Quotes & Sayings About Drawing Comics

The medium of comics is not necessarily about "good drawing"--"It's just an accident when it makes a nice drawing," Spiegelman explained to a curator at the MoMA--but rather about what Spiegelman calls picture-writing and Satrapies calls narrative drawing: how one person constructs a narrative that moves forward in time through both words and images. — Hillary Chute

When I was there at Marvel, everybody thought if you could draw well and you could do sensational panels, that you were going to be a success. The truth is that no matter how good or bad you are as a draftsman, if you can't tell a story, you don't last in comics ... About halfway through my stay at Marvel, I realized I was being paid to tell a story, not do a drawing. That's why my stuff is always rather simple and uncomplicated compared to a lot of guys. — John Romita, Sr.

After 'Blankets,' I was sick of drawing myself and doing this autobiographical, mundane, Midwestern sort of comics. I wanted to create something bigger than myself and outside myself. — Craig Thompson

One funny image can sometimes save an otherwise mediocre strip. At least that's what I tell myself so I don't feel quite as crappy when I've just wasted four hours drawing and coloring a Sunday strip. — Stephan Pastis

I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I'm too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day! — Jeff Lemire

When you look at a photo or realistic drawing of a face, you see it as the face of another . But when you enter the world of the cartoon , you see yourself. — Scott McCloud

I think if you want to do a thing properly you have to take a lot of care. I've always found it's easier to draw comics if you know clearly in your head what you're drawing, rather than if you try and make it up as you go along. — Dave Gibbons

I quit comics because I got completely sick of it. I was drawing comics all the time and didn't have the time or energy to do anything else. That got to me in the end. — Julie Doucet

There is a rage inside me that I mitigate with my constant drawing. — David B.

I was very influenced by comics. The drawing style, definitely, I was interested in. My style of drawing is largely a comic style, but it's also much more obvious than comics. — Raymond Pettibon

When I was a school kid I used to read lots of comics. This started me on drawing, I would make my own comics about my teddy bear whose name happened to be Ted. — Marcel Dzama

I wouldn't want to be defined so much by comics or cartoons. My work is more narrative than that. If you take your basic cartoon, there's always a punchline or a joke at the end. My drawings don't depend on that so much. — Raymond Pettibon

I saw a lot of lousy movies and watched a ton of crappy television and read a bunch of utterly forgettable books and comics and listened to hours of junk music as a kid. And I'm still drawing profitably in my own art on some of the tawdry treasure I stored up in those years. — Michael Chabon

It always amazes me that Japanese comics have, like, 200 pages. How do they do that? They're fat books; it's a whole different kind of comic that's very close to their films. So I'm drawing from that history and bringing it here - bringing it to Katana. — Ann Nocenti

I love those dark moments in Peanuts. I love that they're in there, that Charles Schulz put the sad lonely bits of himself into the comic. I love the silliness too, the dancing Snoopy strips. The little boy Rerun drawing "basement" comics about Tarzan fighting Daffy Duck in a helicopter. Those are the bits that keep me reading. The funny parts! The fun parts. The silly bits that don't make any sense. And when I get to the sad lonely Peppermint Patty standing in a field wondering why nobody shook hands and said "good game," well, it works because that's not all she was. I try to think that way about everything. That's the kind of person I want to be. — Joey Comeau

The method of producing comics in Japan is very hectic, but it's also rewarding because it's possible to do both the story and art all by yourself. In this way, it's possibly to bring out one's individuality. If this idea appeals to you, I call on you to try drawing your own manga. — Akira Toriyama

I think the best thing I learned from drawing comics is that it's a great exercise in concision. — Patrice Leconte

If I can avoid doing freelance work, I prefer to. Not just because it takes me away from drawing comics, but also because it's just annoying having to deal with art editors, and having to read people's articles or books or whatever. — Chester Brown

I'm still awaiting the idea of drawing comics for a living being a reality. I feel like I've been dodging work for 20 years, and at some point, I'll have to get a real job. — Adam Hughes

When you're drawing comics, you get very involved in how the story is going to develop and you spend more time daydreaming on that particular subject. — Sergio Aragones

The reason I love comics is that they DON'T move, and there is NO sound. As a creator I have to evoke those elements in the drawings and writing, and the reader has to create those elements in their own minds. — Dave McKean

I ended up reading comics and just started drawing at a very young age. By high school, I was putting together longer stories. In college, I started doing strips for the newspaper and doing mini-comics. It sort of grew in scope and scale over time. — Tim Fish

Today, although as a whole, the industry is still male-dominated, more women are drawing comics than ever before, and there are more venues for them to see their work in print. In the 1950s, when the comic industry hit an all-time low, there was no place for women to go. Today, because of graphic novels, there's no place for aspiring women cartoonists to go but forward. — Trina Robbins

Oh yes, I'm at my happiest when I have a good idea and I'm drawing it well, and it comes out well and somebody laughs at it. — Charles M. Schulz

The magic of comics is that there are three people involved in any comic: There is whoever is writing it, and whoever is drawing it, and then there's whoever is reading it, because the really important things in comics are occurring in the panel gutters, they're occurring between panels as the person reading the comics is moving you through, is creating a film in their heads. — Neil Gaiman

Comics are so full of amazing work. And I can't look at a drawing of a woman without thinking of, for instance, Wallace Wood and his amazing way of capturing beauty. — Frank Miller

When I and the other young artists were working in comics, our work carried with it a particularly American slant. After all, we were Americans drawing and writing about things that touched us. As it turned out, the early work was, you might say, a comic book version of Jazz. — Joe Simon

There's a ton of stuff in mythology and folklore that is loaded with wonderful creatures that I haven't drawn yet, but that's kind of my retirement plan. Theoretically, I won't be doing comics any longer, and I'll just be drawing and painting whatever the hell I want. Most of that will be monsters. — Mike Mignola

I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid. — Jonathan Lethem

With comics, you've got to develop some kind of shorthand. You can't make every drawing look like a detailed etching. The average reader actually doesn't want all that detail; it interferes with the flow of the reading process. — Robert Crumb

I was always most interested in drawing - most of my childhood drawings are black-and-white line work. And when I kind of abandoned comics, through college and art school, I was doing a lot of painting. But once I started doing comics again, everything else just fell by the wayside. — Jeffrey Brown

I became a writer through drawing first and then a comic book obsession - Marvel Comics, in particular. I invented a world of superheroes starting in third grade with my classmate, Wai-Kwan Wong. In a classroom of forty kids, let's just say there was a lot of undirected time. But this was good because I was a dreamy boy. — Adam Ross

I've always loved pinup art, and I've always enjoyed drawing women. I think it was a conscious decision that has resulted in me getting almost exclusive work on comics where the main character is female. — Adam Hughes

We were always drawing comics as kids. My brother Charles made me draw comics. I was very much under his domination. He was actually a much stronger artistic visionary than I was. — Robert Crumb

It wasn't until I discovered comics that I actually began to approach drawing as a possible career. — Scott McCloud

From my personal taste, it needed more of a visual style. It's so hard when you're adapting something that's so visually scrumptious like Mike Oeming's drawings. They're so unique to comics, but they're a voice. — Brian Michael Bendis

I started drawing comics, and at first I was very influenced by the whole pop art movement, you know, Batman was on TV and all that pop art stuff? But then my next influence was in 1966, or maybe it was '65, I don't know. Somebody showed me a copy of the "East Village Other", which was an underground newspaper.And ... it had comics in it! And they weren't superhero comics. — Trina Robbins

Comics is different than writing because when you draw something you are trying to visualize it and you are trying to put yourself in that space. And when you're drawing something, all sorts of associations come up in my mind that I never would have thought of otherwise. — Chris Ware

The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life. — Ray Romano

What makes it worth it though, is I love drawing. I LOVE IT. I love making comics. I love starting a new page and buying new paper, ink and brushes. I love telling stories! I love the people I work with, I love the people I meet. I love thinking about the syntax and language of comics. I love esoteric discussions about the comic book industry. I love the opportunities I've had in life because of comics. The second I stop loving it I will find something else to do.
Comics are hard work. Comics are relentless. Comics will break your heart. Comics are monetarily unsatisfying. Comics don't offer much in terms of fortune and glory, but comics will give you complete freedom to tell the stories you want to tell, in ways unlike any other medium. Comics will pick you up after it knocks you down. Comics will dust you off and tell you it loves you. And you will look into it's eyes and know it's true, that you love comics back. — Becky Cloonan