047: “I seem to have found it”
Who Needs Drawing?
Liberal use of speech balloons today! It’s easier than drawing right? Ben finds Leia’s holographic message…
Art Notes
Chaykin’s original
We’ve jumped straight to the interior of Ben’s home with the last page. The Marvel comic did the same. I could have sworn that there was a Marvel panel showing the landspeeder parked outside; and that I’d imagined that that same establishing shot was in the film. Or at least added to the Special Edition.
Apparently I was wrong. Ben’s hands are a bit too good in my top panel. (see the Marvel original?). Why – oh WHY! – didn’t I ever bother with light construction work prior to Biro’ing in the finished work? I often say this to my son when he draws. “Just quickly and lightly scribble it in – in pencil, and when you’re happy with it, work over the top in pen.”
Weird!
God, I was so so lazy. Every year my mum and dad would encourage me to enter art competitions – like the Texaco one – but I simply couldn’t be arsed. It was so much more fun to work away on my own comics and things – whenever the fancy took me – of space and World War II, instead of working to someone else’s brief. Big sister Maria would roll her eyes to the heavens on seeing my drawings and exclaim “but they’re just comic strippy looking!”
Above: The real-life house from a traveler’s blog
Proper Pencil and Toning
1981/13yrs: Gruesome pencil drawing – of which I was enormously proud. Half of my relatives are from Northern Ireland. But that didn’t enlighten me much. The ‘Terrorist’ has the «Johnny Red nose crease.
Speaking of my sister Maria, she came home from her school (in Naas) with her first pencil drawings which employed tone – or shading as people like to call it. She particularly impressed me with a study she rendered of her toy microscope.
My mum must have been impressed too, for she asked Maria one night to give me an art lesson. We had none in primary school. During Maria’s lesson was when I learnt the evils of pencil-smudging. Oh, how they hated that later on in art college! Still, it was a much appreciated and a valuable introduction to working in pencil, but more importantly – thinking about tone or tonal values. Check out my effort of 13 years old, above.
Text Notes
You know, thinking about it now, I’m almost pleased to see the lack of attention to detail and quality in this page. The fact that the speech balloons are used exclusively in the bottom panel and the fact that I didn’t bother to tipp-ex or white-out any mistakes suggests that the story-telling element might have been becoming more important to me when I was around 12 or 13 years old.
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