Set to Sea pg. 97
So I just heard that Buenaventura Press (publishers of beautiful prints and publications such as Kramers Ergot #7 and Comic Art Magazine) went out of business a few months back, which is upsetting. I guess there’s some sort of legal trouble involved, which I’m not sure is better or worse than plain old financial hardships. If it was just a cash flow problem, I suspect the “comics world” would’ve rallied with a fundraiser or the like. Anyway, it’s hard to imagine that Alvin Buenaventura will be out of the comics world for long, even if his capacity changes.
“But what does this all mean for alternative comiiiics???”
On another note, Eleanor’s and my comics camp wrapped up. It was, once again, a nerve-wracking but fun collision between the somewhat leaky Ship of Eleanor and Drew’s Vague But Idealistic Philosphy of Art Education, and the Rocks of Actual Kid Behavior. Our takeaway this time: Even though this would be putting the cart before the horse for almost all of our students – next time, we should spend more time teaching kids more about anatomy, poses, proportions, shading, inking techniques, etc. Many of the kids have trouble constructing even single images that are decipherable to an outside observer, much less a sequence of them… but to them, exercises in storytelling and clarity are just insanely boring. They want the cool poses right away.
See, Eleanor and I have had this sort of Hippocratic Oath when it comes to comics. Having both gone to SCAD, I know that somewhere along the way, these zealous little grade schoolers who have absolutely no problem sitting down and drawing dozens of pages of comics with no self-consciousness at all, are going to turn into surly young adults who have to be prodded to draw one page, even though they’ve chosen comics as a career path, supposedly. That was our big surprise last year, seeing just how much these kids loved to draw – it wasn’t work for them, it was play. So Eleanor and I (who both struggle and beat our heads and have artists blocks for months on end, just like anyone else) looked at each other and said “What the hell are these kids’ art teachers doing? Who’s sucking the joy for image-making out of these kids?” And so we took this typical lefty stance of simply trying to encourage the kids’ creativity and not telling them any one way was right or wrong.
But that’s exactly what they want! The “right” way to draw hands, faces, poses. And I’ve been coming to this realization that the loss of simple joy and obliviousness is inevitable – because it’s a byproduct of the increased perspective and empathy that are part of becoming a normal adult. Up to a certain point, these kids exist in their own little words, They become aware that others are observing and judging them, and they start to want to fit in and do things correctly and for a lot of kids, it changes their relationship with art. Which is kind of sad, but then again – the flipside to the surly, excuse-filled kids I knew at SCAD (and was, to an extent) were the oddballs who drew countless pages about some sort of private internal world where everybody was a magical sexy animal-person.
COMICS REMAIN STRUGGLE, STORY AT 11:00
Nice post!
Educating is an education in itself, eh?
Wow, that was excellent.
magical sexy animal-person. heh.
Brad and I taught a cartooning course, and one thing(well, many things) They couldn’t get their heads around was construction. If you forced them to use it, they’d just toss in shaky guide lines after the drawing was done. Oh well. I wouldn’t have listened to me either.
Didja have any talents?
There’s something to this; I suspected that I might just be lazy, but there’s a sick kind of logic behind it all. When I start working on a new process, everything is a great deal of fun and then I eventually get bogged down with the process of it all. Then, some easier or just plain new process comes along and I become excited about creation again.
When kids are just putting their drawings out there, before they truly learn how to draw “properly,” they’re having more fun and the work is emotionally freer (for them). When they begin internalizing the rules, physics and other objective realities of what they’re drawing, the fun can (for SOME) begin to turn into labor.
Stuff to consider, food for thinking.
-Darryl Ayo B.
@Josh: Yeah, underdrawing was foreign to most of them, which is interesting to me, since I was using those “How to Draw – Dinosaurs!” books back in elementary school – you know the ones, where you draw like two circles and a box and end up with a very specifically posed brontosaurus – so I was familiar with at least the idea. They made fun of me for drawing so sloppily, cause I’m used to drawing very messy pencil figures and tightening them up in inks.
But yeah, there are always kids who have surprising skillz – this time there was at least one kid who really knew what she was doing. There were also some kids who just knew how to make funny well-constructed strips, even if they didn’t have the most amazing drawing chops. Often, its the younger ones, who haven’t quite settled into a niche of genre that they’re trying to copy.
@Darryl: I mean, that’s what Eleanor and I thought! That’s why we didn’t want to bog these junior high kids down with trying to learn anatomy or perspective or whatever (who can say that’s the right way to draw anyway?)
But I’m starting to think that when you get old enough that you’re out of your own head, at least a little bit, you’re going to start trying to self-consciously draw “right,” whatever your art teacher says. And then the struggle begins.
It’s too late for us, but we thought maybe we could spare them.
You’re talking about Wilkie at the end there, aren’t you? I’m going to assume so, because it made me laugh.
@Les: Hmm, I’m hesitant to put names to individuals, no matter what species they are secretly. It’s just weird how the post-apocalyptic furry vampire elf kids were the most prolific. It’s like there was some law of proportion between “number of pages” and “resemblance to spank material.”