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artofjim · 10 months

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5 Years of Drawing: Part 1

Originally posted on ko-fi.com/artofjim

July marks 5 years since I started learning art and drawing every day. As they say, time flies when you're having fun, and time has really flown! I want to use this blog post to reflect on some things I've learned, look at some old work and compare it to current, and emphasize my gratitude for all of the support I've received in the last half decade. This is a long one so I'm breaking it into 3, but it should give you a ton of insight into my journey as an artist that brought me here today, and hopefully help you carve out your own path!

Before July of 2018, I would occasionally get it in my head that I wanted to draw. This would be prompted by seeing some cool art online, or needing a way to pass the time on trips. I'd spend money on new sketchbooks and tools, and doodle for a weekend in them. That would be that, and my sketchbooks would sit until the next time I felt like drawing again, which was no more than a few times a year. I had a little natural talent at copying proportion and detail, but there was no methodology to my picturemaking and I relied heavily on replicating others' art. Because of the inconsistent schedule and lack of interest in learning, I usually say I started drawing after all of that. Here's some sketches from before 2018.

This is a direct rip of Nate Van Dyke, with a couple additions of my own. 2014? I learned about ink and decided that was the only medium I wanted to work in.

Around the same time. Every artist has been here at some point, I think. I found some photo portraits of homeless people on pinterest probably and took it upon myself to draw them. Lots to unpack there but we should move on (please we must move on oh God). Again, I wasn't trying to learn, I was just copying photos and other art with no rhyme or reason to it, and very rarely. I just loved that kick when people would look at it and say it was good.

2018

In 2018 I was working in Tacoma and there was a great little book store called Culpepper's across the street. Jerry Culpepper had ran that store for decades, and had no great love for comics. As a result, anytime he got graphic novels in, he'd hide them in an unorganized shelf and price them way, way down. This was also true of artbooks, but I wasn't interested in those (yet). Jerry and I had an amicable relationship, with him busting my chops about the coffee shop I worked at being too expensive, and myself ironically bringing him free drip on my breaks. I remember him going into great detail explaining how "Black Panther was absolute shit! Waste of my time seeing that film!" I probably went in there once a week and dug around, spending tip money on anything that looked interesting while Jerry peered down at the titles with a furrowed brow. My love for comics started at this time, and some of the first graphic novels I bought were from Jerry Culpepper. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and A Small Killing, both written by Alan Moore, and drawn by Kevin O'Neill and Oscar Zarate, respectively (a great place to start, if you ask me!).

Still have them! Jerry always priced books with pencil on the first page. He'd usually charge me at least 30% less than this, and shave off sales-tax if I paid cash.

I bought so many comics and bothered Jerry so often that he started giving me stuff for free (again, he had no interest for comics and was intent on filling his store with civil war history and first edition antiques). I'd pay $20 and walk out of there with an armful of graphic novels, video game concept art, Japanese editions of collected Ukiyo-E plates, published artist sketchbooks, and all sorts of odd things I wouldn't normally look for. That's the beauty of local used book stores, you cannot predict what's waiting in there for you. Those early Culpepper finds were, and still are, very influential to me. I dig through my bookshelf for them regularly. I think it's very important for creatives to have a personal, physical collection of things that inspire and interest them, because they will bury into your style way more than temporary online influences.

"Culpepper Books: here you'll find a man struggling to get the hell home with as much money and few books as possible before he retires" -Jerry, during his last week of business when I asked him for a caption

In late-2019, Jerry Culpepper got an offer to end his lease early from a big developer and decided to retire right as the pandemic started to hit, which was definitely the right decision for him. While writing this, I searched his name to see if I could find his online collection, and learned that he passed away in 2022 at the age of 70. Here is his obituary if you'd like to learn more about my old friend at the bookstore who impacted my life more than I could have realized at the time. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/tribnet/name/gerald-culpepper-obituary?id=32332566

My last purchase from Jerry

Now that I was reading comics a lot, I became hip to Jim Lee, comic art superstar of the early 90s known for his work on X-Men, Punisher: War Journal, and countless other titles soon after. Jim Lee streams on Twitch, and one day in July I popped in to watch purely out of curiosity and ended up following along with his live tutorial drawing Wolverine. There's a recording of this tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wxoH_eZgrw I had never had drawing explained to me in the analogous way that Jim Lee did. Much of the concepts he was demonstrating are very fundamental no-brainers to me nowadays, but back then, despite drawing off and on my whole life, I had never been exposed to them. I specifically remember him relating the teeth to a can of soup, and the triceps muscles to parallel canoes. This was mind blowing to me, and sparked an obsession that is still roaring to this day. Here's my results from drawing along with Jim Lee that day.

A little heavyhanded on the spot blacks there, Jimbo...

Even though the idea of using simple forms like soup cans and canoes had been demonstrated so brilliantly by Jim Lee, I immediately went back to my old ways of rote copying. Only now, I was doing it for a few hours a day. I also started streaming art on Twitch during this time, and I'm amazed anyone watched because I was completely directionless.I was reading a lot of Frank Miller and the interest in ink was renewed, and I would just copy things straight out of comics, line-by-line. I didn't have the tools or direction to study in a more meaningful way, so I just copied and copied and copied, with no real improvement besides hand-eye coordination, and my ability to copy from image to paper.Jim Lee had also mentioned Bridgman, and I found a copy of his big book at Culpepper's and copied a few pages (poorly) before giving up.

Notes?? Why would I write down anything from the book? This is drawing!! Sarcasm aside, this was the extent of it. Whatever concepts I pulled from it, I didn't cement with mileage so it was all for not. Granted, Bridgman is not beginner friendly at all.

I also took part in Inktober for the first time in 2018, and actually attempted concept creation. I knew I was bad at drawing heads, so I decided I would twist every prompt into a helmet of some kind. Strange method. You can view the completed pieces here, if you really want to: https://www.instagram.com/p/BokqcKngdlz/

2019

In 2019, I began to become invested in history, and really enjoyed drawing historical garb. Japan especially grabbed my interest, and I bought tons of books about it from Jerry. I'm surprised I didn't try to copy more Japanese art, especially Hokusai's ink sketches. I was filling sketchbooks regularly by now, still just copying for the most part, and getting a little better at it! When I look back at those sketchbooks now, there's a common "Jim" thread present even if I wasn't being very original. I want to point out that I don't think there's anything wrong with copying references, ever, but especially as a beginner artist. The way I was doing it, though, was from a limited perspective: drawing straight to final linework and not considering anything but the 2-d image. I wish I had pursued fundamentals more, and varied my tools, but I just didn't have exposure to those things. I was still wielding a brush pen like a club on every drawing, and using expensive markers that bled through the page.

I learned about Karl Kopinski, and some of the other star artists from Super Ani, and didn't know about all of the mileage and proper practice between where I was and where they were, so I tried to just do what they were doing. Of course, KK appealed to my interest in historical costume, and I copied a bunch of his drawings in my sketchbooks. I also dug into Sergio Toppi, attracted to his painterly hatching and masterful ink compositions, and learned about Moebius. I picked up a Final Fantasy 1-7 artbook for $10 (thanks Jerry) with tons of drawings by Yoshitaka Amano in it, and tried to match his watercolors with my bleeding Copic markers. Because there was no method to my drawings beyond copying mark-by-mark, there was an element of luck involved that decided the success of each drawing. The artmaking journey, then, was just chasing that next lucky winner drawing, which is not sustainable long term! Sure, I might get lucky more often as I copied more accurately, but I wouldn't know why, and I had no lens to understand what made an image work.

Toppi copy

One of the lucky drawings

Kopinski copy

Amano copies. Notice the difference in quality between the Toppi samurai above and these; this is the element of luck I'm referring to. There was no repeatable process, just diving into the final lines and gambling on it.

Beyond that, I wanted to create, not replicate. I would watch Karl Kopinski, Kim Jung Gi, and Peter Han create worlds on the spot, with no reference, and have no idea how to accomplish that. I figured it was my poor visualization ability holding me back. All I thought mattered was drawing a lot, and drawing a variety of things. I would stream on Twitch and take requests to draw anything anyone wanted for ten minutes. I drew 20 different outfits from the Camp-themed Met Gala. I drew video game characters, Power Rangers, cartoons, and Kermit the Frog smoking a blunt. Occasionally, I'd try to draw people and places from life.

My first ever POV sketch

I knew that clothing was something academics studied, so I "studied" some drapery as well! All that meant for me was copying, line by line, a few reference photos. I downloaded Autodesk Sketchbook, a free drawing program, and tried my hand at digital art. If I wasn't just attempting photocopying, I did try my hand at some imaginative work, with a degree of realistic rendering. Here's those paintings, just so we can compare to my current paintings later.

I would paint over Bill Sienkewicz sketches, this is one of those

This funny little fellow is a Japanese God, Fukurokuju. The drapery is looking especially mushy.

In mid-2019, I decided I would challenge myself to making a comic for Inktober. I was very naive, but still took a lot of time planning for it before October started. I scripted out the pages, did some character "designs," and even worked on turnarounds. My thought was that if I took the time to figure out what a character would look like from any angle, I could just use that as reference when I needed it. This is true, and how animators do it, but I created this sheet by smashing together references and finding an image for every expression and angle I could need. I also sculpted the main character's head so I could use it as reference. I had not rediscovered the power of "form" yet, despite Jim Lee's great tutorial that started all of this, and the literal sculpted 3d form sitting on my desk.

Here's a few pages of my Inktober comic, Dog Days. I made it 13 pages in and burned out super hard, since I was working full-time still and spending at least 8 hours a day on the pages. The cyst on my wrist got massive and I was not sleeping at all. I took a break for a few days to go on a trip and just never came back to it. Surprisingly, I haven't ever experienced a burnout since then.

If you're interested in checking out the other 11 pages, they're available to Ko-Fi Members for $4.50/month, along with my other comics.

For my first comic, I am extremely proud of that work. There's a sort of energy that is now inhibited by experience and judgment. I was fearless and committed to every page, because I had no idea how long it would take me or what challenges I might face. I don't think I will or should ever finish it, because I cannot replicate that vibe.

I returned to drawing a few weeks after the burnout and dove back into Japanese historical drawings, becoming obsessed with the photos of Felice Beato, who brought photography to Japan right as it modernized. Some coworkers of mine were my first ever commissioners, asking for some work relevant to what I was already studying. The first was a family portrait taken in the early 1900s. The second was a 6 panel piece on the history of Taiko drumming. I think they spent more on the frame then what I charged them for the piece, which is hilarious to me now. I also experimented with some blacklight ink and collage, which was a nice change from all the inking I did in October.

I did these on expensive Awagami rice paper with ultra-archival Noodler's fountain pen ink. I was fooling myself into thinking that expensive materials were necessary for any sort of "professional" work, and that they would elevate it. In the end, it just made the process nerve-wracking and left no margin for error.

I will continue with years 2020 and 2021 in my next post to keep this one from getting any longer! Follow my Ko-Fi to get notified via email when that comes out, or tune into my social media: https://linktr.ee/artofjim

If you'd like to support my art career and get some goodies in return, become a Ko-Fi Member in exchange for art in the mail every 6 months, monthly giveaways, access to my comics, discounts in my shop, and more. Starts at $4.50/month, goes up for better rewards. https://ko-fi.com/artofjim/tiers Thank you to all of my members, past and current, for enabling me to pursue my greatest interest in life more comfortably.

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