Hey there sports fans, Al here with the latest:
SO there is a question that always comes up when I am at either a trade show when I am hustling to make a buck for lunch that day or at an art show showcasing my artwork in a framed or better yet when I was visiting (pre-covid) bars working on my sketchbook.
And do you know what that question is?
“Where do you come with your ideas?”
It is an old age question that artist down through the ages from those cave paintings in the caves of France thousands of years ago to today. And always I would come up with a quick glib answer “I dunno.” But I wanted to take a dive into that territory and really think and break down this concept. I can’t speak of those ancestors of mine far in the past who took the time out of a busy day foraging for food or running away from a bear trying to eat them. But I can look into what drives me to do what I do.
But someone will ask after reading that title.“I thought you were gonna talk about style? It’s in the title.” And that is true. I believe that all artists all over the world internally draw on those physical surroundings at first trying to ground what they see into a representation of what they observe. But this is the transition point where the imagination comes into play. Even as I write this I am listening to Grand Funk railroad’s “I’m You Captain” for the mood-setting to type this down. And the thoughts of a ship on the sea where a ship crew has turned on their captain in a mutiny. When you think about it, it’s not exactly the most pleasant topic but it is the way it is presented that makes the music so enjoyable.
That is an inspiration.
However style. Style, I think comes from those very personal interests (in my case all love for science fiction in its various forms from the written page, to the cheesy films of the fifties, to the comics I picked up from the mid-seventies to the late eighties.) and what you want to idealize. As an illustrator, I was just trying to copy other illustrators that I loved for years. John Bryne was the first that impressed me with the way he drew his women and the surrounding mechanical design for “The Uncanny X-men”. Now mind you there was only one X-men title at that time and then there was Frank Miller. When Miller left “Daredevil” and jumped to DC with his “Ronin” mini-series holy crap! His style changed! Then when he went onto “The Dark Knight Returns”. Wow! I think I started looking at my own art style and realized by coping with another style was helping me understand the pacing and design of a page. But even though I was technically getting better with that my style wasn’t coming through.
Personal style is a blender of concepts and what works for you. For me, I love Bernie Wrightson and I love Mike Mignola but you can’t ink a Mignola look over a Wrightson piece. It’ll look funny and won’t work and it takes you right out of the story because you are trying to figure out what style you are looking at even though both are great at telling a horror story. I’ve seen raw blender style where an artist I knew tried to adapt boldly a Wrightson inking over a Jack Kirby-like illustration and printed it! My style takes the page layouts of Gene Day, Paul Gulacy and, Steranko and occasionally uses action pieces of characters and their dynamic weight to carry the story forward. I try to use Al Willamson and Wally Wood for referencing the backgrounds to set the mood. As time has gone on I have gotten a lot bolder with the work that I have been doing and that has made me feel better about the work that I have done recently.
Richard Parker is one style that has benefited years of trial and error. And that effort hasn’t stopped.
So I guess through it all Inspiration is the mixer and Style is the blend at the end of the day.
And with that blurb, I am outta here.