COMIC ART BOOTCAMP
SPOTTING BLACKS
those areas are “asking” to be removed or modified. All these choices should be made in the planning or pencil stage—changing black areas of original inked art on paper is an unpleasant chore. If you are working digitally this isn’t a big problem, but it’s still better to learn to think clearly in the planning stages rather than “find” your best results by later trial and error. Your work will be stronger and more consistent. A second difficulty is the fact that any number of choices within the same set of images may work equally well! This is where your personality, preferences and intentions must guide you. In many cases the possibilities are decided by the mood the material and your treatment of it requires. A gothic horror story or image is a natural vehicle for deep, black, shadow-rich
scenes, a lighthearted, whimsical humor story suggests a bright cheerful approach. Notice the complete shift in effect between these two treatments of the respective subjects. Depending on the desired narrative intent, any treatment can work, but in typical cases a specific mood will “feel” appropriate. As I’ve already mentioned, mood, (or narrative effect) created by “spotting” black is almost impossible to apply isolated from the other specified functions of black—they are almost invariably woven together, because any placement of black that doesn’t strictly describe form moves into the role of local color, cast shadow or arbitrary elements of shape and contrast, any of which also automatically becomes a design element. If this seems confusing, just stay with it, study and experiment and you will understand the concepts. If you are reading this you are already interested in narrative artwork, so you have seen the effects in the material you find inspiring—look at them with a fresh eye, make altered versions (like those below) of images or sequences that strike you. Doing this will reveal how an effect was achieved (or missed) by the artist’s original choices, and you will begin to develop a sense of manipulating the black patterns in your own work to achieve the results you intend.
The cute elephant looks bright and silly in the first image. The stylization of form, the caricatured features and the impossible pose are contributing to the playful fantasy feel of the drawing, but absence of black is a key factor, too. Look at the creepy incongruous effect of the second, heavily shadowed version. It’s slightly disturbing (though in the right context it could be made to work) because it doesn’t seem appropriate.
The crawling corpse seems much more menacing in the first version —the heavy shadow of the arm across the skull gives an impression of mass and weight and locks the effect of a light source (moonlight we might presume) casting the shadow pattern throughout the rest of the image. The weightless outlined image seems almost dainty by comparison and certainly doesn’t project much spooky atmosphere.
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DRAW! • SUMMER 2007