[jimlee]
Like nearly everyone, I doodle. Here are some I did during breaks between
meetings. Cropped out are all the important notes and such. These go so
fast I wonder how I could ever be late on a real assignment. Sad truth is
that nearly every artist I know draws pretty fast when it comes to sketchy
type material but when it comes to real work, everyone slows down--sometimes
to a crawl.
Call it choking, call it nerves but there is something about knowing your
work is for print that makes you pull back and the best work always comes
when you break through this mental block. When it's going good, I can do 2
pages a day. When it's going cold, it can take 3-4 days for a page and you
could never tell the difference between what pages took a short amount of
time and which seemed to take an eternity to finish.
Here is a closer shot.
Posts
17 comments:
you speak the truth :)
Perfectly articulated.
And great doodles!
Peace...
very true indeed, but it's comforting to know that even the pro's work in the same fashion!
To even know what it feels like to be in such an artistic predicament...
I guess you can also draw a parallel with any creative medium, not just drawing. I know when I would write either informative, argumentative, or creative writing compositions for university, sometimes I could knock out an essay without blinking an eye...other times, I would be stuck writing the same paragraph or sentence for days.
Ryan
Jim Lee please come to the PCTC! Please!
Forgot to add...that Superman pose looks dramatically like your "Comic Book Greats" figure. Lower body isn't the same pose, but the upper body is a dead ringer...
Ryan
Hey Jim,
nice to see some of your raw stuff again :)
I agree on your words...Ive once read something about stuff like that in school, i think it was a essay by Heinrich von Kleist (a very famous german author of the 17th or 18th century).
In his essay he said that a actor who plays the role of a warrior f.e, never will reach a dynamic and natural movement like a real warrior whos fighting for his life...while a bear f.e that has to struggle for his life in a fight with another animal will move natural, smooth and elegant because he reacts instintively and isnt posing for the audience...
I always felt like the same thing goes for drawing, sequential pages almost never have the power,impact and effect that a sketch/scribble has.
enough for the stupid talk ;)
love the sketches.
Best,
Sedat
I think it would be cool if you did a weekly "Sketchy Strip" where you don't worry about some of you average rules that you may stick to on the real job and you could break all sorts of rules in comics and have the doodles play with the panels or swing word balloons at each other. but the strips art would have to be made up of unplanned doodles, nothing on slow speed just what comes out- think about it- hmmm- as long as it doesn't take away from what you're doing, and your family- hmmm- think it over.
Sam Out-
Thanks Jim for sharing the DOODLE and info!!
Damn is so terrible to have those loops of Inspiration:
have a great day all of you!!..JESUS ANTONIO
ps:Beautiful Doodle!!!
I was actually pretty surprised to learn how slowly most comic book artists drew, because my husband draws so relatively fast. I guess there aren't that many with enough confidence to do "fast and good."
^ Just like Jim wrote, it's more about the thought of the latter part and pushin' "good" or "good enough" to the level o' "best" or "excellent." Awesome artists are their own worst critics and I appreciate the careful thought they place in their work. I find inspiration to serve as the perfect motivation to break through mental blocks.
Peace...
Elayne the reason is Obvious...Your husband is incredibly talented...!!! I really hope He jumps into the pencilers pool someday...Good day to you and him!!!...JESUS ANTONIO
Jim,
What do you think would happen if you took deadlines out of the picture? What would be the effect on quality and productivity? What if you waited to publish until everything was done? Say for example, you took on a twelve part graphic novel and published it in serialized form only after it was complete. Would you ever finish it? Would love of the form see you to completion?
Hehe. I see it's normal to draw fast when cartoonists are only sketching for sketching (am I clear?). Uff...
I saw that when I'm drawings for example at notebook in school I'm faster then times when I want to sit down and draw sth, sia ba da.
STH MORE: Jim, HOW LONG had you been drawing (I think It's not good tense form, but You will understood me) 2pages splash with cars at Batcave on "Batman" #615??
Hey Jim, your Superman looks great. ¿Any chance that you go back to Metropolis soon?
Sometimes I get *so frustrated* with how long it seems to take me to do a comic page of decent quality.
In the comic courses I take at college, I've often been expected to do 3 pages a week. Of course, I have 4 other classes going on in that week, most of which are 5 hours long. Most of the classes also ask for 5 hours on top of that, out of class, to do the assignments. Which means I really only have 5-6 hours in a week to devote to these 3 comic pages.
Sometimes it's been so frustrating, thinking I should really be able to do those pages in half a day, and feeling like an abnormally slow artist when I can't pull of professional quality art in that timeframe. I guess I should be reminding myself that the typical comic artists averages 1-2 days a page, not 1-2 hours.
nice to see sketches again from you jim! it reminds me of some of the designs sketches for all star superman.
It's sometimes in the spontaneity of drawing quickly that magic can happen. It reminds me of when people toil over term papers and in the end they come up with a completely antiquated thought. If it's straight off the cuff it makes it much breezier. That effortlessness conveys itself in the final product.
Post a Comment