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Brushes and Bricks
Now, I’m certainly not going to argue that Dangle is the best artist in the world, and obviously any use of words like 'best’, 'good’ or 'bad’ etc is subjective. But the whole area of what constitutes 'good’ drawing is very interesting. In recent issues of CAPTION I've been wading into a discussion between Caspar Williams (NERVOUS TALES) and John Edwards (STOP MAKING SENSE) about whether quality of artwork even matters in comics. In a way, of course, it doesn't - what's important is telling the story, and a very simple drawing, or even a cut-out photo or rubber-stamp image, whatever, can often do that more clearly and effectively than a piece of very accomplished but inappropriate draughtsmanship. In that sense, quality of images in comics isn't a matter of drawing technique, but of legibility. But for the purposes of this article I'm going to backtrack a bit and look at the drawing technique itself, since it's still something of interest to a lot of comic readers. The reason I brought up the DANGLE review is that Lloyd Dangle is actually a very skilled draughtsman. But most people looking at his work would probably have the same reaction as Andy: the guy can't draw. His stuff looks chaotic, scratchy, ugly, it's a mess. Funny stories, but the art? Yuck. This is a mistake. To illustrate why, let me ask you a couple of questions. Firstly, what is drawing? Secondly, what is good drawing? Years ago, when I started drawing again after several years inactivity, I despaired of ever learning to draw properly. I'd look at my favourite comics artists and think, "how do they do that?" Anatomy, composition, inking technique, it all seemed so hard to understand and impossible to do. It seemed like you'd have to spend years building up an encyclopaedic knowledge of the human body, the natural world, architecture and god knows what else before you could even think of drawing a real comic book. I wanted to enjoy drawing, but it looked like so much effort; not fun. A while later I started going to the London Cartoon Centre. I had been getting into more non-mainstream comics like WEIRDO, so I was at least able to draw some stories using my more cartoony style without feeling they had no validity because I couldn't draw 'realistically'. But I still wanted to draw more representational stuff. People that looked like people really look. Meanwhile, Todd McFarlane was the hot new talent in mainstream comics, and I watched with interest one day as David Lloyd, my tutor, tried to convince some students that McFarlane couldn't actually draw. They looked puzzled and outraged. What is this guy saying? How can he say this isn't good art? Now, David believes in old-fashioned craftsmanship; he has no argument with mainstream comics as long as they're professionally crafted. His objections to McFarlane were based on technical ineptitude: the anatomy was lousy, the composition was poor, the inking was all over the place, etc. And he was right. So why did those students think it was quality stuff? I thought back to the artists I admired as a teenager: Neal Adams, John Byrne, Paul Gulacy, Howard Chaykin; all good craftsmen, as it happens, but there were others I liked, such as Mike Nasser and Marshall Rogers, who were not. What did those artists have in common, then, that made me like them? The answer is an attractive style. Their mannerisms caught my fancy, like the hookline of a bad pop record. They had the knack of making their work look somehow impressive superficially, whether they could actually draw well or not. This is what makes an artist of such mind-boggling ineptitude as Rob Liefeld a 'hot' talent. All those little lines and that surface sheen look quite dazzling when you don't actually know what drawing is really about. So, back to those two questions. What is drawing, and what is good drawing? The last class I ever took at the Cartoon Centre was a life drawing class run by Laura Faber. I'd tried life drawing before, because everyone always tells you it's essential, you must do it, but I'd invariably found it depressing; one teacher criticised a drawing I'd done because I hadn't got the angles and proportions quite right, and I felt so inadequate and dispirited that I never went to his class again. I just thought "I'll never be good enough. It's too hard." But Laura's class was something else. Laura Faber is one of life's eccentrics. At least, it seemed so when she got us to do things like draw a model who was moving, or pin up several sheets of paper and do a life-size study. I thought she was dotty. She is, but only in the best sense, and she knew exactly what she was doing. We did exercises which made it impossible to show off our favourite parlour tricks; you'd have to do a drawing really fast, or only in silhouette, or using implements you'd never tried before in your life. Steve Whitaker was in the same class; he did each new drawing with different tools, and with his encouragement I started to experiment too. Where previously I would only use pencil (so I could erase mistakes and draw nice, careful, delicate lines), I found myself using great thick magic markers, or this great big dried up knackered brush, slapping on black ink, having the greatest time. Laura's advice and commentary was always positive. She said "that's beautiful" a lot, and everyone in the class thrived on the flattery. I came to love my mistakes, the 'wrong' lines which, drawn in ink, I couldn't erase. It was okay to go wrong, to make a mess, to try ludicrous things like drawing in white on white paper - I couldn't see the drawing till I brushed watercolour ink over it. The change in my drawing was startling. Drawing freehand in ink is terrifying at first, and you start off trying to be really careful. But pretty soon you just think, fuck it. I'm drawing a line, here I go. My artwork was suddenly really confident. I began to love drawing again, instead of being scared of it. I began to love the lines for their own sake. What is drawing? Marks on a surface. That's it. Marks, made with any tool, in any medium, on any surface. Scratching in sand with a stick is drawing. Handwriting is drawing. Doodling is drawing. The happy face you drew on the steamed-up car window when you were seven was drawing. Ink, paper, paint, wood, cake icing, computers, brushes, bricks: all can be used for drawing.
Let me hastily add at this point that I'm not trying to slag Terry - he's chosen to try and make SLEAZE CASTLE look seamless, for maximum legibility and minimum distraction. It's entirely appropriate for his comic (which is also a favourite of mine). But you don't have to do it that way, and his review allowed me to make an interesting comparison. Nor am I saying SPLASH is perfect. From the point of view of drawing only, it's great, but it's not always legible enough for the purposes of a comic book. It is expressive, though, and energetic, and evocative (and not actually "lazy"; the roughness of a drawing doesn't necessarily reflect the 'work' which has gone into it, even if that were important - which it isn't). A cartoonist like Lloyd Dangle comes from yet another direction, the school of the 'ratty line', the term Gary Panter (Mazzuchelli's most obvious influence) coined to describe his own work and that of Lynda Barry, Matt Groening (years before THE SIMPSONS), and Savage Pencil. It's not bad drawing; it's just a different, very deliberate approach, and Dangle shows a great deal of finesse and control over his work. Artists like these have understood drawing and mastered it to a much greater degree than the majority of those working in the mainstream, even though the latter's work may appear superficially more attractive at first.
Art © respective creators/companies |
In the last issue of Battleground, Andy Brewer included a little review of DANGLE, the solo comic by the misanthropic American cartoonist Lloyd Dangle. Though the review was favourable, Dangle was described as "not the best artist in the world, even for indie comics." This got me thinking. 
But what's good drawing? In a recent ZUM!, Terry Wiley of TALES FROM SLEAZE CASTLE writes sternly of Sophie Lander's SPLASH, a comic I admire a great deal. Terry objects to the roughness: "scandalously lazy. . . flat out scribble. . . her presentation is a terrible, half-thought-out mess. . . spot blacks covering mistakes, pens running out. . .", while acknowledging that Soph "can genuinely draw" and that her knack for what he calls "'subconscious' cartooning" is the one thing he wishes he had. This is a very interesting review. Terry's art is well known for its pristine clarity. It's so painstakingly crafted that, to my mind, it loses some of the spontaneity and elasticity that good cartooning ought to have (in contrast with looser, quicker sketches I've seen him do, which are often stunning). Soph's drawing, on the other hand, shows its joins. She doesn't mind the reader seeing the process. It was the process of drawing that I learned to love in Laura's class. Many of the elements Terry cites as faults of SPLASH are the very things I like about it, that make it so fresh and vital. In Battleground #6, David Mazzuchelli talks of bringing "my two interests together: comics, which is sequential storytelling, and my interest in fine art, which has a lot to do with expressiveness and the actual physical reality of making something." The process, in other words. 
It's funny to think that I used to look at the work of Alex Toth and think, "that's crap - it's almost cartoony - not like Neal Adams, his art looks almost photographic!" Whereas I now know that Toth is three times the draughtsman Adams is. Adams' art has a technical sheen, a layer of shallow sophistication which expresses nothing; it's just commercial illustration technique. Toth, on the other hand, is so accomplished that he only needs three or four lines to show a convincing human face. Perhaps the most telling exercise we did in Laura's class was to draw the model in just a few seconds using one single brushstroke. That left no room for superficial technique: only feeling, instinct and an instant expression of form. It was magic.