Tags
anatomy, art, drawing, figure drawing, how to draw comics the marvel way, John Buscema, lessons, Stan Lee
Let’s have just one more look inside in How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way for some helpful figure drawing lessons. In an earlier chapter, John Buscema addressed basic anatomy and proportions: the breakdowns of the human figure into formal shapes: cylinders, spheres, and so on. That chapter is quite detailed and well worth reading. This shorter chapter compares that approach to a much more loose and relaxed — even sloppy — method: scribbling.
Mars Will Send No More 
I remember gazing in wonder at this book when I was a little kid, staring in awe at Buscema’s amazing illustrations, struggling to keep up with such perfectly crafted drawings and then getting frustrated because mine never, ever, ever, ever ended up as good as his. Twenty years later and nothing’s changed, I learned the basic principles of how to draw a head and figure from this book, but mine are still still crap and John’s are still unobtainable. It seems so simple for that guy, but I’m not sure if I will ever be able to get my mind around 3 point perspective or the many other necessary rules to becoming a proper artist. And now I look back, and I realise how easy it was for Lee to write that book. “Go on, John, draw another picture of Thor raising his hammer in a lightning storm and shouting to the gods from an eagle-eye perspective…” “Cheers, Stan…”
Poor John. It is definitely an inspiring and essential book though, and I’m sure many other kids will learn much from it and may even succeed in replicating Buscema’s legendary skill.
One other thing that also sticks in my mind about this book is that it stinks of wee, or pee if you’re American. I’m not sure if they still bind it with that same glue now, but the stench of musty urine will forever be associated with How to Draw the Marvel Way. Blood, sweat, tears, and piss.
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Our softcover version smells just fine! But we had a similar experience in our pre-adolescence: gazing in awe at how simple Buscema makes it look, then gazing in frustration at our meager attempts to duplicate. Few drawings have ever sucked as much as our early attempts at foreshortening and costume design.
But one lesson most if not all of us need remains absent from this instructive tome: repetition and persistence. As children, we failed to grasp that this book was an exercise. If we want to get strong, we need to do the exercises daily. Watching a master at work doesn’t qualify one to create a masterpiece; only a consistent practice of the craft will generate that level of mastery.
That being said, some of us are naturally better at some things than others, and all of us have limitations that may prevent mastering a certain method in some artistic endeavour. Partial color blindness has proven a challenge to our painting efforts, for sure. Just a couple of days ago our art teacher informed us that the colored ink we were using as a “purple” was really a kind of dark brown with some greenish black in it. Oops! We need labels on these things!
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Yep I’d go along with that, practice can possibly make perfect… or a little less crap… and it’s definitely a great book which is packed with tips. However I think that you missed out of the piss smell, I don’t know why, but it seemed to add something to the whole struggling child artist experience.
Colour blindness sounds like a bitch, or a kind of permanent acid trip if it’s particularly extreme. How does that work? What does people’s skin and hair look like to you?
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That brings to mind the story of our friend who, as a teenager, always kept his cat’s litter box under his keyboard. It may have been the best place to keep it from getting stepped in, but he always claimed it was for inspiration 🙂
The most common form of colour blindness, passed from grandfather’s genes to a grandson via the mother, can make it difficult to impossible to differentiate red and green. Our version is like that, with a lot of confusion over brown thrown in (red + green = brown.) Also challenging: differentiating blue from purple in many shades. So, it isn’t like we can’t see color in someone’s brown hair. It’s just that we might pick out the green pastel to render it by accident.
True color blindness renders the world in black and white, so we often clarify for people that we are simply color confused. The world appears in full color, but we often perceive a given color differently than the average viewer.
Sometimes the problem disappears if we can take two colors and compare them side by side, and sometimes we can perceive confusing hues once someone points them out. For example, a single flashing light at an intersection at night can be amazingly confusing: is it flashing red or yellow? Do I stop or just slow down? But a traffic light with three lights is easy, because the positions of the lights gives an extra cue.
Labeled paints are easy, but you can imagine how confusing unlabeled pastels and inks are for us! You know that army helmets are green – but which pastel is green and which is brown? Either looks right to us, but the average viewer will know if we chose wrong.
So, when in doubt, we ask! Composition, rendering, and technique we can learn – but we will always need another pair of eyes to verify colors and color schemes.
Thank you for dropping by and commenting!
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That is an interesting condition. So obviously to you everything is the colour that you’ve always known it as, but if someone were a redhead or had strong sunburn it would just look as brown as a brunette or good tan? Wow, imagine what it’s like being truly colour blind and only seeing everything in black and white, that would be like a living in a permanent film noir.
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It’s not quite so bad that a bad sunburn looks lke a healthy tan, but more than one woman has been shocked to discover we like her brown highlights… which were obviously red to everyone else!
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