On Cast Shadows
“Too late I loved thee, beauty both so ancient and so new!” – St. Augustine
Okay, that’s a little hyperbolic, but it still aptly describes my newfound appreciation for cast shadows. I frickin’ love these guys.
Just so we’re clear on the terms, a cast shadow is dark patch formed by something coming between an object and the light source illuminating it. This is distinct from part of an object being IN SHADOW because part of it faces away from the light source. For instance, if I am performing on a spotlighted stage, the back of my head and clothes will be IN SHADOW, but I will CAST A SHADOW on the wall behind me, and perhaps my microphone will cast a shadow on my own chest.
In real life, cast shadows are everywhere, but in comics, artists often need to reduce their number to keep a composition from becoming an unintelligible mess. Many cast shadows are also distracting and unflattering: the shadow the nose casts on the upper lip at noonday, when drawn in stark black and white, has a tendency to look like Hitler’s mustache.
However, cast shadows in comics can also be used to tremendous effect in any of several different ways.
1.) They indicate a light source. This is pretty obvious, but cast shadows can do wonders to establish the time of day or the location of a lamp, candelabra, etc.
2.) They define the object they fall on. Nothing makes a cylindrical object look more cylindrical than the big ol’ black semicircle of a cast shadow. We wouldn’t necessarily know that a speeding motorcycle has both wheels off the ground unless we saw that black oval on the ground beneath it. Shadows can also describe texture – the shadow I cast on a stucko wall will have ragged edges compared to one I cast on a linoleum floor.
3.) They assist in storytelling. A shadow can function like a big black arrow pointing to the intended center of attention, leading the reader’s eye. A shadow can let us know an enemy is approaching around the corner, and that he’s got a gun.
4.) Perhaps most subtly, they can suggest moods or even themes. When a father’s cast shadow falls across the face of his son, we begin to suspect that his domineering attitude is always with the boy, as if looming over him. A tiny businessman might cast an enormous shadow, suggesting his disproportionate financial power.
As an overall example, check out this panel from an amazing “Mandy Riley” 1983 comic drawn by Ernesto Garcia Seijas:
That cast shadow 1.) establishes the light source as being somewhere outside the hut, to the right, 2.) further defines the location of the wall behind the hero, AND describes its texture as a rough, stone surface. 3.) The shadow helps clarify a rather tricky bit of stage-blocking, reemphasizing that the snake has actually wound partly around Mandy and is now facing his left shoulder. 4.) Notice that, while the actual snake’s head is facing Mandy, its shadow is facing the girl on the left. Thematically, this suggests that, while self-preservation is Mandy’s immediate goal, his ultimate purpose is to protect his benippled friend, menaced by the snake’s shadow. This type of suggestion may only work subconsciously, or it may only work for overanalytical nerds like me.
(By the way, I recommend that you check out the full Mandy story, El Torrente. Every single page is a total work of art. But bear in mind that it is in Spanish. Also, even with my limited Spanish skills, I can tell that it is DEFINITELY sexist and also quite racist. But I am getting desensitized to this kinda crap as I study Caniff, Toth and all these other dead comics geniuses. Unfortunately the best artists also drew some of the stupidest, most bigoted stories.)
Hooray for cast shadows! How many more can you spot in recent pages of Savage Nobles in the Land of Enchantment?
Read MoreMonsters and Dames
When I was first began drawing this comic in 2009, I was already a huge fan of James Gurney, the creator of the Dinotopia books and the author of the greatest art blog on the internet today, bar none. James very often employs miniatures, which he sculpts himself, to help him get ideas for his fantastical paintings, particularly ideas about lighting. Here are just a few examples – I could post dozens more and they’re all equally astounding:
After reading his superb book Imaginative Realism: How To Paint What Doesn’t Exist, I was determined to adopt this practice. I was barely confident in my ability to draw a human being from various angles, much less a totally fictional creature of my own invention. But I knew that the alien/kachina was going to be a big part of the story, and that I’d have to draw him many times. So I busted out the plasticine and managed to crap out this little number:
A lot of the animal’s proportions changed between the initial model and the final artwork (first appearance, Page 86), so I didn’t end up referring to it all that much. But constructing the model nevertheless helped a lot – it forced me to visualize the creature as a three-dimensional being and not just a series of lines. I brought the model with me from New Orleans to Portland in a shoebox – it has completely fallen apart.
P.S. Seriously, if you an artist reading this, even if you think my art sucks, you should absolutely read Imaginative Realism. If you are in Portland, I have two copies and will happily lend you one.
Read MoreOh %@&$! It’s THOSE Guys!
Just as one more reminder that I am not making this all up as I go along, I’d like to point out that the two soldiers who saw through Tonya’s thin ruse were, in fact, present at the Las Cruces concert on PAGE 13!!! No accidents, people. This is season one of LOST, not season six.
Since I knew the characters would have to be recognizable later, I tried to make them look “distinctive.” But since my art in the spring of 2009 was pretty shaky, my solution was apparently to draw a black version of Ernie from Sesame Street and a man with a triangle for a nose. It was fun trying to update these napkin-doodles into the chiseled specimens of military valor you see today.
In vaguely related news, I have now chosen THE OFFICIAL COFFEE of SAVAGE NOBLES IN THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT. New Mexico Pinon Coffee. This is seriously some of the most delicious s*** I have ever tasted, and I brew coffee for a living. Er, I mean, as a hobby, when I’m not making my fortune drawing comics.
While I don’t necessarily think you should order coffee off their website (that is a might big carbon footprint for a mere Cup o’ Jose), you should definitely see if your local grocery stocks it. I know here in Portland you can get it at Trader Joe’s.
SNitLoE April Fools
For April Fools Day I thought I’d treat my SNitLoE readers to a false ending that was only slightly more of a disappointing cop-out than the final season of LOST. From the writing point of view, I think we can all agree that there’s pretty much nothing worse than the “it was all a dream” ending. Don’t worry, kids, I’ve got a much better conclusion in store.
From the artistic point of view, there are two fun things about this page. I got to redraw Tonya’s bolting-awake pose from page 38. That page was drawn around November of 2009, and it’s pretty obvious my drawing as gotten a lot better.
Tonya’s head used to be basically a guitar pick with a face, which is how I had been drawing womens’ heads ever since high school. I’ve got a much better understanding of the skull now, and I’ve done a good job eschewing the cartoonist’s problem of “chronic C-mouth,” even if many of my mouths still don’t look quite right. My below-the-neck anatomy has improved too, as Tonya now has a torso and not just shoulders coming out of her boobs. In fact, I like pretty much everything about this second drawing better. And I had damn well better, since it’s the result of more than a year’s worth of practice! However, I already see things that need a lot of work in the more recent drawing -the muscles of the arm (I am still faking it), the folds in the sleeve, something about the way the nose connects to the upper lip. There are so many places where “not quite right” is almost worse than “completely wrong.”
There is a panel on this page about which I have no complaints:
Though there are many figures in government I dislike, Jan Brewer is the first politician since President Bush the very sight of whom actually triggers in me revulsion. This has nothing to do with her actual appearance – she’s basically a standard issue older white lady, with perhaps whiter teeth than most. No, my revulsion stems entirely from Gov. Brewer’s passage of the racist SB 1070 law, her inexcusable fearmongering, and her absurd and xenophobic lies. (I also don’t like her regressive tax policies, her cancellation of crucial state benefit programs like AZ children’s health insurance, or her shameless complicity with the private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America, but unfortunately none of these practices make her unique among U.S. governors.)
There are a lot of funny things about Brewer on the internet, funny videos of her getting tangled up in her own idiotic rhetoric, often to the point where she just totally shuts down and stares blankly like a moron… giving a certain Alaskan a run for her money in the race to be the most unqualified gubernatorial ditz.
But remember, George Bush also said and did a lot of stupid, amusing, ridiculous things. Neither Bush nor Brewer are idiots. And as a Christian, I don’t maintain that either of them is in any constitutive sense evil. But they are both totally incorrect in their beliefs. Bush and his ilk wreaked havoc on the last American decade, and it’s people like Brewer, with their careless alarmism, who could potentially destroy this one.
HAHAHAHA SORRY, THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AN APRIL FOOLS POST AND NOW ITS DEPRESSING INSTEAD OF FUNNY.
I suppose the lesson I want you to take away is that, if your state elects (or, sigh, re-elects) a governor like Jan Brewer, you should figure out a way to impeach him or her. Failing this, you should draw a comic book where all the bad guys are beefy immigration cops/ corporate prison guards and the good guys are square-jawed immigrant rights activists.
Read MoreEdna Mode Birthday Card
Here’s a birthday card I made for my friend Tamar, who is a big fan of Edna Mode from The Incredibles. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I don’t consider myself to be very adept at drawing characters designed by other people, unlike some of my artist friends who are very good at it. But I think I did a little better here, after scrutinizing some screencaps from the movie and rewatching Edna’s scenes on YouTube.
Of course, Edna Mode is (c) Disney, Pixar etc. But maybe I could make some money marketing this as a birthday card!
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