Alex Raymond study #1

Ngl, thiiiis wwwwas tough. Alex Raymond was a comic artist when comics meant the weekly press, and he used a felt tip pen; so some of his decisions were more about expediency than artistry (not that he wasn't an artist!) He most certainly was, but I struggled to understand some of his choices; there were moments I audibly said, 'What the fuck is that?' Without the panels preceding or following this close on, I can't tell entirely what's being simplified, and what was left on the page because felt tip pens are treacherous. The grinch fingers, especially, were infuriating to parse out. The form and anatomy are there, but they're buried alive under all that indian ink--it's ridiculous.

I did notice--because Photoshop (not my laptop) kept stuttering when I undid too many strokes too quickly--so, like Raymond, I was forced to treat each stroke with a sense of finality. The result was I started making sweeping upward strokes; and that's when it hit me, 'Ooooh...! He draws with downward strokes but inks with upward ones for control! Got it.'

Raymond, because of his medium, blocked out areas of solid black, leaving patches to represent varying thickness in his characters' hair or textures in their clothes.

Something I've learned from tracing previous works is you absolutely have to understand what's being simplified; because, if all you do is just replicate the strokes in the image, you won't capture the nuances in the forms to properly duplicate the image; and the artist's style by extension. To repeat the artist, you need to understand what the artist was trying to say.