Storm By The Numbers

I cut my teeth drawing super-heroes, mostly the Legion of Super Heroes from DC and Marvel's X-men. I used to draw Storm pretty much all the time (well, when I wasn't drawing Phoenix) for decades... since 1975. So today, 1.1.11, I wanted to do another Storm drawing, since the last time there was a significant date (8.8.88, to be exact) I drew a sketch of Storm that I really loved and still do to this day. However, over twenty years later, I find that the comics skills have atrophied a bit, even as my skills for drawing other things have improved. What I'm saying is I'm not in love with this drawing. It took about an hour, and I really almost had to work at getting a comicbook look, but also I think I had to find out how I want to draw my own comic book style in the 20teens, because the styles I held in high esteem way back when are, well, 20 years old. What I've noticed is a loss of the strength of line that I often see in older comic book artists - the line weights aren't as precise or careful, the exact things I don't like seeing when I see new work by Neal Adams, Mike Grell or even Paul Smith, all of whom I idolized back in the day. Ah well, guess that's what happens. It's not a bad thing if I find the right way to express myself, I suppose. We'll see. I suppose I can go back into it and refine the 'inks' a bit later.

Happy New Year, on 1.1.11! Here's hoping for beautiful new things to happen for all of us.

Oh and for reference, here's the Storm drawing I did in 1988: