The False Dichotomies of Comics
Common dichotomies that are, at best, limiting to an artist and, at worst, flat out wrong.
Studies
Kandinsky on comics
I just read through Wassily’s Kandinsky’s book on art theory, Point and Line to Plane (I got this from the Guggenheim online). As the title indicates, in the text Kandinsky meditates on the elements of ...
Panel: top and bottom
Rudolf Arnheim states that in an artistic space, “dynamics [vary] with direction” (30). Or to put it another way, location in a comics panel implies meaning. In the Famous Artists Cartoon Course Lesson 11, the ...
Panel: left to right
The idea that comics have greater clarity when composed with the reading direction in mind tends to be widely understood. Almost all books on comics creation mention this. For instance, addressing English readers, Robyn Chapman ...
Panel: tangents
As I mentioned, I’ve been looking through the old Famous Artists Cartoon Course. Lesson 11 is all about panels and has a lot of solid advice. One thing that is mentioned in that lesson is ...
A Serious Consideration of a Comic Definition
Comics has always had a problem with language. Just take the grammar of the name. Is it singular or plural? I would think that if we use comics as a collective noun then it would ...
Panels: shape, context, and content
Does the shape of a panel carry inherent meaning? A square panel seems to imply stability. Its four equal sides create a sense equilibrium. Rectangular panels imply movement, horizontal for wide panels, vertical for tall ...