May 29, 2009
Twenty years ago I took a drawing class from legendary comic strip artist Burne Hogarth. I learned a ton on anatomy and rendering from the guy who did Tarzan for the newspaper comics and created Drago. This was at the Scottsdale Artist's School where they bring in the best artists in the country and you study with them for a week. Yesterday I got out his 1972 Tarzan of the Apes graphic novel to study his linework. I was taken with his rendering of an old man's head:

Then I returned to my sepia studies:

I really like the richness of the sepia washes and I want to expand this for the Mickey Free book. By the way, I'm about ten days from 9,000 sketches and I have to say that as I approach that milestone I have definitely picked up my game. As a point of reference, here's what I was doing a year ago:

And, here's the next day's sketches:

Very close to what I'm doing now, but I do sense a smidgen of progress. Now to start that second big painting on Billy and Pat Garrett. Gee, I wonder what ol' Diebenkorn has to say about this?

"When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling. But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony. I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy."
—Richard Diebenkorn