Jun 19
Charles Schulz always hand lettered all of his comics. He never used assistants the way some others did, ie. Garfield and Doonesbury. He said that he needed to letter his own strips because he didn’t know what the copy would be until the last minute. Changes always happen while you’re drawing a strip, like in this case when I decided to change the panel layout. The text I had wouldn’t read well in the layout I had so I joined the two middle panels and adjusted the drawing instead. You can still see the construction lines for the old layout (orange arrow).
Here’s the final strip.
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“Peckinpaw Descending A Staircase” by Leroy Brown.
Acrylic Painting of Peckinpaw Descending a Staircase. Painted in honor of Marcel Duchamp for the Mocca Fest in New York City held at the famous Armory, where Duchamp first showed his ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’ in 1913!
Duchamp’s painting changed modern art forever!
You can buy a print of this at the ICECUBES store on Zazzle!
Just some ‘cool’ art for your Friday enjoyment! 
When I’m planning out a drawing, sometimes I need to make some real quick sketches to work out simple things like a hand position. In this case I wanted to try out some different hand positions so that the pen he is holding didn’t cut across his face and disrupt the drawing. So I moved it around. You can see the published comic strip here.
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Here I was trying to figure out how to get Peckinpaw to cross his legs and look natural… not as easy as you would think! Tip: the shin and knee are foreshortened!
My Car’s By Apollo.
I Played With My Toy’s. The Toy Was A Car.
My Toy Go’s Fast And Fast And Fast And Fast.
When I’m planning out my strips I try to draw the characters in different poses to see which ones work best. It’s a good idea to try things out before drawing the strip and to experiment. Often times I come up with unusual results and that goes into the strip. The funnier the better!
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I like how these pencils look. Sometimes the pencils look better than the finished ink job. I hate when that happens! Oh well, you decide.
Notice how I always extend the drawing beyond the panel in order to get a balanced feeling. You can click on the image to get a better look.
The finished comic strip is here.
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It’s all in the gesture! That’s where you get the energy and ‘funny’ into your drawings. So I always spend time practicing each drawing on a sketch pad by drawing big circles and blobs for the heads and bodies of my characters. This helps me ‘anchor’ them into place and make them feel real. Be sure to always get a good under-drawing happening before committing to the final. No amount of style can make up for a poorly balanced drawing. ICECUBES
So get crazy and start making ‘gestural drawings’!
When drawing on the outer edge of your panel, it’s important to extend the drawing as if you were drawing the whole character. Even if parts will get cut off it is a good idea to draw them to get a feeling for where things are supposed to fall. For example in this drawing, Peckinpaw is off to the side and his shoulder is mostly cut off even though I drew the shoulder. Without the shoulder I wouldn’t know where to put his arms and hands. Also note that his left arm is drawn even though I won’t see it because of the book in front of it. That way I know exactly where to put his fingers.
I call this ‘backdrawing’ or drawing in the round.
click for larger image
Here is a picture of my collection of metal drawing nibs. I have gathered these throughout the years and although I only use a very specific type for drawing and lettering, I like keeping them. The ones I use on the strip are in the little plastic box in the foreground. The techniques I use to draw are very old fashioned to some. Although I do use a tablet for doing commercial work, the plastic ’sliding’ feeling of drawing on a tablet won’t work for the strip. I like the feel of drawing on paper and inking with nibs.
