by marvel57 » Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:49 am
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marvel57Posts: 2015Joined: Sun Aug 19, 2012 12:43 amLocation: nevada, USA
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GNFF: I still remember his comment that you should get rid of the reference, because he thought you were capable of much better work without it…
ROSS: Well, the thing is that there's still that much more left to learn. There's an infinite amount of things to see in reality – and obviously if I'm stiffening the stuff up with my looking towards reference too much, than that is a problem that certainly I need to focus on and work towards changing.
IGNFF: What is the importance of using reference? Because, obviously, you can draw without it – so it's not a crutch. But what strength do you draw out having a piece of reference in front of you?
ROSS: There's only so much recall the human mind seems to have – or at least mine, that's for sure. Most comic artist's styles, whether they're more exaggerated like Bruce or more representational like, say, Neal Adams – more realistic – all these things are based upon what things we've filled our heads with. And there's only so much, generally, that each artist has accumulated. The more realistic artists are the guys who've obviously studied and filled their heads that much more with exact figure shape and realism of lighting and outline, whereas your average comic artists is more based upon drawing from mind's eye and just imagination of how to render objects and people. So the more exaggerated styles, or just simple basic styles – everything from John Byrne to George Perez – that's not so much based upon reality as it is a certain form of cartooning. It's a reduction of reality to a basic…
IGNFF: Stylization…
ROSS: It's a basic stylization of how they've understood the world to be. In my feeling, it's almost like you've taken everything that your eyes can see – or that your eyes can collect – and then you've almost put a finger on stopping at a certain point and saying, "Okay, this is where I stop, and from this point I'm just going to create my own version of how I want things to be."
IGNFF: Becoming a filter?
ROSS: Well, I'm more of a filter. Most of your average comic artists are not going and studying life. They're basically just running forward with what their style has become, based upon the process of doing. Neither approach is bad. I guess the fundamentals of fine artists and illustrators over the years has been to always continue to look at the base – which is reality. So you're going to find, when you look back at your classic American illustrators and say, "These were guys that were always looking back at reality as the guiding point. And when you go back to your classical artists of many years gone by – your Da Vincis, your Michaelangelos – they were all working from life. They were looking at the equivalent of their reference, and since this is an attribute never discounted before in the history of art, what's ironic for me just as more of a basic illustrator is that I've gotten constant dissection over the fact that I'm looking at something real before I'm completing these fantastic images. Before I complete an image of, say, Green Lantern conjuring something up, I'm going to want to actually have a guy to base my Green Lantern on and see how close I can get to what's in my mind's eye with that model, that reference. Then fill in the rest from what I feel needs to be achieved that's not there through the photographic help.
IGNFF: So it's like a sculptor working with an armature…
ROSS: Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you're never going to get everything just perfect. When you see artists that are following from reference too closely – not reinterpreting enough – you're gonna wind up with these things where the characters, or the situations, seem less plausible because they do seem stiffer.