When I began my career writing and illustrating art instruction books, there were already many manuals on topics such as perspective, watercolor, and landscapes. But very few books covered specific genres, such as cartooning. And no American author had yet introduced manga techniques to this country. And that’s because “style” had always been looked down upon in art schools as the illegitimate stepchild of classic techniques: it wasn’t art, according to the instructors; it was merely being “tricky,” a sort of visual artifice.
I believed that the instructors were wrong. In addition, I didn’t know why, having the type of expertise they did in the visual arts, the art instructors had such incredibly poor taste in ties. But that riddle remains a mystery, my friends. Now let’s get back to “style”:
So, what happened in the real world to those who adhered to the somewhat haughty, conventional wisdom? Unless they wanted to paint bowls of fruit for a living, they had to go back to the beginning to learn how to incorporate a variety of styles into the rigid format they had acquired. The jobs in popular media are in game development and character design, comics and graphic novels, animation and children’s picture books, humorous illustration and licensing. Each of these styles has specific visual conventions, and I’m not talking about Comicon.
Ask your average figure drawing art instructor to do a sequential page for Spider-Man, or to draw a simple retro cartoon character type, or any kind of manga girl. It will be bad. I’m talking shivers-up-your-spine bad.
Therefore, when I had my chance to publish my first book, How to Draw Cartoons for Comic Strips, I focused exclusively on style. Art students loved it. But they were also understandably reluctant to admit as much. In school, they carried my book wrapped between the covers of Albinus’ tome on anatomy (and by the way, what a fun read that is). If they were spotted reading my book, they would say it was a present for their kid brother. Or they would offer up the sheepish, “Ha, ha, this book shows you how to draw all sorts of characters and poses. What a time-waster, when we want to be drawing femurs and the Teres Major, huh?” Yes, my friend, I think we all understand your dilemma.
Fast forward to today: that modest, first book of mine went on to sell over 200,000 copies. Now, when you go to the bookstore, you’ll see dozens of art instruction books that focus on style. Thankfully, many of them are authored by me. But the important thing is that the era of looking down at style as something ancillary to art is a thing of the past. We’ve stepped out of the darkness and into the light. We’ve leaped into the future, where art is style, when the sun turns into a red giant and incinerates the earth. Okay, don’t think about the sun part – bad imagery.
So today’s take away is simply this:
“Style is art.”
See You Soon,
Chris Hart
Your Cartooning Sherpa