On Cheating

Never draw what you can swipe.

Never swipe what you can trace.

Never trace what you can cut out and paste.

And never do any of that if you can hire somebody to do it for you..

--Wally Wood
Master Cartoonist

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I hate drawing cars. I'm not good at it. There's always a kid in the high school art class who earns minor fame, and maybe even a little pocket change, drawing beautifully rendered hot rods, with giant exhaust pipes roaring, tires squealing off the page, and every chrome reflection perfectly in place. He (invariably a "he" in my experience) is a venerated specialist, and he is not me.

In theory, an artist who understands perspective can draw anything. Establish a horizon line and vanishing points, and build the object out of simple shapes. It works great for a lot of things. The problem (or rather, my problem) with cars is that they're pretty complex objects, with lots of compound curves and subtle angles. Another problem with cars is that everyone is intimately familiar with them; if a drawing doesn't get the proportions just right, readers know it looks "funny" even if they can't say exactly why. Yet another problem is that every car model has dedicated owners and fans who know every bumper and bolt. I'd really like to get 'em right. .

So when I recently had occasion to draw an old car, I knew I needed help. The first resort is reference photos, and indeed you can google hundreds of pictures of old cars in various states of restoration and repair. That helps, but didn't give me the angle I needed. Evidently, no one in automotive history has ever photographed a car from a spot hovering 30 feet above the front left fender. That's a tough angle to extrapolate from a bunch of ground-level front and side shots.

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I needed a model. After combing fruitlessly through dozens of Hot Wheels racks, I found an online vendor of affordable, accurate models of old cars. A couple weeks later, I had a 1939 Chevy coupe ready to pose for me.
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At this point I might've drawn it freehand, but I decided not to do that. Instead, I put the model on a sheet of white poster board and took digital photos of it from several angles.

1939 Chevy coupe, with a smaller-scale 1940 Ford on its tail

I chose the photo above, opened it in Photoshop, and made the Chevy approximately the right size to fill the hole I'd left for it in another drawing several weeks earlier.

At this point I might've traced the photo using a light box ... but I decided not to do that. Instead, I converted the color photo into a duotone image, which is like a black-and-white photo except you substitute shades of some other color for black and gray, in this case cyan.

Cyan duotone

I printed that picture onto a sheet of the same 2-ply Bristol board I use for all my cartooning. Then, I used a brush and pens to ink directly over the light blue image.

Inked

The tricky thing here is to not get bogged down in detail and draw too tightly, despite the pains I've taken to this point to be as precise as possible. Cartooning is distillation and simplification. It's got to look as loose, relaxed, and hand-drawn as the rest of the artwork that will eventually surround it. I didn't go nuts putting in lots of reflections and spotted black because, again, that wouldn't match the style of the rest of the page.

Next, I scanned the drawing into Photoshop, where I made all the blue disappear (I likewise pencil all of my artwork in light "non-photo" blue so I don't have to erase after I've inked). All that remains is my black line art, ready to copy and paste onto the open road I drew for it elsewhere.

Blue erased, ready to copy and paste

Semi-final (I may add some shadows and such later). The road texture is a charcoal rubbing I did of my concrete front porch.

I ... kinda wish I hadn't had to do that. I'd love to have the skills to dash off any car from any era from any angle, but I don't. I admit I feel a little disappointed in myself--but not much. Over time, I've come to regard both writing and drawing as primarily problem solving. I know what I want to accomplish; now what's the best way to do it? This is the best way I could think of to solve a particular problem and produce the result I wanted.

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; !

Yesterday's New York Times had a nice little article about my second-favorite punctuation mark, the semicolon. The lede of the story is that a new subway placard, reminding riders to throw away their newspapers, properly--even elegantly--used a semicolon. Such a marvel! The article then touched on the use and misuse of the shy but intimidating character.

My favorite passage in the story: "David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who taunted police and the press with rambling handwritten notes, was, as the columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver."

I mention the article here even though I don't expect anyone else to follow that link or care. That's part of the story's charm.

What? Doesn't everybody have a second-favorite punctuation mark?
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I Am Old

My wife, kids and I are all fans of the Indiana Jones films (someday I'll tell you about our bathroom decor), and we all agree that our first look at the online trailer left us pretty happy and eager for May 22. Happy? "Giddy" is more like it. Harrison Ford still cuts a credible figure with the hat and whip, and we're impressed with the look and tone glimpsed in the preview. However, the point of this post isn't to give a bit of much-needed publicity to Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg's obscure little art-house film.

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The point of this post is that I'm old. We were talking about the trailer when one of my girls said, "This'll be our first chance to see Indiana Jones on the big screen!"

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My wife's and my reactions were identical: "What do you mean? Surely that can't be true. Never once seen an Indiana Jones movie in a theater? How is that possible? How could you even become an Indy fan without seeing it as God intended? You obviously forgot!" Even after we spent a few minutes working out the timeline, we couldn't quite comprehend how our kids had reached adulthood only seeing videotapes of Indiana Jones on television.

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Here's how. My twins are nearly 20, born in 1988. The last Indiana Jones movie--which I clearly remember seeing as a full-grown mature adult--came out in 1989. QED.

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Today we all went to the movie theater to see "The Spiderwick Chronicles" (not bad), which was preceded by the same Indiana Jones trailer we'd huddled around my monitor to watch two days before. The first time my kids have seen Indiana Jones on the big screen.

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I was thrilled for them. And a little wistful for myself.

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This movie better be good....

Review: Suite 101

There's a very nice review of Mom's Cancer just posted at Suite 101, an interesting site with which I was not previously familiar. Suite 101 is hard to describe: it's like a general-interest magazine that publishes freelance articles on a variety of subjects such as lifestyle, health, education, entertainment, books, technology, politics and more, with dozens of new pieces posted every day. Very ambitious, and evidently successful.

Editor/reviewer Irene Taylor concludes, "This book is a 'must read' for anyone facing cancer of a loved one. Make no mistake--this graphic novel isn’t a child’s comic book. It is a serious, often humorous, always honest guide on how families can cope with a cancer diagnosis and survive the difficult road ahead." Irene and I corresponded when she asked permission to post my cover art with her review--a courtesy I always appreciate--and I'm grateful for her recommendation. Thanks!
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My Friendly Neighborhood Furry-tailed Rats

About a year and a half ago, I posted this sketch of a very determined squirrel in my backyard. This little guy worked extraordinarily hard for every seed he managed to sneak from my bird feeders, clinging to a slippery pole while an infinite feast awaited just beyond the tips of his fingers.

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This morning I looked out my back window and spied the little guy below, probably a direct descendant, no less determined and a slightly more capable climber. Or maybe the pole just wasn't as slippery today.