Back to the Future - Silver Age Ink-overs

Above:  My ink over John Buscema's pencils from a two page spread in a comicon booklet from the 60s.  
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As I keep saying, 'Best Inktober, ever!'  This week I inked over Wallace Wood, John Buscema and Gil Kane.  Had a really good feel for the first two, but, surprisingly, no connection to the last. I say, "surprisingly," because I developed an affection for Kane's distinctive style soon after the love affair with comics began.*  Wallace Wood's style captivated me, at first.  But soon after I discovered Kane's Green Lantern, the rivalry started.**  I flip-flopped between the two, Wood and Kane, until I discovered John Buscema.  By High School Buscema was "the best", not counting Frank Frazetta, whom everybody, even us kids, knew belonged in a class by himself.  So much so that no one aspired to be that good.  (Hmm.  That gives me an idea . . . )

Inking over someone else's pencils is a great learning experience, though the learning may be more negative than positive.  I didn't learn anything positive inking Kane's, just deepened an appreciation for the difficulties of inking.

Well, that's not entirely true.  While it gave me a hell of time with respect to rendering the figure, Kane's penciling showed me how easy it is to draw and ink a fairly complicated backgrounds - such as with interior establishing shots, which are comprised mostly of cubes in perspective.  Just hold down the shift key and use the stylus to touch corners.  One can outline and detail windows, blinds, baseboards, picture frames, sofas, chairs, coffee tables . . . basically any man-made object.  Same applies to exterior scenes.  No need to be intimidated anymore by those intimidating cityscapes.   

In fact, I think the digital age is likely responsible for reinforcing bad habits when it comes to putting in too much detail.  We do it, now, because it's easy.  And we can just zoom in and keep adding detail, even when it defies aerial perspective, making what's far away as crisp and legible as what's right under our noses.  We can draw every leaf on a tree, and every vein in a leaf, even though it's entirely superfluous and detracts from the whole.  But, I digress.

So, after stalling for a few days in week one, I overdid it in week two.  I've got a surplus of inks that allows me to take time to study and practice, which is what I've begun to do.  By practice I mean work things out in the margins when I hit a rough spot, as I did with Buscema's Tarzan pencils.  I did the hair poorly in that one, so I made a separate study of it.  Granted, the study wasn't much better than the copy, but it shows the right idea of how to follow-up. 

BTW- in inking over other artists, I'm not trying to be true to their pencils, or improve them, or make them look good, etc.  I have basically two goals; to practice inking and gain insight into a penciling method to facilitate inking.  I have definite objectives for both, too, which, likely, have little in common with what professional inkers do.  I'm looking at inking as a function of the auteur, of what he must do to finish his artwork.  Even though I'm practicing on others, I'm not gearing up to do it with any great facility.  I'll be content to pencil and ink my own work. 

And I'm not interested in style.  If anything, style is getting in the way, as evidenced by what happened with practicing over Gil Kane, who has a very strong, distinctive style, that is, likely, incompatible with my predilections.  That doesn't mean I'm opposed to style.  If I can pick up some, I'll count it a plus.  But, in the long run, style is affectation.  It's fad.  And fads come and go.  What's in today is out tomorrow.  Style?  We don' need no stinkin' style. We need good, strong composition and drafting grounded in the fundamentals.  That's what we're going for.
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NOTES

You can see the pencils by the late John Buscema here:  www.google.com/search?q=John+%…

* That happened with the purchase of THUNDER AGENTS #1, when I got my first positive aesthetic reaction to the cover, which was done by Wallace Wood.  Finally did the math for that - as near as I can figure, it was the first week of March, 1966, leading up to my 11th birthday.  Not the twelfth, as previously reported.  Two years after that I got hold of the Famous Artists Course materials.  A year after that, in 1969, George Wildman reviewed my "portfolio" and offered me a position at Charlton.  That's an amazing progression.  (What's more amazing, and a crying shame, is that my mother said, "no."  To this day I still shake my head.  Some people.  So why did she drive me two hours to Derby and waste everyone's morning and afternoon?  Because, in her words, "I didn't think anyone would take you seriously."  Thanks, Ma.  She was a hell of a woman; in June of 2014 Satan reclaimed her.      

** Kane's work featured in THUNDER AGENTS caught my eye, but it wasn't until I studied it further in GL that I developed a taste for it.

3)  BTW- I'm working A4 size (not postcard as erroneously reported, earlier) at 350 dpi, which may not be producing the best result.  But I don't see the point in going to 10.5" x 17" at 600 dpi, given my ability.  If and when the skill warrants, I'll adjust the parameters to meet it.  

4)  I really haven't slowed down.  I continue to ink very fast.  However, the finishing times are taking longer as I take on more challenging projects.  As with figure drawing, sometimes I have to stare and study before I start making marks.  Obviously, neatness and accuracy will correlate with longer times.  But somehow I don't think either will be a hallmark of my artwork, whether totally original or in conjunction with others.  Haha.