Mark Making #2: Simon Bisley

This is the second Blog on Mark Making, featuring 2000ad artists from my youth. These two pages come from Simon Bisley. Both pages come from the same story but demonstrate different techniques if you look closely. When Simon Bisley started at 2000ad he was an instant hit thanks to the way he created robots with muscles and tons of detail. Each figure is posed well and full of dynamic tension, echoing a classical drawing style that resembles August Rodin more than modern sci-fi art.

 

Piles of knotted robot muscle depicted with bold black lines and parallel hatched shading lines.

In contrast to the controlled lines of most of this work the gore is a semi-naturalistic splash or splatter.

The tension of the muscle fiber, sinew, tendons and ligaments is shown with strong straight black and white lines, minimal shading. Joe Pineapples is a very calculating, emotionless assassin; hence he is drawn with deliberately hard lines, lacking emotion.

  

 
This time the clean lines are  broken up with some stippled shading, resembling stubble when it is used on the chin.

Mongrol is a more passionate character, full of rage and fury. He is often depicted using more organic lines, like the ones used on his fists here.

A few parallel lines represent a mass of wires.

A very dramatic view of General Blackblood, barely any visual description in the face but it still has tons of character. The line work is slightly more sketchy.

The details of the sniper rifle are a mass of black and white angles, with a bit of stippling used sparingly.

The second page, taken from a later episode.

This time note the use of ink splattered on, maybe with an old tooth brush, also the cross hatching delivered with a much more relaxed style.

 

Background detail is created with a few brief squiggles...

...or minimal lines work.

This weathered detail on the face of Hammerstein uses cross-hatching to show wear and rough texture. Note stippling in the eye to differentiate it from the rest of the face.

Finally, a great use for crass-hatching; the rising fields of the artificial landscape, rising up in the distance behind the simply rendered trees.

Mark Making #1: Massimo Belardinelli

Last week I gave an Introduction to Drawing class to 48 new students at Staffordshire University. One element of the class was trying to give them a taste of the diversity of mark making techniques available to an artists even if you are limited to drawing with a biro.

I started to think about my own influences and how I used to look at the mark making skills of the old 2000ad comic artists. I have since looked at my recent work and realised that the mark making is pretty poor, this is something that I intend to improve upon as I used to pay more attention to mark making. If I can find the comic work I was doing then I will scan it in.

What I want to do here is show some of the beautiful ink work of some of those artists working in the 1970's and '80's. 2000ad was always known for the quality of its artists and story writers and it was the first UK comic to credit the talent that produced the strips. Each artist had a very distinct style and a lot of that came from their unique mark making skills.

This is the first in a series.

I have scanned the example pages at different resolutions and picked out specific areas to look at. The high res. images may take a while to load so be warned. The first example is from Flesh Book Two, written by Geoffrey Miller and drawn by the Italian artist; Massimo Belardinelli (1938-2007).

This is the high res. 600 dpi version.

Foliage picked out in the background with just a few lines.

The under belly of the Tyrannosaur achieved with detailed lines giving the impression of thick, ridged hide. Note the ridge or vein to the top left that is really just a white space with a few lines to imply shading. Again, to the right the rock landscape behind is shown using a absence of line, just a few marks.

The wing of the Pterodactyl has a fractured appearance created by mixing delicate angular lines with thinner 'hatched' lines. The use of a few ovals adds organic texture.

The energy from the time machine is made from simple brush strokes.

The lizards tail is made of small, tightly curved lines, built up to look like long ridges.

The leg is covered in nodules of skin, short, shaded curves of ink, thicker at one end.

The throat of the Tyrannosaurus Rex has bold sweeping brush strokes mixed with short shading lines.

These thin dashes are rain falling on the sea which is made of shorter, curving thick lines.

The energy around the time vehicle is shown by jagged areas of white and ovals of energy, reminiscent of Jack Kirby in the old Marvel comics.

Next time I will be looking at Simon Bisley's work on ABC Warriors.