Picture by Robert Adams.

“Le placard rouge” by Pierre Bonnard (1939)

I recently told a friend of my interest in telling stories with pictures and he recommended Cartooning, by Ivan Brunetti. This slim volume is a written version of a class Brunetti teaches on the cartoon format (he doesn’t care for the terms graphic novel and I don’t blame him). It is broken down into a 15-week course. There is no point in cheating or cutting corners. Brunetti insists that the reader, or student, follow each assignment. If they do, they’ll arrive at a place where they’ve acquired some fundamentals.

Dig this, from Brunetti’s introduction:

Most Italian dishes are made up of a few simple but robust ingredients, the integrity of which should never be compromised. It is a straightforward, earthy, spontaneous, unpretentious, improvisatory, and adaptable cuisine, where flavor is paramount: not novelty, not fashion, not cleverness, and not prettiness. If it tastes good, it will perforce also look good (note that the inverse is also true). It is a cuisine entirely based on a relative few, but solid and time-tested, principles. The techniques are not complicated, just hard; mastering them really takes only time, care, and practice. Originality, as Marcella Hazan instructs, is not something to strain for: “It ought never to be a goal, but it can be a consequence of your intuitions.” One plans a meal around what is available and what is most fresh, usually a vegetable, allowing this ingredient to suggest each course.

…Once you know the basic principles, what you are “going for,” you can add your own personal touch. The most important thing is the potential misstep at the beginning that can ruin the entire dish: don’t burn the garlic. If you do, it will not matter what fancy or expensive ingredient you add to try to cover it up; it will still taste bad. Thus, what I hope, in essence, is that by the end of the book you will learn not to “burn the garlic” and to create art based on sound principles.

[Picture by Will Eisner]

Paintings by John Register. 

Queen.

Mon oncle. 

Cornell.

Painting by Bradley Hankey.

Kirby. 

Picture by Jason Levesque. 

Kline.

Caravaggio. 

Herge.

“Woman at a Window” by Edgar Degas (1872)

Picture by Vittorio Giardino.

Drawing by Giorgio Morandi.

Pratt. 

Via Royalboiler here are 19 tips for comic artists from Moebius. 

“A demi déshabillée, devant la glace” By Pierre Bonnard (1905)

“Interior of the Painter’s House, rue Carcel” By Paul Gauguin (1881)