PROCESS PHOTOS, COVERED, POOR LITTLE RICH DHARB
So Robert Goodin asked me to do something for the Covered art show going on this month in Los Angeles, at Secret Headquarters. Before I get into all the boring art talk, I should say that you should go; I wish I could afford to go, but Los Angeles is a long drive for me. Hopefully less long for you. You can also see all the pieces in the show on their Flickr page, along with prices and info on how you can buy them, regardless of your location.
If you don't know, Covered is a blog Rob started around a year or two ago, which is basically artists re-interpreting classic or favorite or just weird comics covers. It's cool. Rob gets a lot of big names, and a lot of small names, and the takes run from faithful to weird and back again. I love it.
But I had a really hard time thinking of something to do, I came down to either "The Ark" (one of the Jack Chick "Crusaders" line of comics); or the Frazetta cover to Weird Science-Fantasy, the famous one with the spaceman fighting the cavemen; or the one I did. Honestly I was about to pull out of the show; I just didn't have any time, and I'm trying not to do non-paying work, especially since I have undone commissions for some very patient clients.
But I'm glad I did now--drawing Richie Rich was so pleasant, I can't even tell you. Weirdly, it made me feel really grown-up--I still have most of my comics from when I was a kid, and most of them are Richie Rich comics. So the cover above is something I've been seeing--something that's a part of my inner visual lexicon--for the last 25-30 years. Richie Rich might be one of the single biggest influences on my own approach to cartooning, but this was the first time in my entire life including childhood, that I ever tried to actually draw him. In effect I was using adult skills to really look deeply at something from my childhood. It felt strange and great and sad.
The thing about Richie Rich--leaving the weirdness of the comics themselves out--is his design: it's nuts. His head is nearly as big as the entire rest of his body, he's got these kooky cankle legs that actually seem to get larger the closer you get to his feet, and he wears an insane black suit/blue shorts/white boots combo, that's set off jauntily by his massive red bow tie. But what really makes his design is the shape of his head, specifically the way the line of his forehead-to-cheek swoops in and out expressively. You could always tell a crummy Richie Rich artist by this line--if that line doesn't work, the whole face falls apart. Oops I'm digressing.
Okay so anyway I started drawing Richie Rich #141. I'm pretty anal, and didn't have a lot of time, so I did a lot of measuring and mathematizing to make sure I could fit everything in--instead of, say, having to cram in the last couple of letters in the title or squoosh the bike wheel a little to keep them in frame. Or getting most of the way done and then having to start over. I draw small, so I made it 5.75" x 8.5", which is around 30% smaller than the original. Then I just took measurements and divided them by 1.325 to transfer them to the smaller paper.
I basically mapped out where the different title elements would go, as well as the top and sides of the figure, assuming the bottom dimension would just naturally work fine, since there was so much negative space in the composition and I was leaving out the "detectives" subtitle. I actually ended up with too much negative space at the bottom, but by the time I realized this, I had a set of pencils I was pretty happy with, so I just decided to say eff it and go ahead.
I have a weird approach to drawing, and not at all a healthy one--when I draw things I draw their component pieces one at a time, in relation to each other, rather than sketching out the whole thing and then firming up proportions as I go. So a lot of times when I draw from some reference, whether it's life or another sketch or something like this where I'm straight-up copying, everything looks perfect but there's an unsettling element somewhere, like the person's legs are double long or short or the roof of the house is pitched nearly vertical.
In this case it fortunately manifested itself as drawing Richie bigger in ratio to his bike--both the bike and Richie are more or less correct, just not in relation to one another. But that's not the sort of thing people notice, and for some reason I liked it anyway--it fits the way I've skewed the point of the original cover. So, a narrow miss!
I was happy enough with the pencils, in fact, that I was terrified to ink them; I was pretty certain I'd screw them up. Especially since I've been using nibs for the last few months, and am way out of practice with my trusty Kuretake brush pen.
The big lines for me are the tricky ones; I always draw them first, and they always looks terrible until you start filling in the other lines around them.
Like so. This is something I wish someone who knows about it would just sit down and teach me, this thick-to-thin ration that makes certain cartoons work. For instance, the cartooning math that decrees that Richie's head should have a big chunky "holding" line--but that nearly every other line should be of a single weight, and pretty fine at that. I drew all the non-weighted lines with a .005 black Micron pen, which is the smallest one; even as small as I draw the idea of using the Micron for the actual basic lines in a cartoon is crazy.
Anyway, I know there is some cartooning science to this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. But I want to. I want to put my finger on that science! Because Warren Kremer, who was either the original or one of the original Richie Rich artists, and very likely the artist I'm ripping off paying homage to here, has definitely got it. In spades.
It's like the fat lines are bringing forms out of the more mundane shapes in the background almost. But that's not quite it either. Heck I don't know. But it was awfully fun to ink, maybe one of the most fun things I've ever inked. If someone gets the license to Richie Rich and wants to pay me to ink them, I will take that money. You'll have to get a good artist to draw them though.
Figure's all done, next up: lettering! Surprisingly, most of my mistakes on this are in the lettering, which I got a little overconfident on. I like lettering and enjoy making it, and just sort of assumed that lettering the small stuff wouldn't be nearly as hard as getting the big line around Richie's head right.
Still, much as you reduce art for print to smooth out visible errors, by drawing pretty small it makes errors hard to see sometimes, because they are after all tiny.
I spent a long time trying to puzzle out how best to approximate the original colors, but ended up ditching the blue background. I couldn't get a Copic marker to match, and all my blending attempts were either too dull or too bright; the closest one would have meant I hatched the whole background with a blue Micron over a gray marker underlayer. I ended up just doing the underlayer and leaving it at that. Why screw it up just for the dropped background?
And there you go! I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed making this, it was the best. Seriously, someone get that Richie Rich license and pay me to do something with it. I don't think I could compose new Richie's in this smooth style, but I would love to be involved with something nevertheless with someone who could.
One $12 Target frame later, and it's ready to be packed up and shipped off to Sunny California! The show starts this Friday, March 6, and will last throughout the month. Rob is putting up a new piece from the show each day on the Covered blog, so you can see them there, or if you'd like a sneak peek (and/or to purchase one OR EVEN MINE AHEM AHEM, you can check out the Secret Headquarters Flickr set devoted to the show! Okay time for bed it's late!
If you don't know, Covered is a blog Rob started around a year or two ago, which is basically artists re-interpreting classic or favorite or just weird comics covers. It's cool. Rob gets a lot of big names, and a lot of small names, and the takes run from faithful to weird and back again. I love it.
But I had a really hard time thinking of something to do, I came down to either "The Ark" (one of the Jack Chick "Crusaders" line of comics); or the Frazetta cover to Weird Science-Fantasy, the famous one with the spaceman fighting the cavemen; or the one I did. Honestly I was about to pull out of the show; I just didn't have any time, and I'm trying not to do non-paying work, especially since I have undone commissions for some very patient clients.
But I'm glad I did now--drawing Richie Rich was so pleasant, I can't even tell you. Weirdly, it made me feel really grown-up--I still have most of my comics from when I was a kid, and most of them are Richie Rich comics. So the cover above is something I've been seeing--something that's a part of my inner visual lexicon--for the last 25-30 years. Richie Rich might be one of the single biggest influences on my own approach to cartooning, but this was the first time in my entire life including childhood, that I ever tried to actually draw him. In effect I was using adult skills to really look deeply at something from my childhood. It felt strange and great and sad.
The thing about Richie Rich--leaving the weirdness of the comics themselves out--is his design: it's nuts. His head is nearly as big as the entire rest of his body, he's got these kooky cankle legs that actually seem to get larger the closer you get to his feet, and he wears an insane black suit/blue shorts/white boots combo, that's set off jauntily by his massive red bow tie. But what really makes his design is the shape of his head, specifically the way the line of his forehead-to-cheek swoops in and out expressively. You could always tell a crummy Richie Rich artist by this line--if that line doesn't work, the whole face falls apart. Oops I'm digressing.
Okay so anyway I started drawing Richie Rich #141. I'm pretty anal, and didn't have a lot of time, so I did a lot of measuring and mathematizing to make sure I could fit everything in--instead of, say, having to cram in the last couple of letters in the title or squoosh the bike wheel a little to keep them in frame. Or getting most of the way done and then having to start over. I draw small, so I made it 5.75" x 8.5", which is around 30% smaller than the original. Then I just took measurements and divided them by 1.325 to transfer them to the smaller paper.
I basically mapped out where the different title elements would go, as well as the top and sides of the figure, assuming the bottom dimension would just naturally work fine, since there was so much negative space in the composition and I was leaving out the "detectives" subtitle. I actually ended up with too much negative space at the bottom, but by the time I realized this, I had a set of pencils I was pretty happy with, so I just decided to say eff it and go ahead.
I have a weird approach to drawing, and not at all a healthy one--when I draw things I draw their component pieces one at a time, in relation to each other, rather than sketching out the whole thing and then firming up proportions as I go. So a lot of times when I draw from some reference, whether it's life or another sketch or something like this where I'm straight-up copying, everything looks perfect but there's an unsettling element somewhere, like the person's legs are double long or short or the roof of the house is pitched nearly vertical.
In this case it fortunately manifested itself as drawing Richie bigger in ratio to his bike--both the bike and Richie are more or less correct, just not in relation to one another. But that's not the sort of thing people notice, and for some reason I liked it anyway--it fits the way I've skewed the point of the original cover. So, a narrow miss!
I was happy enough with the pencils, in fact, that I was terrified to ink them; I was pretty certain I'd screw them up. Especially since I've been using nibs for the last few months, and am way out of practice with my trusty Kuretake brush pen.
The big lines for me are the tricky ones; I always draw them first, and they always looks terrible until you start filling in the other lines around them.
Like so. This is something I wish someone who knows about it would just sit down and teach me, this thick-to-thin ration that makes certain cartoons work. For instance, the cartooning math that decrees that Richie's head should have a big chunky "holding" line--but that nearly every other line should be of a single weight, and pretty fine at that. I drew all the non-weighted lines with a .005 black Micron pen, which is the smallest one; even as small as I draw the idea of using the Micron for the actual basic lines in a cartoon is crazy.
Anyway, I know there is some cartooning science to this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. But I want to. I want to put my finger on that science! Because Warren Kremer, who was either the original or one of the original Richie Rich artists, and very likely the artist I'm ripping off paying homage to here, has definitely got it. In spades.
It's like the fat lines are bringing forms out of the more mundane shapes in the background almost. But that's not quite it either. Heck I don't know. But it was awfully fun to ink, maybe one of the most fun things I've ever inked. If someone gets the license to Richie Rich and wants to pay me to ink them, I will take that money. You'll have to get a good artist to draw them though.
Figure's all done, next up: lettering! Surprisingly, most of my mistakes on this are in the lettering, which I got a little overconfident on. I like lettering and enjoy making it, and just sort of assumed that lettering the small stuff wouldn't be nearly as hard as getting the big line around Richie's head right.
Still, much as you reduce art for print to smooth out visible errors, by drawing pretty small it makes errors hard to see sometimes, because they are after all tiny.
I spent a long time trying to puzzle out how best to approximate the original colors, but ended up ditching the blue background. I couldn't get a Copic marker to match, and all my blending attempts were either too dull or too bright; the closest one would have meant I hatched the whole background with a blue Micron over a gray marker underlayer. I ended up just doing the underlayer and leaving it at that. Why screw it up just for the dropped background?
And there you go! I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed making this, it was the best. Seriously, someone get that Richie Rich license and pay me to do something with it. I don't think I could compose new Richie's in this smooth style, but I would love to be involved with something nevertheless with someone who could.
One $12 Target frame later, and it's ready to be packed up and shipped off to Sunny California! The show starts this Friday, March 6, and will last throughout the month. Rob is putting up a new piece from the show each day on the Covered blog, so you can see them there, or if you'd like a sneak peek (and/or to purchase one OR EVEN MINE AHEM AHEM, you can check out the Secret Headquarters Flickr set devoted to the show! Okay time for bed it's late!
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