Modern Masters: Bruce Timm and Arthur Adams (24 & 25 down, 27 to go)

Whoa. Tons of books to catch up on before the year is over.

I picked up a couple of these Modern Masters books at the comic shop last week. They’re so much fun. They’re basically sit down interviews with comic book artists and they just talk about their life and work for about 120 pages. Large format, with tons of sketches and illustrations from their careers. Timm is great because he speaks really candidly about his style - like how he uses Buscema’s techniques for drawing women’s legs or Jack Kirby’s shorthand for drawing muscles in action.

The Bruce Timm volume was good - I have so much awe and respect for that man’s work - but the Arthur Adams edition was awesome.

Arthur Adams is one of those artists that I’ll simply never have any real perspective on because he was like a god in my world when I was a kid. His stuff is so oddly perfect - even in the sketch phases - one begins to wonder if he is even human. Here’s a bit that stuck in my head, even though it may seem like obvious advice:

The main thing I notice when people show me their work is they just generally need to work more on their anatomy. And this was certainly true of me early on, at the very beginning of my career–hell it’s still true. Most people just starting don’t have their perspective quite figured out yet, either figured out how to actually do it right, or to fake it.