This drawing was shaded using a compilation of five different shading techniques: blended, circulism, blended circulism, loose crosshatching, and tight crosshatching.
Materials: 8 1/2 sketch paper, # 2 mechanical pencil 0.7 mm, prismacolor premier fine line markers, Q-tip
Research link: http://www.dueysdrawings.com/shading_tutorial.html
Chapter 5: Living in Line
- the idea that a picture can evoke an emotional or sensual response in the viewer is vital to the art of comics
- people such as Wassily Kandinsky took interest in the power of line, shape & color to suggest the inner state of the artist and to provoke the 5 senses
- synaesthetics: the idea that art could unite the senses and therefore unite the different art forms that appealed to different senses
- all lines carry an expressive potential: direction, shape, and character change the line’s meaning
- some lines aren’t really pictures— — visual metaphors (symbols): basis of language
- when an artist creates a new way to see the invisible, it will be picked up by other artists— — when used enough, it becomes a permanent part of the language
- when images drift out of their visual context, they drift into the invisible world of symbols
- even when there is little or no distortion of the characters in a given scene, a distorted or expressionistic background will visually affect our reading of a characters’ inner states
- expressionism & synaesthetics can obscure their subjects when strong enough— — lack of clarity can also foster greater participation by the reader and a sense of involvement which many artists and writers prefer
- What you get is what you give.
- Comics aren’t the only medium of art in which stimulating the senses is vital; any form of art needs to touch the senses to truly be appreciated, whether the emotions are negative or positive.
- The use of line and its expressive opportunity are important in any kind of artistic creation.
- While I believe it is possible to unite all of the senses in a work of art, I don’t really know if it is possible to combine all of the forms of art.
- Using the background to help display what a character is feeling is something you see often in Japanese comics.
Chapter 6: Show and Tell
- traditional thinking has held that great works of art and literature are only possible when kept apart— — combination: at best a diversion for the masses, at worst a product of crass commercialism
- comics are perceived as being recent— — judged by old standards of art and writing
- huge ranges of human experiences can be portrayed in comics— — comics have become firmly identified with the art of storytelling
- word specific combinations: pictures illustrate but don’t significantly add to a largely completed text
- picture specific combinations: words do little more than add a soundtrack to a visually told sequence
- duo-specific: words and pictures send essentially the same message
- additive combinations: words amplify or elaborate on an image or vice versa
- parallel combinations: words and pictures follow very different courses without intersecting
- montage: words are treated as integral parts of the image
- interdependent: words and pictures convey an idea together that neither could alone
- I disagree that comics can at best be a “diversion for the masses.” I believe that with the right portrayal and application of words and images, comics could be as meaningful to people as a painting or a novel could be.
- Since comics are considered to be a newer media, then why do we judge them based on old ideas? Why don’t we judge them based off of rules that apply only to the combination of words and images rather than how each side stands alone?