Humanizing?

[bcholmes]

I recently bought a bunch of art books for my comics class. How to books. Reference books. I've got two interesting books of action poses. Get a few models and photograph them in various comic book-suitable action stances. There are even some brief sections that tell you how you'd use the poses to create comic art.

They're good references. And the art examples are by cool artists like Paul Chadwick and Terry Moore. But sometimes the words make me want to hit things.

Take Moore's write-up in Comic Artist's Photo Reference: Women and Girls:

As you read his lesson on page 73, you will understand why Terry is a modern master of the art form. He reveals how he not only draws the model, but actually thinks about her as a person.

Wow. An actual person. Huh.

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

The how-to books bug me for that reason. So many of them are written by old coots from the dark ages whose attitudes show through in their styles.

I tend to read the books that talk about how to tell stories and compose pictures and pages, but not the ones that tell me how my characters should look. Scott McCloud is my favourite. I read comics and sketch from life and stock photos to learn how to draw figures the way I want.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if it works. ^^;;

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

That's kind of true though. When I was a nude model, the students never thought of me as a human being. I was totally objectified. I'd peak over their shoulders and look at pics of myself and my glasses would be missing or my tattoos would be absent, both of which are quintessentially me.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I've been both a nude model for artists and students, as well as an art student. As an art student, I rarely drew glasses or tattoos (both of which I have) because I was concentrating on the larger form of the body, rather than what I think of as "surface details". I was too busy learning to see musculature, light, bone structure, etc.

Maybe on the last pose of a 3 hour class - the 45 minute one or something, I'd have the time to get to glasses and tats.

The only time I recall drawing something like that was a woman who had been scarred by gunfire - the scars caused her muscles to work in different ways - dimples where things were usually convex. They had caused profound changes not to her skin - but to her musculature itself. She was marvelous to draw.

N.

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

I was rather popular the semester that I did it. I'm not a small woman by any stretch of the imagination so the students were all excited to see a fat model. LOL I had a good time, but the objectification bothered me sometimes.

[sabotabby]

That makes me sad. When I was an art student, we thought our models were awesome. They were mostly art students or dance students themselves, so besides the fact that we were grateful for getting to do life drawing in the first place (this was in high school and we were one of the few schools that had it), we figured they were pretty much us in a few years trying to pay for university.

Your students might very well have been dicks (or they might have been bad artists!). I agree with nex0s below—there were always time limits, so you drew the underlying structures first before you'd draw tattoos or glasses. I know that I was always trying to get a sense of the person—how they carried themselves, the little things that would make the drawing instantly recognizable.

Back to comics, though: One of the problems I have with "how-to-draw" books and, well, mainstream comic depictions of women in general is how generic they tend to be. You really don't get any sense of female characters as characters.

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand the whole draw the body first thing, but very often the students would finish drawing and just sit there without going back and adding details. I am sure that the students were probably really nice people, but they never really interacted with me in our out of the classroom. I felt pretty isolated. I just thought that was kind of normal...

[sabotabby]

I felt pretty isolated. I just thought that was kind of normal...

Aww, that's sad. Too bad you didn't work at our school—we went out for coffee with our models. But then, we were hardly normal. :)

[deepforestowl.livejournal.com]

That would have been awesome! I was invited to their Halloween party and I went, but no one talked to me or the other model...at least they had cupcakes!

[rbowspryte.livejournal.com]

We need to talk.

[lovecraftienne.livejournal.com]

Isn't he wonderful? Sometimes we're even almost people-like. I feel all warm and fuzzy, only not so much like a kitten as like pizza you didn't realize was mouldy before you stuck it in the nuke...