[Briareos]

I love this guy's work, but... Craig said that this style is done by tracking over photos with airbrush and stuff? I still like it, but it takes some of the spice out of it... knowing that... bleh.

[Steven Stahlberg]

The thing with Drew is, his tracing and copying of a photo always makes that photo look better, no matter how well it was shot in the first place.
I remember when Rambo: First Blood came out, how I would just stand there like an idiot and stare for minutes at the poster, with my jaw on the ground... the sky, the sweaty skin, the hair, that shirt, the backlighting, the clean strokes and lines, the machine gun, the perfection of his color and tones... sigh.

I think the illustrator's most important tool(before the computer) was a tracing camera (english sp?). Apart from the copying machine and the light box of course.

[silber]

http://www.sijun.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001825

some good thoughts from worthless meat sack on that one

[ November 04, 2001: Message edited by: silber ]

[Briareos]

I really was admiring the covers he did for the Blue comic, I was like "I wish I could draw like that". But now that I know he didn't draw it sort of dissapoints me...

All the stuff he does is great looking, but I can't get the word "filter" out of my head when I see it... As an artist I want to respect him, but I have a hard time... Maybe I just need to see something that he drew from scratch... :\

[Steven Stahlberg]

It's one of those really difficult issues where there's a wide no-man's-land in between the battle lines, and people have very different opinions on exactly where to place the border.

IMO, tracing is All Good when you're a pro. The copy-machine, the lightbox and the tracing paper are your best friends. (And the Lucigraph, thanks Craig now I know what it's called in english.)
Not just for tracing photos. You do a lot of tracing over your own sketches, saves a lot of erasing.

But when you have a deadline that's too short, and 3 other projects demanding attention, and you find the perfect reference in your reference library, or take a Polaroid of a friend, you don't sit there measuring and sketching and erasing for 2 hours, when you can trace it in about 10 minutes. Sad but true fact of life.

In any case, what normally happens, is you need to 'merge' several different references, which can get very tricky - full of potential boobytraps - and/or change a reference in a subtle but usually excruciatingly difficult way (like turning someones head or changing the lighting etc). So it's not as easy as some may think.

[Derek]

Well... not to disparage the man...

Yes, he works almost slavishly to reference, and yes he does bring a decent sense of proportion and such to his work, so that he can correct the mistakes that are inherent in any photo; the primary one being how it flattens images.

However, he has pretty well handcuffed himself. His technique (correctly explained above in a prev. post) relies primarily on a good sense of composition which is undeniable and a 'trick', as it were, of understanding how to blow out values to get the effects he wants in his lighting (take anything of about a number three value or so or lower/brighter, transition it to white). He isn't a great draftsman, and has on numerous occasions had to ask for a ton of work, reworks and even drawings for reference to work from, his own skills in draftsmanship having been somewhat abandoned by lack of reinforcement. The final work is amazing and luminous, which is a great result of the airbursh work, and understanding how to visually mix values through wide clor transitions (see other posts about using different colors of the same value to electrify an area in an image).

Again, please understand that I don't want to detract from his success. Consider this a cautionary tale against using reference too blindly, tracing as a means of avoiding developing great drafting/drawing skill, and of gimmicks and quick solutions, even for commercial illustration. The means work for him, and it is unfortunate that so many imitators came along and decreased his demand.

[pierre]

From what I know these are roughly the steps of Struzan's work.

once he have the composition and references worked out he follows the old masters principle of dividing color and value.

1.Tracing(underdrawing) on gessoed illustration board, cold pressed I think; most often with lead, but sometimes with colored pencils depending on the final area (I think this is done primarily because of the speed and efficiency of it, him being a commercial artist)

2.If required Filling in large total black areas with black ink.

3.Airbrushing local colors over the underdrawing with acrylic liquitex colors. This is about 70 % of the painting.

4.Rendering and tightening with vax based colored pencils. Mostly Prisma Color, but also Derwent.


I believe that looking at Struzan's work as only tracing of photos would be of great injustice to this great artist. If it was merely so, we could all be "Struzan".

He trace, as many illustrators does today, and did before. Rockwell did and many before him. Rockwell, Struzan and many others do have one thing in common though, are/were great artists and illustrators and understood/understand drawing, compostion, color etc. I am not promoting tracing, just stating that Struzan is alot more than that, he truly deserve it.

One may not want to do what he does, or like it, but denying that the product is more than just a trace, I believe, is wrong.

He makes a living on doing movie posters and in my eyes, he is the indisputable king of them. He has created some posters that will survive many movies, what would Indiana Jones be without Struzan? Probably not the same.

Does anyone remeber the "Goonies" poster (all the kids hanging from a cliff with a deep perspective)?, merely tracing doesn't create art like that.

He trace, but he also makes a masterful composition and render of them, and they all inherit the soul and personality of struzan's style, instead of just being a mechanical copy. I don't know if Struzan could draw a human correct without reference, but that is not what he makes a living on.

Just my give on it
Pierre

[ November 04, 2001: Message edited by: pierre ]

[ November 04, 2001: Message edited by: pierre ]