Do It Like a Spaniard!!

Spent the afternoon watching a bunch of the videos on Watts again today - peeking ahead at what's to come a couple of phases down the road. And suddenly I got really excited, as soon as I stumbled across the videos for quicksketches and figure invention. These are a few screengrabs from the videos - and the ones I like the most are always the quickest - 15 and 30 second heads and 2 minute figures. The longer they get the less awesome they become - though of course you need massive skillz like Jeff has to pull this off so fast (or at all!)

What they immediately reminded me of are the drawings of a few of my favorite comic book artists - all Spaniards who used to draw for Warren publishing's big black-and-white horror comics in the 70's- guys like Luis Bermejo (a chameleon artist who could draw anything in any style, but The Rook from Eerie magazine was my favorite), Jose Ortiz, and Jose Gonzales (the main Vampirella artist). It's not easy to find any of their excellent comic work online - I've tried. Here is a sampling:

Jose Ortiz

Luis Bermejo

I absolutely LOVED those comics in my late high school years - I used to walk up to Shopland every month when the new issues came in and plunk down my thriftily-saved allowance. My favorite thing about them was the way they were drawn - so different from the American superhero comics. There was this quickly-stated elegance and a sort of controlled sketchiness, coupled with amazing design sense and knowledge, and they used a very different shape language than the superhero guys - more straight lines and open, airy shapes as opposed to the carefully closed-off, rounded forms of most of the superhero artists. And those Europeans - rather than just always use hatching or feathering for shading, they used decorative calligraphic marks that lent the artwork even more elegance. God how I wanted to be able to draw like that!! I tried and tried, but my skills just weren't up to the task. 

Tonight I tried again, all fired up on excitement that in the coming years I will be developing the ability to draw very much like those Spaniards! I scrawled off these poor attempts:

Actually they came out better than I thought they would - but I can see a lot of work lies ahead. Gotta get to work memorizing those Asaro planes and Reilly abstractions! That stuff (and completely memorizing it) is the basis for this kind of art. 

Most art schools don't teach this kind of drawing - what an amazing stroke of luck that I found one that does, and that also has an online course!! (.. and that I can AFFORD!)