Next I read some comic books from the 1950s. The history of comic books of this era is quite interesting, coming off the back of a massive decline in readership and interest following World War II. Many of the once popular superhero comics had been discontinued. Horror and romance genres took larger shares of the market, and for a short time EC comics horror series were some of the most successful comics of the time. This led to suggestions of links to juvenile delinquency and prompted a moral panic. As a general rule, anything that precipitates a moral panic is greatly interesting to me, so I was eager to read some of these series.
Attempting to curb the popularity of these comics, the Comics Code Authority began regulating content in 1954, and directly led to the downfall of EC and their horror comics. Adapting to the new landscape, DC began reintroducing superheroes into comic circulation and led to what comics historians call the Silver Age of Comics, beginning in 1956 with Showcase #4. I read through some of the comics of this time, including several Detective Comics, Adventure Comics, and Action Comics issues, but I found most of the stories had aged poorly and were bland and lacking characterisation. Marvel comics didn’t begin their contribution to the Silver Age until 1961 with Fantastic Four #1, under the guidance of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, crafting stories with flawed characters and deep characterisation, often challenging the censorship imposed by the Comics Code Authority. I felt like it was a pity that for me personally, all of the interesting superhero stuff didn’t happen until the 60s, so I resigned the idea and tracked back to the controversial comics of the 50s: horror.
I went on some comics archives sites and read through some Tales from the Crypt (http://eccomics.wikia.com/wiki/Tales_from_the_Crypt). These contained many hokey horror stories, amazingly quaint by today’s standards, making it difficult to imagine these stories led to such anxiety among moral gatekeepers of the day. The writing is largely pretty terrible, having lengthy periods of purple prose, repeated words, overuse of adverbs, switching tense mid paragraph, all the hallmarks of poor writing. A few stories curiously used the second-person perspective in its narration. Yet all things considered, I kind of loved it. It has a very hardboiled quality, with plentiful use of metaphor and simile and occasional flourishes of beautiful wordsmanship. Pulp fiction is something that requires a specific taste but it is something I find very entertaining. The art style too, hasn’t aged particularly well, with a strong and frequent case of same-face-syndrome and dodgy anatomy. But I’m a big fan of high contrast work and half tones. And some of the stories do convincingly ramp up tension and have a genuinely creepy atmosphere.
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I realise at this stage I’m in danger of overdoing it with research, but I wanted to look at one more area for reference material before starting my drawing. I had a look at the most notable films from the 50s and was surprised to find I had actually already seen most of the biggest ones, including Rear Window, Singin’ in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, 12 Angry Men, A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, Ben Hur, Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and others (yes I may be a bit of a film buff…) I wanted to fill out a gap in my film knowledge so I watched something I hadn’t seen before, Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean’s most celebrated film.
On the whole I enjoyed it, James Dean was certainly a charismatic, captivating presence. I connected with the themes of juvenile disenfranchisement and middle-class anxiety. I took notes on the fashion of the time based on the film, and found it a good visual reference. I found that although the film primarily dealt with themes of youthful rebellion and emotional tumult, a sort of anger and frustration resulting from Western middle-class life that’s difficult to quantify or identify a source, the film was itself a contradiction, a commercially successful Hollywood movie packaging teenage rebellion to assuage consumeristic masses. There is no mention of class struggle or inequality, exploitation or discrimination, real issues contributing to the invisible guilt of new-money white Americans in the Atomic Age. I thought that this contradiction was very reflective of the 50s as a whole, so I decided to draw heavily from the film visually when doing my drawing.
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When doing my drawing, I decided to go digital. I figured I was going to be doing a bit of repositioning, so I wanted the freedom of digital work, and I recently got a new brushset which I was eager to try out and figured this could be the project to do it.
I spent some time thinking about what I wanted to draw. The brief asks for a person sitting on a chair surrounded by typical 50s artefacts. I wasn’t that interested in doing an interior scene, preferring to draw 50s cars than 50s appliances, so I thought about an outdoor setting. I found the idea of a city street interesting, so I thought of a young greaser-type sitting on the hood of his car, in a 1950s cityscape. Now, perhaps a car is not technically a chair, but after a spending a long time considering it I figured I would rather just get on with my drawing that worry about the philosophical quandaries of whether the exterior of a vehicle could reasonably by classified as a chair or not.
As usual I wanted to challenge myself, so I looked for references for a one-point perspective drawing, being not very experienced at drawing perspective drawings. I consulted a book I had to hand, and drew out an outline. The image I had in my head was a wide angle shot of a lonesome figure, against the backdrop of an overbearing commerce street. Sort of representing rebellion in the face of consumerism, but giving the figure a bomber jacket and a Buick Special to represent being inexorably tied to the system he’s clashing against. Trying to tie together all the stuff I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time rambling about.
Here’s some progress shots of my drawing, ending with the finished piece.
I have to say, I’m not pleased with it. A lot of the perspective is very off. Colour choices could be better. And I’m not in love with the composition. I have drawn very few landscapes in the past, but it’s something I really want to work on, especially as it’s a dream on mine to work professionally on environment design. So this was definitely good practise and I’m glad I went this route. I think it’s thoughtful and there’s parts I like. But I definitely need more practise at this kind of artwork.
One final addition:
I tried going back and playing around with cropping the image to improve the composition. I did manage one arrangement that I quite like, and think improves the image. I like that the figure it now looking away from the inane advertising, sort of adding to the symbolism.
Josh Robbins OCA Learning Log 