Hello everyone! Today is Tuesday, so that means it’s time to get out pencils and pens and crayons and do some drawing.
As you know, over the weekend we were at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts Festival (MoCCA) in New York. It’s a great book fair that includes a lot of amazing illustrated work that you can’t really find anywhere else.
There are, of course, the traditional action comics:
But there was also a lot of original artwork there. (As an illustrator, one of my favorite things is to see how finished pieces are actually made). So, for example, there was this piece of original comic art by Joe Flood for his new book The Cute Girl Network:
What I especially like is that you can see where he pencilled his drawing in first (light blue pencil is traditionally used for pencilling comics because light blue doesn’t show up in photocopies) and then inked over everything afterwards. It shows how carefully thought out compositions are – and shows that nobody just sits down and draws something perfect on the first go-round.
Another cool thing about MoCCA is that you can see a lot of the artists actually drawing while they sit there. Since I am TERRIBLE at drawing things for people on the spot, I admire these people greatly. Here’s Joe Flood drawing one of the characters from The Cute Girl Network:
And here’s another guy (Gregory Benton) who decided to do a full-on illustration instead of just signing his book, B+F:
I really am very envious of people who can do that!
Another great thing about MoCCA is that there are all kinds of illustrated books that don’t technically look like COMICS, but only because we generally think of comics as being about superheroes. Here’s a wonderful comic series by Kim Ku which looks very different from, say, Superman and Spiderman:
Anyway. These are all reasons why I like going to MoCCA, even though it means schlepping a bunch of boxes up to New York and eating terrible lunches behind our table where we sell our own books.
One of the artists that was featured at this year’s MoCCA was Joost Swarte – an amazing illustrator from the Netherlands. I was excited to see some of his original work (so excited I forgot to take pictures) where I could see how he used bright watercolors to put in very flat areas of color. So, I thought I’d try to do the same thing with my drawing this week (even people like me who have been drawing for a LOOOOONNNNNG time can be inspired by other artists!).
So, here it is:
I decided to draw Superman and Spiderman saying “Powee” with their pigeons, based on Matthew’s rather weird writing prompt from yesterday. I’ll be the first to admit that it doesn’t look anything like anything Joost Swarte has ever drawn, but I learned a few things doing it.
If you want a kooky picture of Superman and Spiderman (who don’t really look like themselves) and some pigeons, you can bid on the original over at eBay HERE. I have a premonition this one is going to go for VERY CHEAP, so if you know anyone who is a comics fan, this might be your chance to pick up some fan art for next to nothing!
Here’s your coloring page (you can download it HERE):
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