Yes, that's a picture of me inking, with a devil of sorts on one shoulder, and an angel on the other. If you look closer, however, you might realize that one side of the drawing is inked in an entirely different manner than the other. The devil, or my inking devil, as it were, is Arthur Adams, probably the single biggest influence on my entire pursuit of comic book illustration and just a huge influence in general since his big-league debut in Longshot #1.
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| Arthur Adams's Man-Thing |
Arthur Adams is a beast for detail, to the extent that he's developed it into its own medium-- he seems to use ludicrous detail the way other artists wield acrylics or oils. He's taken it to an entirely different plane over the years. And, not surprisingly, he's had a reputation of sorts for not getting his books in on time.
Now I'm not going to go so far to presume that I draw, ink, or even wield detail to the extent that Mr. Adams does. But his work, and my longtime fascination with it, has inspired me to develop a style that really puts down a lot of ink, usually in small, and not always clean lines in hatching.
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| My Own Daredevil, with plenty of hatching |
In the Daredevil piece above, you can see me sort of getting carried away with the inks, almost not knowing when to stop. The hatching is intended to develop form and promote the illusion of mass in his body, but very often I'm only flattening things out. In other words, I ink to the point of excess.
And I've recently acknowledged it, and am trying to stop.
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The inking angel depicted above is, sadly, a real angel. The super-talented and super-nice guy Mike Wieringo tragically passed away in 2007 in the midst of a celebrated career as a comic book artist, and left a multitude of loyal fans to wonder what might have been. I met Mike in Baltimore a few years before his death, and I found him to be friendly, accommodating, and honest.
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| Mike Wieringo's Fantastic Four |
Mike's own style certainly had its share of detractors, but he was also on my short list of artists to watch and be inspired by. And unlike Arthur Adams, Mike's style was greatly reserved and simplistic. There's no hatching, no heavy and laborious working, and seemingly no effort. Quite simply, he's the day to Arthur Adams' blackest india ink night.
Since I've gotten back into this style of artwork just a few short months ago, I've really struggled to find my own voice or signature style as an inker. I love the Adams look but certainly don't want to just mimic it-- plus I worry about becoming an artist who just can't work quickly enough because of all the detail. On the other end of the spectrum is Wieringo, who draws so differently than I do that I'm not sure how good such a simplistic style would look over my pencils. Either way, I think there's a fine balance between the two to be found, and I've spent some time recently exploring that balance.
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| My Own Flash, with no hatching whatsoever |
In the Flash piece above, I laid down the law to myself: NO HATCHING. NONE. And I think I still tried to cheat in a few places. But, as a professor, one of the greatest things I've learned in art projects is that by withholding certain practices or techniques, a student can learn to appreciate, execute, and better identify the need for other techniques. So I turned the tables on myself here, and learned quite a bit from my temporary ban on hatching. Mostly I learned how natural it was for me to just overwork things, and HATCH FOR THE SAKE OF HATCHING. Not good, and certainly not necessary.
I anticipate this to be an ongoing battle as I settle in to a more comfortable style. But I thought it might be worth sharing the struggle between the angels and devils.