This past month of April has been a very dry spell for me creatively. Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with new ideas for picture books, comics, or random illustrations. Nothing seems to be appealing to me.
While a part of me says to step back and take a couple weeks off, another part of me wants to work through it. In the meantime, I've been redrawing some Prince Valiant comics from the late 30's. Hal Foster's rendering are beautiful and unmatched by anyone on the comics pages save a couple others. Being classically trained as an illustrator from the Brandywine school, Foster introduced fine rendering to the comics page and beautiful storytelling. Reading one of the Fantagraphics introductions, Mark Schulz points out that although he renders realistically, his black and white art work is still very abstract, and the distance between "Prince Valiant" and "Peanuts" in terms of art is a very minute one. It's then the brain that makes the jump from abstraction to representation which is neat to me.
Anyhow, I've also been making myself do more reference work. A couple of these illustrations were done with the aid of a photograph that I've taken. A very good habit to get into especially if realistic rendering or foreshortening comes into play. Very good practice.
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