Sweet Vindication [?]
by T. Hodler
Sunday, March 1, 2009
No one else will remember or care about this, but a while back I recounted how I was once deluded into thinking MAD caricaturist Mort Drucker didn’t use pencils, but inked his pictures directly. Tonight I happened across my ancient copy of Mort Drucker’s MAD Show-Stoppers and noticed the included biographical essay (written by Nick Meglin), which includes the following passage, and must have been my original source:
Drucker doesn’t think out his ideas on paper. He doesn’t do thumbnail sketches. He prefers instead to envision the completed work in his mind beforehand. He later duplicates the concept on paper as best he can, allowing accidents and changes that may possible improve the work as he goes along. … “It’s also a sure way to keep from being influenced by your research,” reveals Drucker. “I put the figure in where I think it belongs and not where the photo dictates. Staging an illustration around available reference points limits your freedom to tell a story effectively; when an artist does that, he ignores his very purpose.”
It goes on to say that Drucker sometimes used pencils, but only for panel backgrounds.
Anyway, the latter part of that quote is reminiscent of some of Frank’s talk about photo-referencing, etc., which is interesting to me because Mort Drucker’s one of the last artists I would’ve associated with Frank’s ideas. He doesn’t often achieve the associated flow Frank talks about so much, I don’t think, but still… half-baked connections are what blogs are for.
UPDATE: An anonymous commenter has rightly pointed out conflicting evidence.
Labels: caricature, MAD, Mort Drucker, photo-referencing, who cares?
Todd, I mean Tim,
if this starts a 100-plus comment thread about photo-referencing, I’m going to f**king kill you.
I feel like photo referencing is a good idea as long as it’s used with integrity. when it comes to drawing places and specific things. if you need to know what a specific motor cycle looks like, study some photo reference just to teach your self what it really looks like so now you can draw it from memory, but don’t copy from the photo. if you are drawing a scene in a forest use some photo reference to compare to what you are already drawing, so you don’t leave out extra details, and your drawing doesn’t look like it’s of some weird forest that only has 1 type of tree in it and nothing else.
but never use it for composition reference or do those weird photo shoots.
Yeah, that’s more or less what Drucker said in that book, too. He claimed that he sometimes uses photos for reference but doesn’t copy or trace them, and doesn’t depend too heavily on them. So his stance isn’t nearly as strong as Frank’s.
Knock it off, I swear I’ll f**cking stab you guys!
Sorry, Fred. I thought we were safe for another eighty comments or so. I’ll shut up about the photos now.
Frank,
What Drucker is basically saying is that he’s better than Picasso. So watch out.
I have personal friends who are better than Picasso.
(inside joke everyone, sorry)
If you look at the Drucker pictures on your link to “Mort Drucker” in your text, you will see that they are high res scans from the original artwork, and that you can very clearly see the pencil lines on the faces. They are light and rough, but Drucker did not erase them, and they are pretty instructive.
I see what you mean, but I think that’s probably pencil added in for shading after he inked in the heads. I didn’t quote the whole relevant section from the book, but Drucker does go into various shading and coloring techniques too… But I don’t know for sure, and you may be right!
Actually, looking at them some more, I think you might be right, at least in the drawing of Jack Lemmon and Jane Fonda. Hmm.