Being a Second Grade Artist, part two
So what does it mean to be a Second Grade Artist?
For me, it means nutting up and putting pencil to paper. It means drawing, even though I’ve said for years that I can’t. It means that I draw with exactly the same spirit I had in Second Grade - and I have a blast doing it.
Will I ever get hired by someone for artistic reasons? That’s really, really doubtful. I’ve always intended to make my living as a writer, so that’s okay. I’ll let people critique the hell out of my words. But I’m not showing off my art portfolio any time soon.
That was actually my biggest fear after launching DearPirate.com. Upon getting back from Philly, I watched the hit counts sky-rocket on my site. It was insane, absolutely nuts. I mean, they were looking at my art - why? Oh yeah, because I handed out fliers asking them to.
Since then, I’ve calmed down about the whole people looking at my art stuff. Really, honest. Look all you want now.
When I was updating the read cycle, it got me to thinking. One, is that I read a lot of webcomics. But two, I noticed some art trends in my reads. There’s some really good art, some really good bad art, and a lot of stuff in between. Occasionally I run across a strip with another category, really bad art. That doesn’t make the read cycle.
Really good art is easy to spot. Butternut Squash is one of the best examples of this - those two are budding stars that accidently got their stardom pruned by Speakeasy. That should have been Speakeasy’s top book, but instead, it got lost in the shuffle. And predictably, Speakeasy got lost in the shuffle because of it.
Spells & Whistles is another one of my examples of really good art. Again, that duo needs to be put under a contract, and soon. The whole remote control/Click rip-off is getting a little thin, but eventually the story should pick up again and catch were the art is.
A lot of the bigger strips, like PvP, Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Atl-Del fall into the middle grounds. They’re nice and all. They’re funny. They have huge audiences. But Kurtz almost never does any shading or backgrounds. The PA crew does a good job of both of those, but their anatomy is still a little too cartoonish to be in the really good category. CAD does a better job at anatomy, but the backgrounds often lack.
I want to put Questionable Content in the really good art category. It’s got good anatomy, good light and shadows, backgrounds, and expression. But it doesn’t have feet. Or changing panel sizes, or panel amounts. The subtle tricks of story telling just aren’t quite there. But the focus of that strip has always been the writing, which is why I check it on a nightly basis.
Then there’s that happy category of really good bad art.
First, check out In His Likeness. This strip started as four black dots, then slowly added a red dot with horns. Eventually, James Hatton keeps adding to his character selections, so there’s God’s cosplayer, and even Poseidon showing up. James is a Second Grade Artist. He undoubtably repeated the mantra over and over again, until he too got sick of it. He still won’t make any claims to being an artist now, but he’s learning and trying. And on top of that, he figured out a genius way to storytell at a second-grade level.
There’s always the guy going around with a version of the mantra saying "I can only draw stick figures." And naturally, if you’re at all inspired to start a comic starring stick figures, you might think it to be a great gimmick. Just know that the bar is set really, really well by Rich Burlew from The Order of the Stick. He’s up to 324 strips as I write this, and most of them elicit a chuckle at the least. It’s some solid characterization, which is amazing that he did that by keeping the cast looking and feeling more or less the same that whole time. Not that they don’t grow, but that you can compare No. 1 to No. 324, and the style is pretty much the same. If a character gets new boots or a new clasp on their cloak, there’ll at least be a joke about it. But he uses the sticks to their advantage - by not improving them.
A side note to stickmen - check out for Jonnie Allan’s Stykman. I’m endorsing this comic on concept alone. By the time I found it in Philly, it had already sold out. But it looks good, and it takes the stick figure to a very different place.
Another side note on stickmen - "The Preposterous Voyages of Ironhide Tom!" was something I snagged up at free comic book day. It’s about a stick-figure pirate, and it’s one of the best things I’ve read in years.
There are two other good bad art strips that I can think of off the top of my head, both using the same-panel gag at DayFree Press. Dinosaur Comics and Indytits both use the same panels over and over again. This is something that DearPirate uses to a lesser extent, but only because I’m still working on making more backgrounds for Pete.
Which is what I’m off to do now.
For me, it means nutting up and putting pencil to paper. It means drawing, even though I’ve said for years that I can’t. It means that I draw with exactly the same spirit I had in Second Grade - and I have a blast doing it.
Will I ever get hired by someone for artistic reasons? That’s really, really doubtful. I’ve always intended to make my living as a writer, so that’s okay. I’ll let people critique the hell out of my words. But I’m not showing off my art portfolio any time soon.
That was actually my biggest fear after launching DearPirate.com. Upon getting back from Philly, I watched the hit counts sky-rocket on my site. It was insane, absolutely nuts. I mean, they were looking at my art - why? Oh yeah, because I handed out fliers asking them to.
Since then, I’ve calmed down about the whole people looking at my art stuff. Really, honest. Look all you want now.
When I was updating the read cycle, it got me to thinking. One, is that I read a lot of webcomics. But two, I noticed some art trends in my reads. There’s some really good art, some really good bad art, and a lot of stuff in between. Occasionally I run across a strip with another category, really bad art. That doesn’t make the read cycle.
Really good art is easy to spot. Butternut Squash is one of the best examples of this - those two are budding stars that accidently got their stardom pruned by Speakeasy. That should have been Speakeasy’s top book, but instead, it got lost in the shuffle. And predictably, Speakeasy got lost in the shuffle because of it.
Spells & Whistles is another one of my examples of really good art. Again, that duo needs to be put under a contract, and soon. The whole remote control/Click rip-off is getting a little thin, but eventually the story should pick up again and catch were the art is.
A lot of the bigger strips, like PvP, Penny Arcade and Ctrl-Atl-Del fall into the middle grounds. They’re nice and all. They’re funny. They have huge audiences. But Kurtz almost never does any shading or backgrounds. The PA crew does a good job of both of those, but their anatomy is still a little too cartoonish to be in the really good category. CAD does a better job at anatomy, but the backgrounds often lack.
I want to put Questionable Content in the really good art category. It’s got good anatomy, good light and shadows, backgrounds, and expression. But it doesn’t have feet. Or changing panel sizes, or panel amounts. The subtle tricks of story telling just aren’t quite there. But the focus of that strip has always been the writing, which is why I check it on a nightly basis.
Then there’s that happy category of really good bad art.
First, check out In His Likeness. This strip started as four black dots, then slowly added a red dot with horns. Eventually, James Hatton keeps adding to his character selections, so there’s God’s cosplayer, and even Poseidon showing up. James is a Second Grade Artist. He undoubtably repeated the mantra over and over again, until he too got sick of it. He still won’t make any claims to being an artist now, but he’s learning and trying. And on top of that, he figured out a genius way to storytell at a second-grade level.
There’s always the guy going around with a version of the mantra saying "I can only draw stick figures." And naturally, if you’re at all inspired to start a comic starring stick figures, you might think it to be a great gimmick. Just know that the bar is set really, really well by Rich Burlew from The Order of the Stick. He’s up to 324 strips as I write this, and most of them elicit a chuckle at the least. It’s some solid characterization, which is amazing that he did that by keeping the cast looking and feeling more or less the same that whole time. Not that they don’t grow, but that you can compare No. 1 to No. 324, and the style is pretty much the same. If a character gets new boots or a new clasp on their cloak, there’ll at least be a joke about it. But he uses the sticks to their advantage - by not improving them.
A side note to stickmen - check out for Jonnie Allan’s Stykman. I’m endorsing this comic on concept alone. By the time I found it in Philly, it had already sold out. But it looks good, and it takes the stick figure to a very different place.
Another side note on stickmen - "The Preposterous Voyages of Ironhide Tom!" was something I snagged up at free comic book day. It’s about a stick-figure pirate, and it’s one of the best things I’ve read in years.
There are two other good bad art strips that I can think of off the top of my head, both using the same-panel gag at DayFree Press. Dinosaur Comics and Indytits both use the same panels over and over again. This is something that DearPirate uses to a lesser extent, but only because I’m still working on making more backgrounds for Pete.
Which is what I’m off to do now.
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