Tag Archives: COMIC BOOKS

#196: SEVENTEEN ARCHITECTURAL SKETCHES

November 22, 2024

San Diego Civic Theatre, San Diego, California: Conceptual color marker sketch on yellow trace paper shows the exuberance of opening night.

For past decades, I have explored architectural ideas through drawing: from tentative doodles to scratchy sketches, from colored diagrams to illustrative depictions. Though a variety of technological tools are at my fingertips—CAD, 3DS, Photoshop, even AI—I still prefer the simplest of tools at my desk, a pencil and my hand.

Design sketches can be artifacts representing a search for ideas, sometimes an elliptical journey of tests and failures. In other cases, sketches can establish the conceptual narrative and design agenda—a graphic thesis, a 2D picture that launches the creative process. Design sketches can also be gestural capturing gestalt and overall expression, as taught in figure drawing classes. Or perhaps, an illustration can delineate an architectural caricature, not unlike the art within the comic books of my youth.

Here, I have collected 17 various sketches of mine for your perusal—all part of a creative journey, not to be scrutinized as a final product or conclusive solution.

Saffron restaurant, Beverly Hills, California: An intentionally crude collage of marker and craft papers explores broad ideas of patterns, colors and fabrics—ignoring tedious details.
Din Tai Fung restaurant, The Americana at Brand, Glendale, California: For this 160-seat, 7,000-square-foot restaurant, thin and thick black ink lines display the patterned wood and glass screens wrapping from walls to ceiling.
Pacific Christian High School, Culver City, California: Color pencils over color markers over a photocopy of a pencil drawing—a bird’s eye view show three brick anchor buildings (theater, library and cafeteria) connected by occupiable green roofs.
Library at the American University of Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt: Quick five-minute pencil sketch of shade and shadow expresses the Egyptian-influenced modern design and associated stone pattern (while w/ HHPA).
Taegu Arena, Taegu, Korea: For a 14,000-seat basketball arena, gestural sketch on yellow trace paper—a few lines represent the curved glass walls and saddleback roof.
Start Select esports lounge and bar, Arcadia, California: Heavy shades and tones from markers and color pencils capture the hangout mood of technology and drinks.
Buddhist Temple, Natural Bridge, Virginia: A minimal pencil and marker drawing made evocative with a Photoshoped backdrop of the property’s actual trees.
Greenman Elementary School, West Aurora, Illinois: A piano work by J.S. Bach inspires the rhythm of windows on the building’s brick surfaces, a school that emphasizes a performing arts curriculum–color pencil and pen.
Robbins Elementary School, Trenton, New Jersey: 20-second doodle of pen and color pencils explores how the proposed collision of new glass additions to an existing traditional red brick building.
Kenter Residence, Los Angeles, California: A traditional living room captured in mere pencil lines and modest textures.
EC Kids fitness and community center, Culver City, California: An aerial view depicts playful forms, recreational areas and youthful spirit, inserted into an existing 10,000-square-foot industrial warehouse, done in color markers.
Aztec Student Union, San Diego State University, San Diego, California: For a new 230,000-square-foot university center, a fast and loose five-minute, color pencils sketch exhibits the public space, the heart of the design. (while w/ HHPA).
Sushi Noguchi, Yorba Linda, California: Quick repetitive pencil line work captures the many wood slats that provide privacy, filtered sunlight, ceiling interest, and overall interior warmth and character.
Herb Alpert Music Center, Los Angeles City College, California: Renovation of an existing stair, color pencil, markers, and paper collage on white trace.

Why do I sketch? Sketching comprises many things: artistic ideas, physically moving one’s body, and communicating an idea to an audience. With drawing, I enjoy the connection between my brain and my hand, between my imagination and a pencil, between an idea and a blank piece of paper. I also find complacency in how graphite moves across the tooth of vellum or how ink slides across smooth trace.

Herb Alpert Music Center, Los Angeles City College, California: Exploratory sketches for a new lobby, pen in sketchbook.

#92: NOT JUST FOR KIDS: THE ART OF COMIC BOOKS

November 23, 2018

The New Mutants, by Bill Sienkiewicz

(On November 12, 2018, we lost a super hero. In memory of Stan Lee, 1922 – 2018.)

No longer targeting an adolescent male audience, comic books have become more complex and far reaching. Some comics, known as “graphic novels,” highlight the quality of the writing—even honored with the Pulitzer Prize. Alongside the award-winning stories, the artwork of comic books have evolved from the crude cartoons of early comic strips found in the back pages of the newspaper. Comic book illustration has advanced to the level of art. As in fine art, as in Michelangelo and Da Vinci.

And why?

The Avengers, by Jack Kirby

The classic art form of comics arguably started with the giants of the 50’s and 60’s, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Their line work was crisp and clear. Though graphically modest, the art was expressive. The colors were flat, but boldly captured movement and energy in two dimensions. In part due to the limits of rudimental printing, early comic book artists were forced to be thoughtful and efficient. The results brightly portrayed the optimism of the generation.

left: Spider-Man and Mysterio, by Steve Ditko; middle: Iron Man, by John Romita; right: Iron Fist, by John Brynes

From the late 60’s to the 80’s, John Romita added tonality and detail. Influenced by the world of Pop Art, abstract graphics enhanced the drama of a scene. Later, ground breaking artist, John Byrnes, continued the study of graphic design and narrative structure, literally breaking out of the typical paneled grid of comic book pages. Note the revolutionary full page art of Iron Fist, and how the smaller insets exhibit the fist of our hero transforming to iron, alongside the oddly shaped boxes of commentary. As with the Pop Art movement, irony and criticism entered the pictorial lexicon, representing a growing interest for originality and a fresh look at old things.

Batman and Robin, by Bill Sprang

In studying the development of Batman over the generations, the simplicity and naivety of pioneer Dick Sprang’s Batman from the 40’s evolved to the heavy use of black ink from Neal Adams three decades later. In Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 release of The Dark Knight Returns, we confront the twisted representation of our gritty anti-hero, whose shadowy presence is barely contained within the limits of the physical page. From innocence to dark forces, graphic tools displayed our weariness in celebrating so-called virtuous heroes.

Batman, left: by Neil Adams; right: by Frank Miller

Testing further visual limits, Miller takes an abstract pictorial approach, reducing Superman and Batman to merely cinematic silhouettes. Yet through this graphic austerity, the carefully composed and detailed postures imply the entire story. Perhaps our brains are so filled these days with data, emotions and retorts, that a mere gesture can cause our bodies to generate complex reactions.

Superman and Batman, by Frank Miller

My all-time favorite, Bill Sienkiewicz, transforms the visuals of comics to the highest level—as a classical painter would, as a mixed-media artist would. For the past three decades, Sienkiewicz captured emotional and psychological content in the most imaginative of techniques. In this Moon Knight cover, note how the villainess in red, intentionally omitting her body’s outline, becomes the entire background of evil, or the cover drawing that is 98% minimalist black.

Moon Knight, by Bill Sienkiewicz

Going further, The New Mutants cover illustrates Sienkiewicz’s interest in mixed-media collage, expressing even the tape that attaches the scraps of paper. Doing away with the slickness of illustration now offered by digital means, he reverses his approach to show an honest and revealing snapshot of process and composition.

By Bill Sienkiewicz, left: The New Mutants; right: Elecktra

Finally, Sienkiewicz’s beloved assassin, Elektra, is treated with the skill, vision and artistry on par with any generation’s most prominent creative geniuses. With some illustrators, we have reached the bleakest and most dense part of our souls. Sienkiewicz and other innovative artists reached deep into murky places and offered beauty, instead of despair.

Is it so simple to say there is a linear path from the innocence and optimism of early generations to the difficulties and sarcasm of later generations, from oppressing nightfall to triumphant invention? If comic book art and the methods of artistic process and reproduction represent the development of the human condition, than I utter the legendary phrase by the father of comic books, Stan Lee, “Nuff Said!”

© Poon Design Inc.