If you’ve ever tried to become an artist, or just learn to draw in general, you may have come across the answer to the question “How do I get better?” as this…
Just Draw.
It’s true, but not always helpful. And it’s also true of comics. You can’t get better at something unless you do the thing badly for a while. But comics are unlike drawing because they take much, much longer. They also have a lot of moving parts that you need to be conscious of in the beginning. So how do you get over this hump?
Well, you make a small comic. A really, really small comic. The beautiful thing about making a small comic is that you will learn everything you need to know about the process, which will inform every one of your future decisions within the medium. Do you even like making comics, or do you like the idea of having made a comic? That’s a big one that a lot of new comic creators need to reconcile through experience.
My next video explores this very concept and I tried to use a running/marathon metaphor to make it clearer and more interesting. I’ve come to realise that communicating information is much more about the communication part than the information part. If I write a script that just has the information, then it’s less likely to be absorbed by an audience. Which is why metaphors are so key.
If, for example, you decide you want to run a marathon, you wouldn’t go from your sofa/couch to the starting line. You’d start jogging small distances and slowly increase the distance over time as you train. Well, comics are the same. I think most comic creators, including myself, made this mistake at the beginning. We have this grand idea of this epic tale that we want to tell, but we don’t have the muscle strength or lung capacity to complete that journey. So we start, get tired, maybe get hurt and then we either give up entirely or feel incredibly frustrated by the whole experience.
Doing a comic that is 6 pages long instead of 60 is the equivalent of training your body to prepare for your marathon. And once you’ve completed your 6 page comic, you’ll be able to ask yourself other questions beyond whether you actually enjoyed the process. It’s all well and good creating a 6 page comic in a month, but could you commit to a 60 page comic over a year? Maybe more? And if you fell in love with the medium and determined that this is how you want to express yourself, then which areas did you struggle with the most?
I believe the single biggest challenges that artists of any kind come up against are mental challenges. Yes, you can show people the technical side of art through the use of tutorials, but you can’t draw for people. And one of the biggest barricades between people’s desire to draw and actually putting the hours in to do it efficiently are all in their head. So if you give people mental techniques or bite-size projects to explore and experiment with, then I think that’s more impactful than explaining the Loomis method to someone.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s really important, too. But learning art is more than what we see. It’s about our personal experience and relationship to art and to comics. And I find that side of things more interesting, which is why I want to find ways to help people overcome those barriers and start creating. Because you can’t make good comics until you make bad ones in the same way that you can’t draw well until you draw badly for a while. And you’ll never reach that point if you don’t start.
So, I guess what I’m saying is… Just Draw.
Solid advice for sure. My comic series started this way, the sprawling epic with a thousand pages ahead of me. And it was overwhelming, for sure - still is!
One year later, I’ve got about 50 pages of work drawn, with another 50ish pages written. Reflecting back on it, I’m really glad I started with the full 22-page single issue. It gave me a lot of space to improve and see a variety of challenges that I think I would have avoided if it were shorter. Things like multiple changes in scenery, action vs. dialogue, references, lettering, graphic design..
The second issue was a slog though. I suffered through that one, as it became clear to me how much the business side would affect my ability to get it done. That additional stress overhead is a challenge that many creators need to decide whether or not it’s worth it.
For the record, I still think it is! Thanks for writing the article, gave me a necessary moment to look back on it all.