthur Adams, putting all I can on one book a ing more of working in the European model, where they do year, than to do a monthly or more and become a star that way.” one album a year or every two years. At that time you could take the path of someone like Ron Lim, YP: Yes, the European model was the beginning of it, but I who you could rely on to do tons of good books every year, or remember Arthur Adams would put out an X-Men Annual once you could be someone like Mike Mignola, who would do grana year, and that book would just rock everybody. X-Men Annual diose books, but would not put out that much in a year. And I #10, #12, “The Evolutionary War”, Mojo—those issues. And felt that made more sense to me, artistically at least.

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DRAW!: The other side of that, of course, is that you not only have to budget your time, but budget your finances. YP: Yeah, because I’m Canadian, I guess, there’s a little less pressure in terms of making ends meet. I’ve always worked, I’ve just never felt the stress of, “Oh, I need to produce a lot of books.” The first five or six years of my career, I was doing monthly books, and I was putting books out there I was not totally satisfied with, but I made a living out of it. As I shifted towards my aspirations of doing less, but doing it a little better, as it turned out, it somehow paid for itself. I was getting higher page rates and more special projects. It added value to the work from an editorial point of view, and the map balanced out at some point.

DRAW!: You can set out to take more time and do a more intense job, but sometimes you get offered an opportunity, and it always seems, especially at the beginning of your career, like you’re a fireman. You have to run in and do whatever you have to do to get the job done. YP: Yeah. Very early on I was telling people I was not willing to do books between deadlines. They were asking for my time, but I would just not take the job. It’s a weird thing. Many people who were less secure might would have taken the job anyway, and eventually over the years they would get typecast as an artist who can do a book in two weeks, and that would be their thing. But because I was foolish enough to refuse work, even at the beginning, it somehow forced the editors to say, “Okay, we can try to find something with a schedule that fits you better,” and slowly I got to do more of those—the Earth One, for instance, which took me two years to draw 120 pages, which is very slow. Or even when I did Swamp Thing, that was one book every two months. It was a very luxurious type of drawing. But I’m convinced I would never have gotten to that point if I hadn’t said from the very start, “I’m not going to do books that require a monthly schedule.” Once in a while I’ll work fast to save the day, but it’s on my own end. I’ll negotiate a good deadline, but then paint myself into a corner and be forced to work very fast to make up for lost time. But that’s because of my own mismanagement of time, or because I went to a convention or on a vacation. DRAW!: Do you find that you tend to work faster on a project as you go along and build a head of steam? YP: Oh, yeah, totally. I’ve been doing this a long time, so I don’t get nervous when I find the first five pages taking forever to draw. I always start out, “I want to do the best I can,” and it just slows everything down. But by the time I finish ten pages of any project, I’ll be moving along pretty fast. If I take long breaks—I have kids, so I like to take breaks in the summer and at Christmas—it takes me a while to get back up to full speed. It’s like a long train that needs to build momentum, and when I get that momentum, I need to keep working uninterrupted as long as I can, day after day, so I can get the work done, taking advantage of the moment.

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DRAW!: Working in the European style, do you have a stage at the beginning where you do development art, sketch, gather material, and figure out your approach?

A page from the Batman: Lost one-shot tie-in to Dark Knights: Metal. The detail shot above shows just how minimalist you can get when drawing characters in the background. Batman © DC Comics

instance, which I’m using a lot. I scanned a bunch of my thumbprints, and I can recombine them in different orders, or go white on top of the inks to create abstractions. And I’ve made a bunch of dry brushes because I just love the effect of it. When you look at a drawing, and there’s some unknown element in it, it feels less digital. Sometimes when you recognize a computer rendered a drawing, it can lose a little of its emotional shine, I feel. DRAW!: Yeah. I do two newspaper strips. The Phantom I do traditionally, and with Judge Parker I switched over a year ago to digital. What I do to keep the feeling that I had, is I use a triangle on my tablet [for straight edges], and I ink freehand using the triangle [rather than using the line tool]. It gives me the same feeling as inking traditionally. I don’t like the precision, the mechanical aspect, of creating lines [with the line tool]. It feels less human. So I just put it on my screen just like I would if I was using a marker or a pen on paper. YP: Going back to the soldier, if I said, “I’m going to pencil and ink on paper tons of soldiers!” I’d put on my George Pérez hat and fill the page with soldiers. You’d look at that page and go, “Oh my god! It’s crazy! So much detail!” You’ll have some emotional reaction to a double-splash page done like this. But if I created a brush of one soldier in Photoshop, and filled the page with them, it would take three minutes to do, and it would still have soldiers all over the place, but when you’d look at it, you wouldn’t react the same way, because

you’d know there’s a trick. It’s inhuman. It’s obviously not made by man. You won’t get the same visual thrill, and that’s something you have to be aware of when working digitally, because it’s very easy to just import 3-D models. Doing those things will save you time, but it will dehumanize your work to a point where the relationship with the viewer will be screwed. It’s boring. DRAW!: It’s like watching a film now, when they have 10,000 guys on one side and 10,000 guys on the other side, and they’re all fighting. You know they’re not all actors, so it’s sort of like watching a video game. I had that feeling watching the end of Wonder Woman. I liked the film, but in the final fight scene, you know it’s not the actress, so they’re basically puppets, so I didn’t feel an emotional connection.

DRAW! WINTER 2020

BY MIKE MANLEY & BRET BLEVINS

Sparking your

elcome to the latest installment of “Bootcamp”. Bret and I have tackled a large variety of subjects on making your drawings and storytelling better over the close to 20 years I have been publishing DRAW! One of the questions both Bret and I are probably asked the most at shows or online or when teaching is, “Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a standard question I get, especially when I post non-comic drawings, or any of my sketchbook or more personal drawings on my social media. The only other question I get asked maybe just about as often is about “style”. Students and young artists are very concerned about style, and having the best or coolest one. When I was younger I also wanted to have a style that emulated the work of my idols. I think, especially over the past few years, people seeing the more personal work or non-comic book page work I do

DRAW! WINTER 2020

IMAGINATION are interested to find out if there is some “secret way” of coming up with a cool image, of fighting that fear so many artists have of the blank sheet of paper—the dull brain that sits there and sputters looking at a nice, white piece of paper, a new sketchbook, or empty screen on the tablet. The panicked brain screams, “What should I draw? What can I draw? Why can’t I draw or come up with anything?! “Why are some artists so good at coming up with such cool and unique imagery? Why is it so hard for me to get something going? Everything I do sucks! “Why are my ideas too similar? Why do they sputter and die in a haze of lackluster lines and smudges? Command-Z is getting a great workout!” Like all of you reading this article, my Instagram feed is just an endless scroll of the imaginations of artists from all over the

world, past and present, on display 24-7. Add in Twitter, Facebook, etc., and it’s just a massive blast of art and imagery. I think for some artists, especially younger artists in training who are seeing so much, being washed over by so many images sometimes almost wipes them out like a surfer getting swamped by a huge wave. You can’t even begin to think or speak, to form your ideas, because of the roar of your social media feed. Where are “you” in all of this mass of imagery? How can your voice be heard? That’s the good and the bad of the time we live in. The plus is having endless access to not only new artists and what they do, their creative processes, but more and more work by artists of the past is available every day. I am very adamant on one point as a teacher—I feel going forward as an artist is always built on lessons from artists of the past. They give us ideas and keys, ways of working, of thinking to solve any of our current drawings problems, even if we are not consciously aware of them, even though we should be. There is also a big difference between blindly consuming and curating what we are exposed to. The former is just part of the “push consumer culture” of the new media and the latter takes effort, time, and consideration. When I see a great drawing, painting, or illustration, I think “Why do I like it, and how can One of Mike’s Inktober drawings. I learn from it?” Sometimes the work is Artwork © Mike Manley executed so excellently in a technical way, but the idea or sub- body. Drawing is thinking, and your imagination is like your ject matter might be unappealing, or flawed in some way, but brain running over the countryside picking up clues and possithat also sparks a thought process to understand why that’s the bilities like a bloodhound picking up a scent. If you keep going you are bound to discover, and make something interesting! case. This is an opportunity to learn and study, to think! In trying to develop my own work and ideas, art separate Often we older artists hear the joke about “magical tools”. I wish there was a special technique or some magic pencil or from my daily commercial concerns, I have come to embrace brush, paint, or paper, but alas, there is not. But I have found a way of working that has opened up my mind and imaginafrom study that the artists who seem to come up with a lot of tion, something like taking the reins off a horse to truly let my ideas, the best and coolest ones, are always sketching, think- imagination run free. Here are a couple of ideas I think will help spur you on the ing, always working, always exercising their brains and their adventure into the country of your own imagination: imaginations. Artists I truly love, like Jack Kirby or Moebius, who influGIVE YOURSELF SOME TIME enced generations with their artistic process and work, seem First, cut back on the social media feed a bit. Give yourself like endless fountains of ideas! I think the reason they had so many great concepts is that they were simply always, always some “alone time” to be with your thoughts, and have a stack drawing and sketching. They probably did 10, 20, 30 draw- of paper or a sketchbook handy. Take an hour in the morning, ings for every one done by the average artist. I have come or at night after a day’s work, or before you hop on the web. I to believe that your imagination is like a muscle, and can be often find I am at my most creative when I have knocked off strengthened and worked out—trained just like an athlete’s for the day but I’m not ready to watch TV or go to bed.

DRAW! WINTER 2020

magination is a mysterious aspect of brain function, as it you—an accord with your own inherent sensibilities. This can seem to generate results that come from “nowhere”, reaction is an important guide to discovering your own nature, manifesting original concepts that didn’t exist before. While but be careful not to become too fixated on particular surface that is possible and certainly appears to happen in rare cases, features of another admired creative personality. Focus on the the far more common process is a recombination of stored essential underlying reason you admire their “vision”—the impressions or a response to stimuli that draws on the accu- big choices they make about approaching a subject, which mulated memories and impressions one has experienced since elements they stress, which they sublimate or eliminate—not birth, filtered through an individual’s personality, taste, and the specific technical rendering means they use. Technique is important, but secondary to concept and ideas. Conceptions skill. What is lauded as originality is usually a fresh combination can be expressed in a multitude of ways by a multitude of including yours. Surface effects are integral to the of elements melded in a successful way, one that generates a techniques, IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, strong reaction (preferably a favorable one in commercial finished work, CLICK THEart) LINK TO ORDER THISbut alone they are sterile if not used to convey ISSUE IN is PRINT FORMAT! from an audience. The freshness of that combination oftenOR DIGITAL something worthwhile, and most importantly, personal to you. This is an important point because it sometimes happens shaped by what is called “style”, meaning a collection of personal idiosyncrasies, mannerisms, preferences, prejudices, that a student will become obsessed with one admired artist etc., along with a particular repetition of effect or treatment (or style) only. If this progresses naturally as a phase of learnthat becomes recognizable as the defining characteristic of an ing and is eventually left behind as knowledge is accumuindividual’s viewpoint, perceptions, and methods of express- lated and understanding deepens and broadens, it is a valuable ing them. experience. If it ossifies into complete imitation of someone One artist might love geometric precision in their compo- else—it will become a prison and atrophy one’s own potensitions, and form construction measured out mathematically, tial, because dedicated imitation creates an unfortunate conanother an organic, free flowing, “instinctive” feeling. One striction of mind that limits options only to what the admired may naturally be drawn to careful photographic accuracy, artist has already done—nothing that falls outside of that is acceptable, or even fully understood. The work will always another wild distortion and impressionistic effects. As you work you will continue to discover what satisfies second-rate, because it is fundamentally disingenuous, DRAWbe #36 MIKE HAWTHORNE (Deadpool, Infinity Countdown) interview, you—which effects and techniques please youYANICK more than (Wonder oth- Woman: inauthentic—in PAQUETTE Earth One, Batman Inc., current vernacular, fake news—because it Thing) how-to demo, JERRY ORDWAY’s ers—and these discoveries will coalesce overSwamp time into your isn’t your“Ord-Way” news, it’s what you think someone else would have of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, Comic Art Bootcampdone. by BRET BLEVINS MIKE trap. Broaden your tastes. There is so much “style”. When studying, you will be most drawn toplusother artAvoidandthis MANLEY! Contains nudity for figure-drawing instruction; for Matureresponse Readers Only. in ists’ work that strikes an unconscious positive to learn from. (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95

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DRAW! WINTER 2020