JACK KIRBY - The Irony of ARGO

The other night I finally had a chance to watch the movie Argo. While most of the films I see on the Middle East are so biased as to make them laughable, Argo was actually an engrossing watch. What was particularly impressive was the opening historical exposition explaining the American and British coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mosaddegh and replaced him with Shah Pavlavi's authoritative regime. And Ben Afleck, once the whipping boy of Hollywood, has emerged as not only a talented actor, but an excellent director.

One of the incidental characters mentioned in the cast list is Jack Kirby (played by Michael Parks of Then Came Bronson fame) as the artist who creates all the storyboards and production art for the ersatz film that is going to be shot in Iran. Don't blink or you'll miss both Parks and his credit line.

Of course, all of us who know and love comics realize that Jack Kirby was arguably the greatest talent that the medium has ever seen. He wasn't the best in the business at drawing exotic women, so  as a kid I was much more a fan of Kubert and Williamson and Wood and Leonard Starr. Jack still influenced me as much as anyone over the course of my career. His frames were always alive with energy, the storytelling impeccable, and like Eisner and Jack Davis, the work was just FUN. His comics were always entertaining.

At Marvel/Atlas Kirby wound up doing all the science fiction/outer space stories which usually featured any assortment of creatures. I was always more a fan of mood and mystery, so Steve Ditko was the grabber for me. But while I never really tried to emulator Ditko, I was always looking at KIrby's work for new solutions in both the art and storytelling. Unfortunately one of the realities at the comic companies, was that if a penciller was paid a high rate, he was then assigned an inker with a low rate. And the economics of the business often lead to pencillers asking for less qualified inkers to increase their own page rate. Consequently, we didn't always see the best in the business finishing Jack's work, often by his own choice.

Oddly enough, I was never much attracted to the Marvel superhero work that Jack did. The long lean athletic look of the action characters that he did for both National Periodicals (Sandman and the Guardian) in the forties, and the satirical Stuntman and Fighting American features were much more to my liking. The epic stories of the New Gods, particularly Mr. Miracle,  were also what I considered some of his best work. And Mike Royer did a great job inking the pages of the latter.

Of course, my favorite Kirby inker was Wally Wood, who teamed with Jack to do the art chores on the syndicated strip, Sky Masters which ran for a short time in the late 50's. And my personal favorite Kirby/Wood project was Challengers of the Unknown. While I will admit that Wood's style stiffened up Jack's action-oriented figures, he brought a wonderful sensitivity and artistic verisimilitude to the faces. And the women suddenly were knockouts.

At the end of Argo, when the explanation is given how this story was classified for a number of years, we learn what  happened to the characters over time and how they were eventually given credit for their parts in this incredible event. But one is missing:

Jack Kirby: Creator of Captain America and the majority of characters in the Marvel Universe, for which he has never been acknowledged. While most of the artists working in the industry had there artwork returned to them starting the the l970's, Jack work, now worth millions, was never returned because he refused to sign off on his part in creating the material.  Here's a man who has had as much impact on American culture as Walt Disney, and virtually no one outside of comics knows his name. Meanwhile, the other half of the creative team has made millions and has his name plastered virtually everywhere.

At the academy awards there was even a chorus line of the actors who played many of the characters created by Jack. Kafka would have loved this. The KGB would have been jealous of the thoroughness of our ability to rewrite history. For me, that was the irony of Argo. There still is a great American hero who has yet to receive the honors due him and to take his place in the history of entertainment.

(While the version of New Gods that I did was never well received, it still was a lot of fun to do. But then Jack Kirby is a tough act to follow.)

On a pleasant note, yesterday afternoon I had lunch with two good friends, Steve Rude and Tim Burgard, and afterwards they came by and we spent the afternoon doodling, looking at art and talking. Tim, one of the best and most prolific storyboard artists in the business (his latest is White House Down), was at Ruby-Spears Animation while both Jack Kirby and Gil Kane worked there; he had great stories to tell. Steve was in town for the opening of a film on Bruce Lee. He is also legendary for his admiration for Mr. Kirby. It was great seeing these guys, both of whom I have great admiration for, and a lot of fun getting together and being art geeks.

(Finally...here's Steve, Tim and myself in my studio. )

(As soon as I mange to figure out how to download the photos I took of them from my Furshlugginer Samsung tablet I'll post them here.)

ANDY GARCIA- MODIGLIANI

This blog is actually a continuation of the Egyptian Larva blog I posted previously. (You can click here if you want to refer back to that blog and the the working process I use:
.http://vozwords.blogspot.com/2013/06/egyptian-larva.html  )
With this painting I tried using my normal techniques, but switching the order just slightly to eliminate a bit of the the opacity the final color is creating on the tonal underpainting.

As I usually do, I gathered what reference I need and created a rough of my planned illustration and then took that to a tight pencil drawing.

 

After this I added on a quick wash of watercolor so that I'd have something to work against while applying a line drawing of acrylic paint.

Normally I would do a completely finished tonal drawing and apply color over the top of that. But I find that depending on how much color is being used the underpainting loses a good bit of its impact. To avoid that I didn't try and take the tonal painting any further than this, but added in the tone where it was needed when I added the acrylic colors to the painting. The final effect then tends avoid the muddiness than can happen with overworking.

(The original photo of Modigliani. Below right is a publicity still of Andy Garcia for the film. Below left is the Modigliani painting Woman in a Brown Dress.

Copying the works of less representative artists I've found is an excellent exercise. In the process you begin to understand that what they are doing is much more complicated that it looks at first glance. And it's a nice counterpoint to the realism I'm usually attempting in the work.

 

The Andy Garcia portrait, from the biopic he did on Modigliani,  was done as a thank you gift for the sweet woman Helen who runs the lab where I get bloodwork done. Mr. Garcia is her favorite actor and Helen reminded me a bit of the woman in the Brown Dress. As some of you might well have discovered over the years, there is no such thing as a hard and fast price for any health services. Helen has always made sure that I get the maximum discounts. I often refer to my illustrations as my health care plan. I don't think that there is a doctor that I see (and as you get a bit older you see more and more) that hasn't had one of my paintings presented to them. They seem to remember me and make sure I'm well taken care of.

 

The above were for my cardiologist, dermatologist and back specialist.

Here's a quick preview of the re-issue of the Off-Castes series I did back in the 90's. It will be one of the digital books that Asylum Press will have online sometime in the next few months.This was one of the few times I got to do a finished coloring job over my work, and I was pretty disappointed in the result. Part of it was my own ignorance and ineptness handling the color; another problem was the method Epic asked me to use. I was applying watercolor on what were basically xeroxes of the artwork. Since I was doing the work on Craftint boards (which creates a dark and light line pattern for tone) the linework turned out very spotty with the xeroxes and the watercolor muddied them even further. I rescanned the originals and have been coloring them digitally with much better results.

 

 

HARRY BECKHOFF

Harry Beckhoff (1901-1979) began his pictorial compositions with small sketches that were almost literally thumbnail in size. These tiny drawings contained all of the information needed for the final rendering- even down to facial expressions. He then pantographed the drawing, about five times larger, and inked in the outlines. The tonal or color areas were painted in in flat washes.

Beckhoff describes his work as having been influenced by the French illustrators Martin, Brissaud and Marty. He also cited his teachers, George Bridgman, Dean Cornwell and Harvey Dunn for their encouragement and training.

Beckhoff  worked for many periodicals including Reader's Digest, Saturday Evening Post, but he was most closely associated with the wonderful Broadway characters he drew to illustrate Damon Runyon's famous stories which ran for many years in Colliers. (He shared a similar association with the P.D. Wodehouse characters Jeeves and Wooster in the same magazine.)

(The above transcribed from Walt Reed's wonderful book on The Illustrator in America . A must for anyone truly interested in the field. If you aren't, you should also be aware of Illustration House:
http://www.illustrationhouses.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/exhib/a45/a45pages/a45_054.html)

(One of Beckhoff's tiny crowd drawings and the revision.)

 Beckhoff continues in the tradition that runs from Hans Holbien to Alex Toth, of exceptional artists who seem to produce drawings with both a simplicity and spontaneity that belies the careful planning and effort.  And in Beckhoff's case, the humorous subject matter off undercuts the depth of the material he created.

 

 His preparation for an illustration was meticulous. He would first create a his tiny thumbnail. I would love to use the adjective "rough" here, but often the these drawings were as complete as the finish. You see this a lot in Bob Peak's work, but his preliminaries were never that small. The closest thing I've seen to what Beckhoff did was Alphonse Mucha's drawings done in a 3" x 5" Moleskin sketchbook for the lifesize produced theater posters of Sarah Bernhardt; you could see every line in this huge poster in this very small sketch.

Sometimes his preliminaries would be in the form of a watercolor, or more often,
color pencil drawing. If unsatisfied with the composition, he would then cut up the drawing and move the elements around to refine the picture. Or he might add or adjust elements using tracing paper overlays. But before he jumped into creating the final illustration, the majority of the thinking work was completed. What followed was technique.

(This guy even made golf look fun.)

 Once he had blown up the drawings using a projector, he would create an ink line drawing. On top of this he would lay in washes of tone and color. It was a process used by Dorne, Fawcett and many other illustrators. At any rate, the spectacular finished illustration always seemed to be produced with a ho-hum and a wave of the hand. Nothing could be further from the truth.

(Beckhoff's working method is described much more accurately and completely in Fred Taraba's wonderful book, Masters of American Illustration, 41 Illustrators and How They Worked. Like the Walt Reed book, it's a must for any student of the craft. And if you are ever looking to purchase illustrations originals, you definitely want to visit Fred's website: http://www.tarabaillustrationart.com/

 

EGYPTIAN LARVA

 One of the great things about living in LA is the absolutely incredible late evening drawing workshops that Jennifer Fabos puts together. I've been to several of these over the years and they never fail to be a source of entertainment, great socializing, and getting the creative juices flowing. One of my Retrowood stories, Gypsy Twins, originated in one of these sessions when two of my favorite models, Sara and Cassandra posed at Siamese twins. But I think this is the first time I've actually come up with a painting.

(These were the sketches of Larva drawn during the Turkish Delight workshop.)

 The workshop was called Turkish Delights, but since ancient Egypt is currently my focus these days, I used trappings from that environment for my reference. The model was the lovely and appropriately exotic Larva La Larva, whom I've only had the opportunity to draw a couple times, but I'm hoping there are many more sketch sessions to follow.  What really helped were the photos taken by master photographer Greg Autry . For my approach to painting, I really need something more than a 20-30 minute sketch to capture all the nuances of the model. Photo reference is really essential to me. Thanks, Greg! And my thanks to you, Larva!

(Photos by Greg Autry  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Greg-Autry-Art-Photo/262689913797400 )

(Some of my reference. Odd, I've used the kitty drawing in the upper left a number of times and just now noticed my little Repo peering out on the left side.)

Once I had the chance to digest the material I came up with a quick little rough of what I wanted to do with the illustration . Using the myriad of Egypt reference and cat photos I have around, I worked out the basic composition combining it with Greg's photo.

(In my sketchbooks after I do a drawing in class, I'm usually adding to it to create an interesting composition on the page. The doodle on  the left was the rough for a drawing used in last week's blog.)

 The next step is to produce a fairly detailed pencil drawing on a piece of illustration board.I adjust whatever I think is needed in the composition so that it reads quickly and clearly. Things are added and rearranged until it seems to work. There are no right answers, although there are certainly plenty of wrong ones.

Once I have the drawing worked out and finished, I  mask off the working area and tape it down to a piece of masonite. I then do a quick watercolor wash over the entire illustration so that I have something to work against. Next I start the linework working in acrylic paint. At this stage I use french ultramarine blue, cadmium red light and burnt umber to create a dark line for the objects and furnishings, and a warmer,lighter reddish brown for the flesh. Then I apply washes of a combination of these three colors to create the shadows. This was a system used by a lot of the illustrators that I admire such as Robert Fawcett and Albert Dorne, except they tended to use colored inks and dyes since acrylic paint was still in its infancy. (If you aren't familiar with the Famous Artist's course you should check it out. It's the best compilation I've ever seen on drawing and storytelling.)

To create as much mood as possible, I continue to add more shadow. I use the photo of the model as the basis of the lighting source and try and keep it consistent with the figure.

Using the strongest darks and opaque white I'm finally finished with the painting as a tonal study.

 

While I don't produce finished digital paintings, I do use Photoshop where ever I can both for shortcuts and safety. In this case, before laying on the finished color I tried to work as much out with layers to see what combinations worked best. 

Adding the color to the work is less labor intensive for me than the tonal process, but I've found it's never as simple as just washing a color over a section. Each color has different degrees of transparency and opacity, and with each wash you have to readjust slightly your tonal work. The last bit of work is working strictly opaque and adding highlights to the entire piece.

Next time I run through this process with another recent painting where I tried adjusting the order of the steps...adding on all my darks and light on top of the color. See you then.