| Posted: 13 January 2010 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | 10
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This has been the most fun I have had drawing in a long time. Probably since, way back when to draw came naturally unencumbered with what was the right or wrong way to draw and things like rules and procedures, deadlines and expectations put the squeeze on.
I’ve often been piqued by the ‘Homage’, as it appears in comics. Far too often the image would leave me thinking that it was more about ripping someone else’s riff than any public display of admiration.
So, I’ve been more than mildly tickled at this little pet project. Recently my laptop’s processor appears to have been, well, not processing very well and while a Photoshop file was saving I took the fifteen minutes to sit and doodle. The sketch that just sort of appeared on the page was of Gladiator. “Praetor of the Imperial Guard of the Sh’iar Empire”
As is often the case while doodling, your mind wanders off. This time it took me back to when I was reading the Fantastic Four and Gladiator’s appearance within. Fond memories. The artist of this comic, already well established at the time (1982/83), was John Byrne. His artwork, pretty much single-handedly, made me want to draw, more, inspired me to try harder and it was great fun.
A lot of artists under-study a master, traditionally done in the same studio, however (and I’m not unique in this) for me, my apprenticeship was done remotely and without the knowledge of my master. Easily a decade spent as a teen, studying, practicing, emulating, tracing, copying, seeing me through to twenty-odd years old, trying to draw the same as John.
Eventually we step away from the track our mentors are on, they follow their flame, as do we and so it was natural that my burning desire to draw like John Byrne ebbed away and was replaced by wanting to draw under my own terms and aspirations.
All this entangled nostalgia reared itself in this one little Gladiator sketch and I thought maybe I’d like to mark this feeling with a drawing, a ‘Homage’.
And so, that is what I did, I hope you enjoy this, I have the greatest respect for John Byrne as an artist and here I took the time to embrace him again with a look at the Fantastic Four number 249, “Man and Super-Man”.
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