The great cartoonist Leonard Starr wrote and drew, on average, 27 complex panels every week for decades.
Starr usually employed an assistant to finish the backgrounds he laid out, and a letterer for the word balloons. But the literate plots, the sparkling dialogue, the drawing and inking of the figures were completely Starr's creation.
Starr said that "producing a great many pictures in a short period of time," meant that he needed to use an opaque projector "by means of which ... you can project a photograph of a locomotive, or an ocean liner, or the NY skyline onto your drawing paper in the size you want." Starr would rough out the projected figure with a hard (4H) pencil on 3 ply Strathmore, then complete the drawing with ink using a #3 brush.
How did this process work in real life? Well, take this figure for example:
The following comparison shows that Starr used a projector to import only the basic proportions and key folds. This enabled him to add the magic part of the drawing with ink, quickly and reliably:
If Starr had attempted to trace the completed drawing from a projected image, it wouldn't have ended up with the vitality that Starr was able to add in the inking stage.
This working method might disillusion some who'd prefer that a strip was produced with no mechanical aids, but Starr-- winner of the Ruben award for outstanding cartoonist of the year as well as repeat winner of the NCS award for the best strip of the year-- would've scoffed. "This is a business," he said. "Anything [the artist] can use to help him is all to the good."
It was up to Starr to prioritize where his talents were most needed. He might've had more time in his week to ink his own backgrounds if someone else wrote the scripts. He might've been able to pencil everything from scratch without a projector if someone else had inked the figures. But Starr allocated his great talents where they would do the most good, and used mechanical aids and human assistants to fill in the rest for a high quality product.
15 comments:
Nice post, especially about Starr's practical nature.
I must confess that, though his On Stage strip was well drawn, at the time the general subject didn't interest me (I was starting college and had other priorities such as frat house parties). So I never followed it. C'est la vie.
David,
Were you told by Starr that that particular figure / pose was worked out over a projected photo (evidenced by the accompanying pencil rough) ?
I'm just wondering why you've singled that one out, and what that implies for the rest of the figures in his work (the ratio of drawn from imagination vs from photo ref).
This is one of the things that makes Starr a master, his ability to use photography for a quick sizing guide while still fully synthesizing the information.
Lesser artists merely translate the photography to line work, but Starr has completely taken ownership of the photographs content and made it his own.
That synthesis can be seen in the projected image, in the right hand (our left).
Rather than simply tracing the hands as a lesser artist would have done, he’s used his knowledge of constructed anatomy to edit even in this early stage.
The lines of hands don’t curve like that in real life, But anyone who’s understood drawing hands knows you have to exaggerate the concave and convex lines that make up the knuckles and the sides of the hand to make it read properly when in line.
A mere trace artist would not have handled the hands this way. See Briggs’ nurses hands.
The proportions of the sketch and the final don't map at all when you try to superimpose them upon each other in PS, no matter what resizing or rotating you perform.
My guess is that Starr drew that sketch from reference, not as a prelude to projecting it onto his art, but to understand the reference, to simplify the silhouette/graphic design of it, and to get clear as to how the cinched waist was tensioning the jacket fabric, and so on. All to better assist his translation of the photoref into the drawing and inking conventions he works with.
This is a business," he said. "Anything [the artist] can use to help him is all to the good."
There's the rub! LOL! The next time you bemoan "circle heads," David you should remember, "this is a business!"
This drawing stuff is easy peasy, I can skip the whole issue of form, so I will just use my, "great talents," to pick out some "key fold lines," and get on with the inking, It's one thing to love a guy's work, it's a much harder thing to understand what constitutes good drawing. You might address why “form,” is immaterial when it comes to drawing.
I still would love to see some drawings from life. Like the drawings that Rembrandt did of the people, animals and landscapes of where he lived. Do these guys ever make a drawing of their back yard on a Sunday afternoon, or is it all business all the time?
One should remember that in drawing a line what a great draughtsman is always drawing the relationship of three lines, that is if he is describing form, the direction, width and depth of whatever it is being drawn.
David also wrote,
"The following comparison shows that Starr used a projector to import only the basic proportions and key folds. This enabled him to add the magic part of the drawing with ink, quickly and reliably:"
The hardest part and the "magic," part of drawing is creating the masses that are going to be decorated. Why try to understand proportion, or scale, space or any of the thorny and difficult questions that art gives rise too and the often surprising and ingenious solutions artist come up with. It seems art has to do all the compromising when it comes to business.
If one spends their time defending how illustrators use the camera as a "tool," they can't help but develop the narrow aesthetic vocabulary, of a "businessman," who's main concern is getting people to separate with their money unaware of the true building blocks of art, the richness, depth and vastness of the "space," of life. That is the play of life not the business of life.
Of course the demands of Starr's project, which in many ways for his viewers is simply wanting to know what was going to happen to the character in the next installment of the story, forced him to do things the way he did, just like you wrote. I don't think anyone's illusions have been shattered but it is nice to know "why," his drawings look like stylish film stills.
The post reminds Helen Gardner's description of the different the exceptions of art can be among different people.
"The Italians were interested primarily in the structure behind appearances given to the eye-that is perspective, composition, anatomy, the mechanics of bodily motion and proportion through measure; the northern painters were interested in rendering the appearances themselves, the bright colored surfaces of things touched by light."
Someone has to play the devil's advocate.:) Right?
Tom, my shorthand for short-circuiting odes to art shortcuts is:
"Are we talking about making art or making rent?"
Kev wrote
"Are we talking about making art or making rent?"
LOL!!!
I just saw this today. Hayao Miyazaki's thoughts on an artificial intelligence
https://youtu.be/ngZ0K3lWKRc
Donald Pittenger-- Yes, there's no denying that the comic strips we follow in our formative years have a big impact on our long term tastes. As a young boy, I learned to draw-- and learned the fundamentals of composition-- by copying Starr's drawings. I got to know his drawings so well, I recognized instantly when professional artists working for Marvel and DC swiped his work (just as a previous generation of comic artists shamelessly swiped from Raymond and Foster). Whatever you want to say about what Starr built from reference material, plenty of artists built their own pictures from Starr because they recognized how solid his drawing was.
Laurence John-- No, I found that pencil drawing on the back of a strip from that story after Starr died. Starr's house was being sold and I saved boxes of background materials which have now been donated to the Billy Ireland comic art museum in Columbus Ohio, and can be viewed there. Those materials included photographs that Starr used, sketchbooks and layouts, files of clippings for reference, etc. Given what he said publicly about his use of reference on more than one occasion, it wasn't hard to put some pieces of the puzzle together. It was also obvious that Starr didn't have reference fully assembled for a drawing with the complex angles shown here; he had to take some basic material and tilt it or add perspective or shadows. For example, the pencil drawing shown here had to be tilted to be viewed from below.
As for the ratio of what was done from imagination vs. reference, it's hard to say but I've previously posted Starr's sketches showing that he was excellent at improvising facial expressions without any reference.
Kev Ferrara-- You could be right. With Starr gone we can never say for sure.
Tom-- Ah, the circle heads... when you look at what was required from professionals making a living from art in the 50s and 60s, on the comic strip pages and in the New Yorker, and compare it with the era of circle heads, you see how what passes for "business" has changed.
If you want to use Rembrandt as a precedent, remember that he had a workshop full of apprentices to do the simpler parts of his paintings under his tutelage. I don't view Rembrandt stepping in to paint the crucial glint in the eyes or the golden skin as being much different from Starr turning over his backgrounds to an assistant to complete, or use photo reference to meet the demands of a soap opera strip. Both artists had to decide how to leverage their talents to make the best living. Starr was a little better at it than Rembrandt, who went bankrupt.
Tom also wrote: "If one spends their time defending how illustrators use the camera as a "tool," they can't help but develop the narrow aesthetic vocabulary, of a "businessman," who's main concern is getting people to separate with their money unaware of the true building blocks of art, the richness, depth and vastness of the "space," of life. That is the play of life not the business of life."
Most of the artists I know whose use of photography I respect don't spend their time "defending" their use. They may describe their practices to help young talent but when they hear young purists talk about how photographs are illegitimate they just smile knowingly.
I had an excellent conversation with Craig Mullins, the father of digital painting, on this very subject. Mullins is one of those who drew all the time-- when he was in line at Costco for a hot dog, he'd draw the person ahead of him in line. But like Starr, he believed that whatever shortcuts he could use to maintain quality and meet deadlines were all for the good. He said it was foolish to measure the quality of a picture by how much pain you had to go through to produce it.
David, (and Tom, who wrote: "I don't think anyone's illusions have been shattered but it is nice to know "why," his drawings look like stylish film stills.")
None of Starr's figures betray a reliance on, or use of photo ref in the way we were discussing Re Briggs. Like most comic artists he would have had bits of photo ref and drawn character studies all around his drawing board and studio walls all the time, but his drawn figures all look constructed from the ground up to me.
David, regarding the drawing you thought was drawn over a projection; I'm in agreement with Kev's comment (above). Even if the drawing was drawn over a projection (which I don't think it was), it was just an intermediary stage to work out some clothing construction for the final figure.
It's notable that he only mentions vehicles and buildings in the quote about using a projector.
Laurence John wrote: "his drawn figures all look constructed from the ground up to me."
Agreed. After Starr was already a successful comic artist, he felt he was cheating and taking too many shortcuts so he went to Dean Cornwell who recommended the noted art teacher Frank Riley. Starr credits Riley with, among other things, teaching him to plant a figure solidly on the ground or plant an ass solidly on a chair. He studied with Riley for some time and later said, "If I'd just started with him instead of going to Pratt like a fool, I might have wound up learning how to draw."
Laurence John also wrote: "I'm in agreement with Kev's comment (above). Even if the drawing was drawn over a projection (which I don't think it was), it was just an intermediary stage to work out some clothing construction for the final figure."
You could be right. My strongest argument for a projector is that it would be extremely difficult to capture the three characters in three different positions from such extreme perspective; note that the girl lying on the table seems out of proportion, as if she came from a different source. We'll never know for sure just how far Starr took projections. I'll post some of the photographs from his personal files, and it's clear he never had photographs of every character in every position. The vast majority of the photos I found were background pictures of location scenery (beach houses on fire island). There was a series of basic photos of faces of different characters so Starr would be able to draw them from different angles with different expressions.
it's clear he never had photographs of every character in every position.
If the artist can really draw out of their head, exact photos aren't needed, because everything can be rotated in the mind. An inexact photo, actually, is more help artistically, simply because it must be reimagined haptically. And that is always all to the good. Combined with the mirror, the imagination, a model, the gestural sketch, the idea of the picture generally... solid results can result.
My strongest argument for a projector is that it would be extremely difficult to capture the three characters in three different positions from such extreme perspective;
If he could draw, he could draw. If he had good-enough ref, he could simply draw what he needed, working from general to the specific, checking the photos as one might check notes on a podium while delivering a lecture. He was a realistic cartoonist, not a painter-illustrator, potraitist, or salon history painter. Horseshoes and hand-grenades; have fun, get it done.
"If I'd just started with him instead of going to Pratt like a fool, I might have wound up learning how to draw."
Is it known who he studied with at Pratt? In the 1920s Cornwell himself taught at Pratt, and some of his lesser students also taught there. I assume they were all gone by 1940 when Starr attended. Mario Cooper, a Dunn student, also taught at Pratt after WWII; I guess maybe that was just after Starr had left.
David wrote
"If you want to use Rembrandt as a precedent, remember that he had a workshop full of apprentices to do the simpler parts of his paintings under his tutelage. I don't view Rembrandt stepping in to paint the crucial glint in the eyes or the golden skin as being much different from Starr turning over his backgrounds to an assistant to complete, or use photo reference to meet the demands of a soap opera strip. Both artists had to decide how to leverage their talents to make the best living. Starr was a little better at it than Rembrandt, who went bankrupt."
I wasn't setting a "precedent," LOL! I get the "similarity," between the two artists and the irony of their business ventures, but which one is remembered? But as Kev wrote, are we talking about art or making money?
But that is not what I asked. I asked if you have any examples of drawings that these artists did from life, like Rembrandt did, or any other artist would? Nor was I asking what artists thought about the use of the camera and photos in art work. It is a pretty simple question.
David also wrote, "remember that he had a workshop full of apprentices to do the simpler parts of his paintings under his tutelage. I don't view Rembrandt stepping in to paint the crucial glint in the eyes or the golden skin as being much different..."
I have too admit that I am dumbfounded at your notion of art making.
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