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NUMBER 7 FALL 2003

THE “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS AND CARTOONING

DAN BRERETON ZACH TRENHOLM ALBERTO RUIZ BRET BLEVINS PAUL RIVOCHE ANDE PARKS

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FALL 2003 • VOL. 1, NO. 7

FEATURES

Editor-in Chief/Designer • Michael Manley Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Proofreaders • John Morrow & Eric Nolen-Weathington Transcription • Steven Tice

COVER STORY FROM THE MACABRE TO THE SUPER-HERO WITH DAN BRERETON

For more great information on cartooning and animation, visit our Web site at: http://www.drawmagazine.com

Front and Back Cover Illustrations by

THE CRUSTY CRITIC DRAWING SUPPLIES AND PRODUCT REVIEWS BY ANDE PARKS

DAN BRERETON

30 SUBSCRIBE TO DRAW! Four quarterly issues for $20 US Standard Mail, $32 US First Class Mail ($40 Canada, Elsewhere: $44 Surface, $60 Airmail). We accept US check, money order, Visa and Mastercard at TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Dr., Raleigh, NC 27605, (919) 833-8092 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com ADVERTISE IN DRAW! See page 2 for ad rates and specifications. DRAW! FALL 2003, Vol. 1, No. 7 was produced by Action Planet Inc. and published 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, NC 27605. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2003 by their respective contributors. 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 and historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. Batman, Superman, Birds of Prey, Aquaman, Joker, Batgirl are TM and ©2003 DC Comics • Devil Dinosaur, SpiderMan, Blade, The New Mutants, Sleepwalker, Wolverine TM and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. • The Crow is TM and ©2003 Fallen Bird Productions Inc. This entire issue is ©2003 Action Planet Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

ILLUSTRATOR TECHNIQUES A STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL ON ILLUSTRATING IN ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR BY ALBERTO RUIZ

CARICATURES A STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL BY ZACH TRENHOLM

THE POWER OF SKETCHING WITH BRET BLEVINS

DESIGNING LIGHT AND SHADOW BY PAUL RIVOCHE

Figurative interpitation by Bret Blevins

FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to DRAW! #7. As the autumn breeze sweeps the first hints of the cooler season past my home office window, it also brings with it the usual change and hectic pace my life seems to take every fall. This August, I started teaching a class on storyboarding and storytelling at the Delaware College of Art and Design, in Wilmington, Delaware. I’m also busy storyboarding on The Venture Bros. for Noodle Soup Productions in NYC. The pilot has already been shown on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. I plan on covering the show production in-depth with a trip to the studio in DRAW! #9. Next year I also plan a crossover with our sister book Write Now!, edited by old Darkhawk partner, Danny Fingeroth. We will do a crossover between DRAW! and Write Now! which will cover the complete process of creating a comic character from 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 annual Comic-Con International: San Diego. Once again I shared a table with DRAW! contributor and best pal Bret Blevins, Chris Bailey, John Gallagher, and Randy and JeanMarc Lofficier. Our table was busy all show long with both Bret and myself selling our new sketchbooks as well as art and copies of DRAW! It’s always a hectic show and 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 from this year’s summer shindig. Once again I’d like to extend another heartfelt thanks to this 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 not paid 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

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MISSIONS NOCTURNAL

From hard boiled detectives, giant monsters and superheroes to the macabre, illustrator Dan Brereton covers it all with his lush and evocative brush strokes. The busy artist shares some of his working techniques. INTERVIEW BY MIKE MANLEY TRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN TICE

DRAW!: So what got you interested in drawing and painting monsters and horror material? Were you into that as a kid? DAN BRERETON: I started drawing monsters as soon as I could draw. They were the first things I felt I could draw, people never interested me as subjects, nor machines or architecture. I’d draw a hillside full of caves in profile and then fill the caves with reclining monsters. I don’t have a recollection of doing this, but my mom has shown me some paintings that I did when I was two, two-and-a-half years old. She has one that’s a blue, pink and red watercolor. My mom painted a lot back then, and she’d set me up sometimes with brushes and paints. The painting is entitled ‘Pecos Bill’ because it reminded 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 colors smashed 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 could actually sit down and think about what I was going to draw, it was monsters. I drew horned monsters with big teeth. Little more than 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 I piped up and suggested we draw monsters! She wanted to encourage me, I guess, so she indulged the request and the whole class had a ball. I was like the expert and I remember classmates coming to me with their drawings for approval and advice. It was like my first comic book convention appearance in a way. That day must have sparked something. It surely reinforced my love of creatures 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

ILLUSTRATION

DAN BRERETON

You know what? This is really weird, but I watched Ultraman on a daily basis. I watched Speed Racer, I loved the Warner Brothers cartoons, I loved the Groovy Ghoulies and Scooby-Doo and stuff like that, but Godzilla I could not get into. Because it was just a big rubber suit with a guy in it, and it just seemed really fake to me. And a lot of the Godzilla movies that were out when I was a kid were the ones with little Minya, and the more friendly Godzilla stuff was just lame. It wasn’t cool like Ultraman. I didn’t draw monsters from films or TV, most movie monsters scared me too much. I had what I guess you could call night terrors or something. I was scared to walk down the hall to use the bathroom at night and would imagine things wanting to get me in the darkness. My parents didn’t leave a single light on in the house at night and it was creepy. Years later when Poltergeist came out, I could totally relate to the scene with the clown, toys and clothing that always looked like devils and creatures in the dark. I would spook the hell out of myself. Its not like I had a bad childhood, either. My parents are great people and they encouraged my imagination. I just had this over-active imagination, like, to a fault. Comic books were my salvation, I loved superheroes instantly and I loved stories where they triumphed over the villains. The first comic I ever saw was Captain America battling the Red Skull, drawn by Kirby, I knew I was home. The only time I wasn’t drawing monsters or aliens was when I was trying to draw Cap. DRAW!: So were you into the Gamera movies at all?

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

4 DRAW! • FALL 2003

GI JOE © AND TM 2003 HASBRO

DB: I hadn’t really seen Gamera when I was a kid. See, I got into all this stuff later, when someone in ’95 or ’96 sent me some tapes 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 really liked what they were doing. And I totally got into them. I completely fell in love with the Godzilla stuff. Old, new, you name it. I bought a Japanese laser-disc of the original movie, the

ILLUSTRATION

DAN BRERETON

Tarzan’s Jane BRERETON: Colored pencil with watercolor wash. I did this piece in a sketchbook full of depictions of Tarzan’s girl. I was blown away by many of the pieces in the book, but inspired too. This was originally a two-page spread, something I enjoy doing in sketchbooks. After scanning the piece, I used photoshop to play with it, and touch-up the area where the two pages met. The winding trunk shapes and twisting vines are prime material for creating a strong composition that carries the eye through the piece from left to right, from background to foreground. Simpler compositions are best—if it’s strong enough, you can build off it and it remains powerful.

house style of comics. The ’60s era style.

Buscema was more inspired by Alex Raymond and Hal Foster than Frazetta. And Frazetta was heavily influenced by them as well. It all goes back to the same well. DB: Yeah, I think he was inspired by the guys that Frazetta liked, too. Raymond and Foster and Wally Wood... the adventure strip artists. Burne Hogarth, Foster.... DRAW!: I think those artists of that generation all were inspired by the strip artists; that’s the material that they read as kids. Milt Caniff or Foster or Raymond... the great illustrators in the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, etc. DB: Yeah. I always thought Conan was all Buscema, and I really like his Conan. And then you discover, oh, there’s this guy named Frazetta who painted these Conan covers, and you look at 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 have the 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 that I mean back when Image first started, you had Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane... who was the other guy? DRAW!: Liefeld? DB: Liefeld, yeah. You look at their work and you see that they established this house look that is still so heavily prevalent in comics. DRAW!: Well, it basically replaced the de facto Jack Kirby/John Buscema Marvel Comics style that was the sort of

DB: Well, look at DC Comics. DC and 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 leaving out a bunch of awesome guys. José Luis Garcia-Lopez. You name it. And they’re being replaced by this other look. And at DC, especially, forget about the Image style, there’s this DC house style now. It’s this sort of really realistic, rendered style. And I just look at this stuff sometimes and it just boggles my mind. John Cassaday and Bryan Hitch, those two guys, I look at their work and I go, “Holy Christ. I’m in the same business as these guys?” They’re incredible! But, at the same time, as incredible as these guys are, their work leaves me.... From a technical point of view, I’m stunned, but I get weary looking at it. I think, “I can’t draw, I stink.” [Mike laughs] But the stuff leaves 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 there was in Kirby’s stuff. DB: No animation in it. DRAW!: Yeah, there was a bit of humor—the old Spider-Man stuff 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 out in the late Eighties, early Nineties, guys like Steve Pugh and... DRAW! • FALL 2003

ILLUSTRATION

who drew Grant Morrison’s first book over there? He has a real great style... Steve Yeowell. He had some animation, some humor, some opinion to it. And that’s the stuff that really gets my juices. That’s why I think I like Bruce Timm’s work so much. People who are working on his end of the spectrum get me a lot more excited. I’m juiced to it. DRAW!: That’s why I really liked what Darwyn Cooke was doing on Catwoman. DB: Yeah! In fact, I was just looking at that stuff. I actually happen to have a copy of it someone gave me, and I was just looking at that stuff. I love the way he draws figures. There’s some opinion to it, there’s some juice to it, and there’s also this sense of... 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’s your taste, some like detail, some like exaggeration, some simplicity. It reminds me of the old Alex Toth argument. Many artists 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. I think, if you’re an artist, your interest in the comic is more based upon your desire, in a way, to emulate your art heroes, your influences—to be able to draw as good as them. In your case, it would be somebody like Frazetta. DB: Yeah. DRAW!: Where I think, to the average comic-reading fan or person looking at art, they look at most modern cartoonists drawing super-hero books today and they see all this attention to detail, and to the average person, they equate detail with sincerity and quality. That means if the artist was really, really rendered up, his drawing is really good. It’s easy and obvious and lays there and requires the reader to do little work to complete the 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 little battle going back and forth, within some artists in the industry. Maybe not huge, but I certainly talk with many artists about this, because the fans never raise up an artist like Toth. The artists raise up a guy like Toth as sort of the ultimate—an artist who got really close to perfection in the medium. DB: Well, you have to get to a certain level as an artist to be able to understand why it is that Toth is a genius. Just like when you’re studying art, and your teachers are pushing Picasso on you, and you’re like, Picasso, Van Gogh, these guys sucked! They couldn’t even friggin’ draw! Give me a break! Picasso draws a nostril in the middle of the face? Well, then you come to realize, well, okay, Pablo Picasso mastered drawing the figure when he was a boy. He transcended and went up into the stratosphere artwise. And most people don’t get that stuff. They just don’t have the education, they don’t have the patience to under10 DRAW! • FALL 2003

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

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 I got into school, and now I look at his stuff and it is so simply beautiful. It burns with emotion and passion. It has all these things that I guess just took people a while to figure out were there, just like it took me a while. DRAW!: Well, if you go into an art gallery, the work that the average person would buy is work by someone like Thomas Kincaid, because to them, they look at it and it’s very detailed and it’s got all the glowy light and everything—that’s good. DB: That’s “good” artwork. That’s like my great-uncle. One day he comes over and he shows me this painting of a boat in a harbor. It was totally photo-realistic. The watercolor painter had obviously taken a photo and tried to do as photo-realistic a job on it as possible. And he shows it to me and goes, “See that? That’s Art.” [Mike laughs] He was basically telling me that what I do is not ’good’ art because I don’t make it look real. And then of course I show him a panel of my comic where I had taken some reference and done a portrait of someone’s face, and I said, “What about that? Does that look real enough for you?” and he nods and says, “Well, that’s good. That’s good, right there.” But basically anything where you use too much imagination is not

THE CRUSTY CRITIC

ANDE PARKS

For my purposes, I bought a couple of packs of nibs, which came with holders. I had some old pens on hand, but I thought it might be a good idea to buy new stuff, in case Hunt had changed them since I stocked up a decade ago. By the end of the testing, I was really thankful for that decision… one of the pens had changed dramatically, and it has become my new favorite nib. Hunt makes a wide variety of nibs, which I quickly narrowed down to pens that I thought appropriate for comic book work. Pens were eliminated for being too blunt, or for not being large enough to carry a good amount of ink. A useful pen needs to be capable of detail, and I don’t intend to waste my working day dipping my pen every couple of lines. Here’s a breakdown of the pens that made the final cut:

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN HEEBINK

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

PENS and INK Greeting, fellow Draw-ers! Your humble critic returns this issue to give you the rundown on your choices in pen nibs and India inks. I have to admit that I’ve been in a rut for several years when it comes to these tools… using pretty much the same products, and finding myself fairly satisfied with the results. When I hit the art supply store shelves to refresh my knowledge of what’s available in today’s market, I was shocked by what I found. There were more choices regarding inks than I had imagined, and I was equally surprised to find that, in the American market, a single company holds a near-monopoly when it comes to pen nibs. Even so, I found some revelations awaiting me when I put these products to the test. PENS Since 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 different pens, but the one I’ve found myself using most often is the popular Hunt 102. When I hit the Internet to see what’s currently available, I found that Hunt dominates the marketplace. I did find Gillott pens at one source in the US, www.aoeartworld.com, but the Gillotts I tested were not as well made as the Hunts, and did not offer any unique properties. I’d encourage you to try the Gillotts, but since Hunt pens are so much easier to find, and I prefer them, I will not be reviewing the Gillotts in depth. The good news is that Hunt makes some excellent pens, and they are widely available. You should be able to find them at any arts and crafts store, not to mention a number of internet retailers. Unfortunately, a lot of crafts stores carry only packages of a variety of points. That’s fine if you want to try them all, but not practical if you use the same pen or pens every day. The Critic’s favorite internet source, www.misterart.com, offers all of the Hunt pens in bulk. If you buy a dozen pen points, you should pay well less than a dollar per nib.

102—A stiff nib, for use with the Hunt 102 pen holder. This is probably the most popular nib amongst comic book artists. It’s capable of very fine detail, but can be pushed into making some fairly wide lines. This is the pen used by Terry Austin, Erik Larsen, Kevin Nowlan, Jerry Ordway, and yours truly, to name just 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 a wide variety of lines, but it takes a gentle touch. Beware of ink blobs! 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 backgrounds or for ruling lines with a raised straight-edge. 108—A flexible, bronze-finished pen, to be used with the Hunt 102 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 stiffer and 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 other options, and you may prefer one of those alternatives. My focus, though, is on tools that are widely available. I’m confident that you’ll be able to find a pen that will suit your purposes among these choices. As always, I encourage you to contact me if you love a pen that I haven’t mentioned. I’m always looking for new products. I’ve provided a visual example which should help demonstrate what lines each pen is capable of, but I’ll give you a brief rundown 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 handles well, and ink flows well from its tip. If I want a pen with this much flex, though, I’d probably just jump to the 103. The 102 is an old standby. I’ve been using this pen pretty exclusively for years. It handles well, and you can get it to produce an amazing variety of lines. It’s not especially durable, especially if you press down hard. I snap the tips off of these pens several times each year, and it’s never fun. At best, you can end up with a small ink splatter on your page. At worst, the ink, DRAW! • FALL 2003 25

THE CRUSTY CRITIC

ANDE PARKS

PEN INKING DEMO STEP ONE I asked my pal Will Rosado to provide a copy of a panel for this demo. Will’s stuff is amazingly rich and textural. Check him out these days at CrossGen. Anyway, Will was nice enough to provide several examples, and I chose this one to demonstrate how I might use several different Hunt pens to approach a drawing.

STEP TWO I first hit the drawing with the Hunt 108, using the pen on the main contours of the figures. The pen’s flexibility allowed me to produce some very heavy lines. It’s fine enough for some detail work, but I save the finest figure work for the 102. I plan on doing most of the hair with a brush, but I provided myself some guidelines with the pen.

STEP THREE I did the face on the background character with the Hunt 102, along with the papers. This pen is great for fine work where some variation of line weight is called for. I want to use a dead line for the background elements, so I saved them for an even stiffer nib.

26 DRAW! • FALL 2003

THE CRUSTY CRITIC well with pens, even when left open for days, and produces a fairly solid black. I like to thicken the ink for use with brushes, as you can see in the “Ink Juggling” sidebar. The Pelikan Type A ink is also available in bulk… www.texasart.com has it in bottles as big as 33.8 ounces, for just over a dollar per ounce. The Koh-I-Noor works better with pens, and the Black Star goes down darker with brushes, but this ink is the best option for handling both jobs. Speedball Super Black India Ink I was really disappointed with this ink, because I’ve heard several artists recommend it. I found that its flow with a pen was less than average, and it did not hold up well when erased after brush application. Perhaps it could perform better when either thinned for pen or thickened for brush, but I can’t recommend it for use straight from the bottle. If you don’t mind using two different inks… one for pens and one for brushes, I think the Koh-I-Noor and the Dr. Martin’s Black Star are excellent choices. I’ll stick to the Pelikan, though. It performs well with both media, and I only have to worry about finding a good deal on one product. That’s it for this edition of The Critic. As always, I remind you that the opinions presented here are just that… the feelings of one solitary, grouchy artist. I encourage you to let my reviews guide you, but it’s also important that you try these tools out for yourself, to find what works best for you. Until next time, The Crusty Critic reminds you to draw well, and carry a finely crafted stick.

ANDE PARKS

If you’re viewing a digital version of this publication, PLEASE read this plea from the publisher! his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE T DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks—your support allows us to keep producing publications like this one. If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, and it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. If that’s the case, here’s what you should do: 1) Go ahead and READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, and see what you think. 2) If you enjoy it enough to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and purchase a legal download of it from our website, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. We’d love to have you as a regular paid reader. 3) Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. 4) Finally, DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. We offer one complete issue of all our magazines for free downloading at our website, which should be sufficient for you to decide if you want to purchase others. If you enjoy our publications enough to keep downloading them, support our company by paying for the material we produce. We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard-working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this work. We love what we do, but our editors, authors, and your local comic shop owner, rely on income from this publication to stay in business. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so will ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download. TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

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DRAW! • FALL 2003 29

A DIGITAL LIKENESS

An interview and demo with caricaturist

ZACH TRENHOLM 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 magazine 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....

This interview was conducted over the phone, transcribed by Steven Tice and copy edited by Zach Trenholm. DRAW!: So Fortune magazine called you up this morning and gave you a quick assignment to draw, an illustration featuring.... Zach Trenholm: Larry Ellison, CEO of the software firm Oracle. Basically they wanted ’em him pointing directly at the viewer or the reader and holding a fistful of bills— pretty straightforward. I thought I could knock it out by the requested five o’clock East Coast deadline (I’m here in California) and did. After e-mailing the illo over, I guess an editor got... DRAW!: Got a brainstorm? 30 DRAW! • FALL 2003

ZT: Yeah, exactly. After getting the art, the art director, Robert Dominguez, got back to me immediately with an editor’s request that Ellison now be turned into the Incredible Hulk. He wanted him appearing angrier then had been done and as the Hulk it could be accomplished in a timely, pop cultural reference sort of way. I guess the barrage of summer movie promotionals really does have an impact. So now I needed to ditch the body I had just spent the last few hours doing and quickly redo him as the Hulk. To be honest, I’m not much of a superhero artist (even an anti-hero like the Hulk). But here’s what I typically do in a situation like this: I go straight to the masters, and the master in this case would be none other than Jack Kirby. DRAW!: [laughs] Go find some cool, old Jack Kirby Hulk examples....

CARICATURE

ZACH TRENHOLM

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

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

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

ZT: Oh, that’s impossible. That wouldn’t work at all. For starters, he excels at foreshortening, and I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around that too terribly well. DRAW!: When did Fortune originally call you with the assignment? ZT: I got a call around 9:30 this morning here in San Francisco, so it was around 12:30 there in New York. And the art director needed it by 4:00 or 5:00 New York time, so I needed to really knock it out. DRAW!: What’s your first step? Do you draw up a rough and then... do you go on the web and try to find as many pictures of the person you are going to draw as possible? ZT: It depends on the art director. In this case, he supplied me with two pictures basically from one of the same sources that I would have gone to, which is Corbis (an online public access photo archive). Another is Google’s search engine 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 what you’re looking for has a common name, such as “Larry ABOVE: Oracle CEO Larry Ellison “Hulking out” from Fortune magazine. LEFT: Neo and Orpheus from The Matrix.

ZT: Right, so even though the art director sent me reference, I still always go online myself to see if I can conjure up anything better, especially any type of candid or offguard reference. That’s always ideal when striving for the most definitive likeness. DRAW!: Do you draw something quickly in pencil and scan it in, just so you can mess around with the shapes of his face, to get down the caricature, the likeness? ZT: No, no... I pretty much do a tight sketch. Particularly with the face. The rest I can approach like that, such as the body and background aspects.... DRAW!: Now, is this in pencil, or is this on the Wacom tablet in Photoshop or...? ZT: No, it’s done in pencil on paper, and after scanning the sketch into the computer, I convert it into a template for tracing over in Adobe Illustrator. DRAW!: Is that what you send to the art director first, or do you send him the sketch? ZT: No, I’m really bad about that. Unless they’ve worked with me before, I probably give ’em a slight case of hives the first time around [laughter]. What I do instead for my own creative flexibility is, after making sure I’m clear on what’s needed concept-wise, I simply just proceed with it and then provide the more or less finished illo the first time as a proof. The client then has the option to make any fixes or revisions as they see 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, “move his arm, move his leg”? ZT: Well, never on that micro of a level, but as I mentioned earlier with Larry Ellison, he went from being simply himself in a business suit to needing to look like the Hulk, or to being the Hulk. DRAW!: Now, do you charge them extra to do that, because you had essentially already finished the illustration? ZT: [laughs] It’s interesting that you ask that. No, I never really do that—I lack the business cajonés I guess [laughter]. The majority of my art directors are quite fair and in the particular case of Fortune, they were already paying me a couple of hundred dollars more than normal because of the shorter turnDRAW! • FALL 2003 31

ZACH TRENHOLM

CARICATURE

around. As a matter of fact, when I got the commission, he told me they were going to compensate me X amount for it and as I thought 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 him into the Hulk. [laughs] So after spending another couple hours or so converting him into the Hulk, I then asked if he wouldn’t mind boosting it back up to the originally quoted fee. DRAW!: Do you have a standard day rate for this, do you have an hourly rate that you figure for yourself in case things like this happen, where they go haywire, or do you just have a standard way of...? ZT: No, I just sort of roll with it. Budgets are generally dictated by the publications and I pretty much take on the jobs that I do 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 inclined I am. And then of course it depends on how famous the individual to be depicted is. The more well known the individual, the more timely the individual, then the more I want to take the assignment on.

DRAW!: So you can keep your portfolio fresh, so to speak? ZT: Well, yeah, but it’s not entirely based on portfolio reasoning. 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 tear sheets into, but I haven’t had a tangible portfolio, y’know, something you would show an art director, in probably about ten years. DRAW!: Wow. So most people, then, if they want to find out what you do, or to find out the kind of style you have, you are referring them to your website? ZT: Right. Well, they usually find me—mostly by seeing my work. DRAW!: They’ll see your byline and then look you up online and give you a call? ZT: Right, that’s usually how it works. I also send out a promotional postcard every couple of years or so. That way if they’re not already familiar with what I do, they’ll hopefully take the time to visit my web portfolio and that will (once again hopefully) lead to a commission at some point. At least that’s the idea behind the nefarious scheme. DRAW!: So, most art directors who you have not worked with before are people who are either coming across your work BELOW: Producer Weinstein and directors Scorsese, Rob Marshall and Stephen Daldry done for the Wall Street Journal.

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CARICATURE

gral part of things, but recently it has changed. DRAW!: Yeah, that’s one of my favorite magazines, but you’re right, it does seem they’re using more photos and less drawings. ZT: Yeah, I recently had an exchange with David Cowles, one of their regulars regarding EW’s re-design and he aptly described it as “the Maxim look.” That men’s mag is apparently so successful these days that many others are now racing to imitate it not only in terms of its content but appearance as well. That probably doesn’t bode too well for illustrators. DRAW!: I guess everybody will jump on that, and in a year or two they’ll reinvent themselves again because that will be old. ZT: Well, I hope so. Magazine illustration has had a good run since the early ’80s, and it would be regrettable for it to diminish now. You know, there’s a precedent for this; illustration had another heyday back in the 1920s and ’30s and when Life magazine reinvented itself, it created a photographic standard that a lot of magazines soon followed suit on. DRAW!: And then, after the second World War, they really started using a lot more photography. ZT: Exactly. It wasn’t really until the ’60s that illustration—and for that matter, caricature—had a kind of resurgence in the form of artists such as Edward Sorel and David Levine. DRAW!: And illustration had artists like Bob Peak and Bernie Fuchs and other people like that. ZT: Right, right, exactly. DRAW!: And that lasted all the way into, oh, probably the mid’70s, and then things seemed to change again.

ZACH TRENHOLM

ZT: Yeah... things kinda plateaued and then had a resurgence after Tina Brown took over The New Yorker in the early ’80s and brought back the sort of illustration The New Yorker was known for back in its early days. DRAW!: Now, who are some of the caricaturists that you like or whose work you follow today? ZT: Let’s see... Richard Thompson is a fave. Wonderful stuff that differs a great deal from my own.... He does a weekly political panel for U.S. News and World Report and the occasional illustration for The Washington Post. Definitely one of my favorites. Consistently solid likenesses.... DRAW!: Do you follow political cartoonists at all, like Pat Oliphant and people like that? ZT: Yeah, I like his work. I wouldn’t say he’s a keen caricaturist, although he does better caricatures than the majority of political cartoonists that are working at the moment. Another caricaturist whose work I like and who has just come to mind is Eric Palma. DRAW!: Yes, he’s really good. He also does a lot of work for Entertainment Weekly. ZT: Right. David Cowles too, my good pal Gary Smith of The London Sunday Times, Charlie Powell, Chris Pyle—they all do terrific stuff as well.

VISIT WWW.ZACHTRENHOLM.COM

NEXT PAGE: Nelly and California Gov. Grey Davis. TOP: Internet CEO roundtable done for Fast Company. ABOVE: Julia Roberts. LEFT: Eminem.

DRAW! • FALL 2003 41

From pencil sketch to Adobe Illustrator—THE PROCESS STEP 1: Zach’s first step in doing this spot illustration of Cybill Shepard was to compile photo reference of Ms. Shepard. He does this by visiting an extensive clipping file of personalities that he has built up over the years and by the Internet, which has become an excellent source for material with its thousands of celebrity shrine or fan sites. After studying the collection of pix of her, Zach lets his mind, rather than eye, take over. With regards to likeness and character, it is far more selective and interpretive—retaining what is essential and ignoring that which is inconsequential. He usually achieves his likenessess in anywhere from 1 to 5 sketches, although it can sometimes take upwards of 50 sketches to obtain the same desired effect. He states that he knows when a likeness is successful: “It’s when the subject looks more like the caricature rather than the other way around.”

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

STEP 3: The sketch or sketches are then scanned into the computer for conversion into templates for tracing in Adobe Illustrator. Since time was of the essence in this case, 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 publication. Working digitally makes this possible. He sends all his illustrations, finished or otherwise, initially as “proofs.” If after seeing the artwork the client has any changes or additions, he can easy make those corrections to the original file and send the illustration again.

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

PLANNING YOUR LAYERS Managing a complex illustration is made easier by nesting groups of objects into layers. You should create as many layers as you deem necessary, not just to organize, but also to simplify the tedious process. You can lock and hide layers to isolate and protect their contents or to avoid the obvious cluttering. To further prevent or minimize the guess work and confusion on the work in progress, I identified and defined the various areas in my image before I start inking by grouping elements in the image based on their overlapping order, and creating individual layers for each group. Because of its complexity I divided the hair 4 into two groups. The shapes behind the girl’s face became Layer 1 (I double-clicked on its name to rename it “Hair Back”). Next I created a second layer by clicking on the “Create New Layer” icon (folded page) located on the layer’s palette (bottom row)—I renamed it “Girl’s Face”—followed by the hair overlapping the girl’s face in its own “Hair Front” group (Layer 3).

List of layers created for this image, in overlapping order from back to front: 1- Hair Back 2- Girl’s Face 3- Hair Front 4- Left Arm 5- Right Arm 6- Torso/Legs

SPLITTING THE HAIR I started by tracing the contour of the hair behind the girl’s face as one global shape with the pen tool, using a 0.25 point black “Stroke” (outline) and “No Fill,” matching the lines of my sketch as closely as possible. The intersecting lines that make up the mosaic-like pattern inside the hair were drawn individually using the same stroke and fill properties as the big shape. In order to apply the “Divide” Pathfinder filter effectively, all the lines were drawn past the main hair shape’s perimeter. I then grouped them together—Command+G (Mac OS), Ctrl+G (Windows)—and set the group’s attributes to No Stroke 6 and “No Fill.” I selected all the elements I had drawn up to this point (including the main hair shape) by choosing “Select > All” from the top menu bar and clicked on the “Divide Filter” from the Pathfinder palette. After the filter was applied I deleted the residual shapes and proceed to color the various objects. 7 5

DRAW! • FALL 2003 45

DIGITAL ILLUSTRATION

ALBERTO RUIZ

After finishing both hair groups, I got them out of the way by hiding them from view. This was accomplished by merely clicking on the eye icon in the Layers palette. Hold down Option as you click on the eye icon to show/hide all layers but the active one. FACE VALUES Before I started tracing the contour of the head I created and named a new layer for the face, then I clicked and dragged the new layer and sandwiched it between Layers 1 and 3 (the “Hair” layers). I set my object’s attributes to “No Fill” from the icon at the bottom of the toolbox and mixed a medium flesh tone for the Stroke. Zooming in at 300%, I drew a quick outline of the face using the Pen tool. I kept the flesh colored Stroke without a Fill to be able to see the pencil outlines I was tracing over; I always get very excited at this point in the image because faces are my favorite things to draw. I began to lay down the rest of the objects in the face, as always, working from back to front, I completed this part of the image in a very short amount of time, mostly because I don’t have to be too careful about drawing parts of the image that will eventually be covered by overlapping objects,

46 DRAW! • FALL 2003

ILLUSTRATION

DAN BRERETON

RIGHT—GRENDEL—BRERETON: This job was computer colored with red and it came out looking gorgeous. Matt Wagner wrote the script in a way that left room to do these vignetted images instead of separate panels, and I loved the way the story flowed in that regard. The reference I shot in one afternoon with my girlfriend’s niece, Cynthia, created a personal connection for me that often translates into better work in the end. The pictures I arranged inspired the finished pieces. When you are composing photos, remember that part of the drawing happens at this point—your arranging, lighting, posing—all of this ends up affecting the drawing and composition.

LEFT—UPCOMING BIRDS OF PREY—BRERETON: I was lucky enough to make a sort of transition with the Birds of Prey stories I’m illustrating from painting to drawing by using grey washes to create values. It’s an interesting way to work and I’m curious how the colorists will handle the art. I’m trying to keep the white of the paper more than in a regular painting. The “Grendel” story helped in that regard, though it was more of a painted story, whereas the BOP stuff is inks and washes in watercolor and inks. Blocking in shadow shapes is crucial here as in painting.

smaller—10” x15”—and it came out really nicely and took much less time. I may have found a new way to work for a while. It’s encouraging to know I can move along more rapidly on a story. Sometimes the absence of color can be freeing. I especially like working in gray tones at times, because I can concentrate on value and design. I have a hard time, though, leaving values out entirely in black-&-white work. it probably comes from 20 years of painting. I managed to do it in the “SpiderMan” job last year and I liked the results, but it was a tough transition!

Contact and stay up on all of Dan’s projects and art at: www.nocturnals.com

DRAW! • FALL 2003 57

The Power Of Sketching BY BRET BLEVINS

THE POWER OF SKETCHING

he value of sketching is impossible to overstate. Habitual sketching will sharpen your perceptions, teach your mind how to see with ever greater depth and subtlety, and transform your hands into skilled instruments of visual expression. It’s also a lot of fun—for a person in love with drawing, sketching is the path to the good life! Constant drawing is the surest means of becoming a fluent draftsman—if you are searching and stretching to improve the accuracy or emotional eloquence of every mark you make. This distinction is crucial—filling reams of paper with repetitions of learned rendering tricks or minor variations of familiar contrived imagery is not what I’m describing. You

BRET BLEVINS

must draw as a process of informing your perceptions—increasing your understanding of rhythm, form, shape, light and shadow, composition, your mediums and tools, and unlocking access to the core of your imaginative powers. This sounds like a daunting task, but a relaxed, playful attitude will work wonders and make sketching a pleasant and satisfying addiction. If sketching doesn’t appeal to you, or seems to be a waste of effort because there’s no money in it (a common stigma among commercial artists), decide to develop a joy for observing everything around you and a hunger for creating images. Don’t allow the act of creating art to become a chore—you can choose to approach your work with an attitude that feeds your ABOVE: The old farm sketch (done in the late 1980s using a medium-soft HB pencil and a kneaded eraser) accents the linear contours of the forms—many small lines build up the shading within outlines. The overcast winter day weakened contrasts and softened the shadows into gray. LEFT: This Fairy-embellished life drawing (drawn with a soft 6B Rexel Derwent graphite pencil) is recent and more elegant in treatment; very simple, subtle lost-andfound contour lines edge the forms—the volume of the masses are shaped by smooth gray tones rubbed in gently with a finger.

DRAW! • FALL 2003 59

THE POWER OF SKETCHING

BRET BLEVINS

spirit as well as your stomach. With proper enthusiasm it’s possible to eventually escalate that conscious choice into an obsession—then you’re on magical ground and every sheet of blank paper becomes a rewarding invitation to soar. Any act of intense creativity both drains and inspires the mind, opening the way for new ideas and skills to arise, building and building your store of experiences. The more energy you expend, the higher you rise—and constant practice is the pragmatic aspect of this ascent. Just as a musical virtuoso hones his or her talent by daily revisiting scales and technique or an athlete depends on specific physical exercises to achieve and maintain superb performance, diligent drawing is the training regiment of the master draftsman or draftswoman. Aim high and always shoot for the the moon—it’s the only way to find out how far you can go. The rewards of this enthusiasm are far greater than just filling your studio with stacks of filled sketchbooks—the practice of sketching develops technical facility as it nurtures your curiosity, observation skills, and sensitivity to ever more subtle perception, and this will enrich all your work. Until you make a considered drawing of a subject, you’ve only glimpsed it— never really seen it. The process of drawing an object, atmospheric effect, or emotional impulse carves nuances and depth into your consciousness that cannot be gleaned through casual observation, and builds a storehouse of memory that will inform all your future work. A devotion to sketching also enriches your experience of living—using your eyesight becomes a constant delicious adventure. No two trees are alike—no two leaves on a tree are 60 DRAW! • FALL 2003

TOP: The rotting barn was drawn was drawn the same day as the sketch at the top of page 59, and the technique is identical—more attention is given to contour and texture than the sculptural effects of light and shadow. ABOVE: My small son’s peaceful sleeping face inspired a spontaneous recording, with a fairly hard pencil on the nearest surface handy—the back of a comic book script page.

Draw #7