Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Mark Texeira


I featured a few scans of Mark Texeira's art in a previous post, but I wanted to go into more depth and talk about what it means to me. To be honest, I'm a little divided, because on the one hand he does these ridiculously overdeveloped superheroes and his women are often insanely sexy, but on the other hand, his art is astonishing! In many ways I'd have to say he's my favorite superhero artist. But yet his work always has something really juvenile and embarrassing about it. 

The way he does faces!!! My god, I've never seen a comic book artist do such great faces and expressions. And yet it's very caricatured, despite all the subtlety. There seems to be no separating the 2 elements of his work - you always get two for the price of one. His figures are the same way - double aspects. Some of what he does with them is incredible, and yet at the same time he seems limited to only certain poses and angles. I suppose that's because of the very extreme way he caricatures them. However, the poses he can do are often unbelievably well drawn - often with uncanny levels of subtlety at things I've never seen comic book artists attempt. 

I don't know if I'm expressing myself very well - I feel like I'm just groping for words and coming up blank more often than not. And overusing a handful of superlatives. You know what - I don't really know what to say about Texeira's art. Talking about art is literally, as the saying goes, like dancing about architecture. The reason people create art in the first place is because they have something to express that can't be done through conversation or ordinary writing. If I keep working on it I might be able to write something better up at some point - but for now I think I'll just post the images. 

Enjoy...










Oh yeah, and he's really good at drawing celebrity faces too!






 Ok, a few more words dropped in the bucket:

 His work is often bold, astonishing, fresh, exciting, and yet at the same time there's a subtlety and a sensitivity there. Some of the best artists tend to embody a paradox like this. Also, about the flow of his pages for the purpose of storytelling - to me it looks very cinematic and very well laid out. Excellent design sense and use of cinematic tropes, plus a very innovative use of long narrow frames interspersed between the more traditional rectangular ones, often vertical! Innovative and often very difficult camera angles, usually handled easily and with panache and aplomb. The skills this guy wields are legendary!

And the characters - well, they have a lot of character! These people just brim over with personality - you can see it in every line.

As for the drawing style itself - the mix of incredibly bold thick brush strokes with that intuitive sense for where to go thick and where thin, and then the unbelievably fine pen work that manages to sculpt subtle forms on faces and bodies as if they're landscapes. Man, I have no idea how he figures out how to do that pen hatching - it must be completely intuitive. It's like the guy was born with a dip pen in his hand and was using it before he started breathing!

 Hmm - well, I suppose I ended up saying something after all in a big rush at the end there. Still not sure it means much though - but I'm one of the people who feels compelled to try dancing on the parapets and crenellations whether or not it does any good. At heights like this though I just have to hope I don't fall off!


1 comment:

  1. Love his work. Just picked up some of my old comics and forgot how good his pages are. I'm a graphic novel illustrator myself and so I was curious as to what other works he's done but dissapointed to find next to nothing on him online.

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