My neighbor Hazel drew this comic for me and left it in my mailbox a week or so ago. I’ve been staring at it since and loving everything about it.
I’m currently in the process of responding to her in like fashion with The Princess and The Prince II. I know what you’re thinking, she hasn’t left many loose ends here, it’s a very complete, compelling and exciting one-off adventure. But oh, ho ho, not so when dealing with dark wizards who trap princesses in towers….
As you can see I’m taking her character cues and trying to find out how they would work when I draw them. I trust that she gave her best effort when creating something for me, so I want to give my best effort when it comes to my correspondence to her. So I go with my gut first and then very quickly reach out for reference and inspiration from books like this, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table illustrated by Swedish-American illustrator and 1930’s Disney artist Gustaf Tenngren.
This is a wonderful book, and quite rare I believe, published in 1962. I loved flipping through it and getting the tone of an artist who takes the romantic tales of knights, kings, and queens seriously. Tenngren’s mix of realism, abstraction and graphic design are wonderful. This is part of my process but there’s no way of actually knowing just how much of it influences my actual drawing or construction of my comic strip…it doesn’t matter, what matters more I think is the joy received from the gift given by Mr. Tenngren, I can live on that enthusiasm and honesty in art and I know that will affect my final product positively.
I’m also creating a Youtube series about all of this, if you’d like to watch and hear a very long explanation of this same subject, click the image below!
