I have drawn or did art ever since I’m sure I could pick up a pencil and figure out how to use it. I always loved doing arts and crafts in elementary school when I was a child and those parts of the week quickly became the best days when I was in school. As I grew I still drew every chance I had. I was introduced to comics via the Archie comics that would be at the registers at the store. My aunt or mom would get me one from time to time. Another way I was able to read comics were through the Saturday funny pages in the news paper. I loved seeing all the different stories and found myself more drawn to the comic strips that seemed to have a continuing story line.
My first ever comic was of a man on a boat being hunted by a ghost. It was done on college ruled paper with the panels only being two lines wide and maybe 3 inches long. It was actually inspired by an image I saw in a school book that I think belonged to my older sister at the time. My first ever original characters were these weirdly looking wrestlers as my brothers and I were heavy into WWF and I wanted to create my own with unique outfits, powers and set states. I think at multiple points I would even randomly pick the characters I drew out and would work out in my head with each character’s states and the abilities who would win the fight. Of course my favorite ones would always seem to make it to the last rounds.
When I was in about 4th or 5th grade, I knew that I wanted to have a career in art with it specifically being in making comics. I had tons of stories in my head and I wanted to share them with the world. At the time I thought the only way I would be able to do that would be able to work for Marvel. I had no idea of how I was even going to achieve this goal or improve my art to the skill level of the X-Men show I would watch on TV. At the time, I thought that’s what the Marvel comics would have looked like as well.
So fast forward to high school, I started looking into possible animation to get my stories out to the world because I grew up on cartoons and loved the media. As much as my art teacher at the time tried to get me as much information as possible to help me reach my goal, at the time there wasn’t much information out there about how to break into the animation industry outside of going to art school and trying for a job a Disney. At least that was really the only information I was able to find or information that was really recommended to me.
After graduating high school and getting into an art school, I quickly discovered through more research how expensive it was to create an animation and how creating an animation at the time involved having a large team. This was not something I was drawn to because I wanted to be able to create something that was mine on my own. (I have always been a person who didn’t like group projects. If something didn’t work out the way I wanted, I knew that if I was the only one working on it, it was because of me that I got the results I got.) Some how I was drawn back to comics again and knew this would be the route I would go to get my stories out to the world. Sadly the art school that I attended had no real focus on improving my art and my art did not improve hardly any. So after leaving it fell on me to figure out how to improve my art.
Fast forward again in my early to mid 20’s I was able to find a few videos on YouTube of people trying to each art, but nothing was very detailed and I didn’t know about the classic books from artists like Andrew Loomis or George Bridgman. It wasn’t until I found a series by Rich Graysonn on YouTube teaching a simple way of learning to draw the human figure. After completing his YouTube series I ended up getting his course for 30 Day Anatomy. Even after learning through this course I did see improvement in my art, but I wasn’t sure how to really apply what I had learned to achieve my goals in creating my comics.
After that I took another course entitled “The Structure of Man” as I figured that I just needed more in-depth learning on how to draw human anatomy. (I guess I should state that most of my drawing when I was a kid and even a few years in high school involved drawing what I saw from books or magazines and very little from creating my own stuff again or exploration drawing.) After completing the original 90 hour course from “The Structure of Man” course (which at the time only involved learning the basics of the stick figure to the muscles of the body. Nothing on posing or taking the knowledge and really expanding on it. The course how now since evolved since then.) I still did not feel confident in my ability to be able to pose and do storytelling. My thought process on drawing was also not great. I don’t know where I picked up the thought process, but I figured that a skilled artist would be able to just draw out a picture without any mistakes or much editing. (I know… CRAZY!)
Fast forward again and between relationships and discouraging thoughts, I decided to take my art serious and really buckle down and get myself back on track to achieving my goal of creating my comics. At this time I am probably 3o or close to. I ended up writing my first comic while at the same time drawing to improve my art while I joggle two jobs living on my own. After writing, rewriting, and rewriting again my comic story, I finally started thumbnailing my first comic issue. I did the pencils traditionally and then digitally inked it. I was able to say I finally completed my first ‘real’ comic in my early 30s. I even released my second issue a year later.
After completing my second issue, I looked back on my art for my comics and was just totally unhappy with almost everything about it. The only thing I was still proud about was the hand drawn cover I had did for the first issue. So with that I decided to complete scrap it and start the comic from scratch.
I really wanted to improve my art to the skill level of Marvel or DC even though I was reading comics that were published by Image that had a totally different style.
All of this to lead up to where I am currently. Even though I am still always working to improve my art, I know that I will never be ‘perfect’ and I will always improve the more I draw so I might as well just get my story done now so I can move on to the next one. I am focusing more on drawing the things I genuinely find interesting and am drawn to vs trying to draw what I see other artists create that is allowing them to gain an audience and success. I have also cut back my social media consumption to help with my mental health and the comparison thought process I have had for years due to social media. (I’ll do another post about social media and the effect it had on my art and my mental health.)
