STUDIOSPACE: EXCERPT 2: MIKE MIGNOLA

[MattBrady]

In May, Image Comics will release StudioSpace a 320-page collection from Joel Meadows and Gary Marshall of interviews, photographs and art with unique look at the way that the finest comic artists work, visiting their studios and getting into their mindset.

The massive book also speaks with the artists about their training, their “big break” and how their working methods have changed over the years. Over the course of three days, we’ll be bringing you peeks inside the volume, with today’s subject being Mike Mignola.

The full list of artists profiled includes 1. Brian Bolland 2. Dave Gibbons 3. Tim Bradstreet 4. Howard Chaykin 5. Sean Phillips 6. Duncan Fegredo 7.Joe Kubert 8. Mike Mignola 9. Tim Sale 10. George Pratt 11. Tommy Lee Edwards 12. Adam Hughes 13. Sergio Toppi 14. Walter Simonson 15. Jim Lee 16. Frank Miller 17. Bryan Talbot 18. Alex Ross 19. Steve Dillon 20. Dave Taylor.

Here’s today’s excerpt:

as told to Joel Meadows

I remember an apartment in New York when I was still single, I had my studio and a front room. I bought the furniture for the front room but I never sat in it, I never went into the front room! I’d get up in the morning and go into the studio, I did it then and I pretty much do the same now. If I’m at home then I drift into the studio. It’s were I am, and I’m most comfortable when I’m working by myself. Its not lonely, I really have the best of both worlds. I have my isolation room, my studio, and I’m in here fighting with these shapes all day. But at the same time I have my wife and daughter in the house. I like to work with the television on, it’s a comfortable background noise, it probably harks back to when I was a kid, drawing with the TV on. It’s a comfort. It’s also true that I would probably work faster if I didn’t have the TV on, my editor has suggested it and we had one big fight (laughs). It works for me.

The studio itself is a mixture of the organised and the chaotic, lots of shelves with things on them. As I pull things of the shelves they usually go into giant piles on the floor. I’m a control guy, I need a certain degree of order, but within that order there is a certain chaos. It’s a constant struggle between order and chaos. I’ve just moved to California, and the first thing that I needed to establish was the studio. I needed to get the book shelves up, get the various objects up onto the top of the book cases. I need to have some sense of order, have pictures on the wall. I could just work with cardboard boxes on the floor. I need the stimuli around, even if it is not obviously there. The way I display little toys and statues, or hang paintings on the wall are arranged in a way that I find aesthetically pleasing, otherwise it would drive me crazy. You want this random feel, but I’ll want the Jesus figure to be overlapping the Hellboy figure! There is this constant thing with me, with art and manipulating my work environment of getting shapes to interact in a way I find pleasing.

It is the same with regards to how I work. I think in these massive shapes. For example, if a figure is sitting in a chair then it has to be part of that chair. I can’t draw a guy here, and then the chair wrapped around him, all separated neatly by lines. This is something that has increased as I have got older and moved further in this direction. The idea that everything mixes together to be this big solid shape.

What you see in the work I was doing at art school is all inked with a brush, its soft, kind of rubbery and it didn’t really work for me. But it was developing towards a certain style, it was getting to be really heavy with solid blacks, but the overall effect was mushy and soft. It had the high contrast, but not the high contrast of my work now. It was certainly starting to drift that way though. I was definitely a black and white guy. I thought my style was worked out, but when I started Hellboy it still continued to develop, in a direction more and more influenced by painters. As much as I grew up on a diet of comics and the like, it is painters that continue to drive me crazy and influence me more than anything else.

I look at a lot of art, the illustrators attracted me early on because I could understand what they were doing, making a picture of a pirate, whatever, I got that. But as I have gotten older my influences have become much more impressionistic, those that are more abstract. As a young artist at art school, Van Gogh didn’t necessarily do anything for me, but now those shapes and flat areas of colour, those textures, they drive me crazy. Edward Hopper is the same kind of thing. It is something that was also in Frazetta, those bold, strong shapes. As I look at the piece on my drawing table right now, it is a relatively simple image of Hellboy against an old religious piece of art. But I’m going back into this and breaking it up into little shapes, almost turning it into a mosaic knowing that I’ll be able to say to my colourist ‘Give me all these dots of another colour’. That’s a very impressionist, painterly technique. Currently, this is the way that my brain is working.

I really dislike the whole slick airbrush approach, it just doesn’t gel with my work. If it ever worked! It certainly doesn’t anymore. Finding these ways to add a certain richness to the art by breaking it up into little shapes has all come from looking at these painters.
I would love to work in oils or acrylics again, but it is a time factor. I just don’t have the time to fool around with it, I paint so seldom that when I do I want to use a medium that at least I can understand what it does, and how I can make it do certain things. All my work is in watercolour, which I don’t know how to use (laughs), so I make the best of it. I overwork paintings, there’s probably only one painting in the last few years that I didn’t overwork. But for the most part I beat them to death until the paper won’t take anymore.

When the piece starts to disintegrate is when I guess it is done.

The one thing that I do love about painting, especially in watercolour is that at a certain point it is going to do what it wants to do. I’m not a giant control freak, I like having that big messy palette and just saying, ‘What if some of this colour goes in here?’ Maybe that is more a technique associated with the oil painter, but you know, ‘Let’s stick a green in here, dab a bit into the shadow on the cheek.’ That is how I paint. The beauty of watercolour is that, as much as I control the drawing, laying in the colours and getting the water moving around leads to these wonderful accidents. You can’t get this with pen and ink, and I like accidents. I like a certain primitiveness to the art, I don’t like my work to be really slick.

This is why it is really difficult to have somebody else ink my pencils, because my drawing is very finished and looks very angular and precise, but when I ink my own work I do it really fast. I break up my blacks a certain way, mostly working so fast to try and infuse life into the drawing and a little bit of accident. But the pencil work is very precise, I’ll go back on a line nine or ten times, ‘Is this dot going to be here or here? Two dots here or three?’ It’s an amazingly anal, yet abstract way of working. It is all shape oriented, ’Do I want this curve here or here, do I want this shape smaller or larger?’ It is about trying to manufacture accident.

Here’s an example, say someone wants to draw Batman’s cape, they think of it as a piece of cloth hanging down a man’s back. To me it is an abstract shape, so if I’m drawing Batman moving then the cape has to make some kind of interesting shape. I don’t what that shape is, but either I’m going to get it down really quick as a gesture, perfect, or I’ll spend the next six hours drawing and erasing the shape until I get it right.

If Hellboy is smoking a cigarette, and there’s a puff of smoke coming off, that take me either a second or the rest of the day. I’ll keep drawing, erasing, until I get the shape I like. I’m nuts (laughs). It is a fine arts mentality. I have this drive to discover wonderful shapes, and the simplification of shape. Right now with the piece I’m working on, I’m constantly going back and forwards to the reference to interpret position and scale of these shapes. It’s not as case of, ‘Oh, these are folds, so I’ll copy them the way they are.’

Interpreting in this way feels right to me. Sometimes it works, and you know sometimes it doesn’t, but there is some weird aesthetic that I’m looking for. I only know it when I see it.

[captainzero]

Mike sure has brought us some good stuff.
His story-telling is wonderfully captivating.
I'm a sucker for Lobster Johnson.... how great is that book.!!?!? I hope Mike finds time (I don't know how he'll do it) to give Lobster his own on-going book. I've got my Lobster Johnson Sculpted Magnet..the dark horse Deluxe... so, ---- I'm ready for Mr. Johnson's on-going series.
And, of course, the other books... not least of which is HELLBOY!! What a fight scene in the latest book.
BPRD is "cookin'" right along, too...and next, we travel back in time to BPRD.... Year One!! Mike and John Arcudi's writing and Guy Davis' art make it an "experience" to get through. All I can say is:

Thanks, Mike,.... for sharin' your world.

[SeamusMcClernan]

I disappointed not to see any reference to The Comic Reader (r.i.p.) - which is where I first saw his work
His first published front cover was the Comic Reader #196.

[joelmeadows1]

Of course, TRIPWIRE Annual 2007 is still available to buy from your local Barnes & Noble with a brand new Mike Mignola interview talking about the current Hellboy and a Tim Sale Heroes chat as well as an exclusive Matt Groening Simpsons interview and an Alan Moore chat. As part of the Hellboy coverage, there are pencilled and inked pages from Hellboy Darkness Calls by Duncan Fegredo. Plug over

[prolix]

I quit reading Hellboy when Mike quit drawing it. Are you guys telling me he's drawing again?!?

[pop monkey]

Originally Posted by prolix

I quit reading Hellboy when Mike quit drawing it. Are you guys telling me he's drawing again?!?

Well that's a silly thing to do! He is still writing it, you know?

[RedPhoenix]

Originally Posted by prolix

I quit reading Hellboy when Mike quit drawing it. Are you guys telling me he's drawing again?!?

Dude, you're really missing out. Lobster Johnson is simply awesome; totally pulp and really Mignola. BPRD is awesome! Guy Davis' art is top notch, different from Mignolas' but he excels with these macabre stories.

But hands down you will be blown away with Duncan Fegredo's art in the Darkness Calls! I rank him up there with Mignola. I'm still in awe with what he did on that storyline.

Buy Darkness Calls, you'll love it.

[baxtos]

Well, the concept of this book seems really promising, but I'm wondering if it really delivers. Are there some detailed photos of the actual studios those guys work in and are there some technical descriptions of what equipment they use, what their working habits are. Interviews about their art and careers are great but I'm just wondering if the "studio" part is also fleshed out cause i'd really be interested in that.

[prolix]

RedPhoenix - [Dude, you're really missing out. Lobster Johnson is simply awesome; totally pulp and really Mignola. BPRD is awesome! Guy Davis' art is top notch, different from Mignolas' but he excels with these macabre stories.
But hands down you will be blown away with Duncan Fegredo's art in the Darkness Calls! I rank him up there with Mignola. I'm still in awe with what he did on that storyline.
Buy Darkness Calls, you'll love it.]


Up there with Mignola, eh? With this kind of enthusiasm I'll have to give it a shot!

Now I have to find out everything that's gone before...make a list...>sigh<...

[Hoppy]

I wish that prints of Mignola's covers for the White Wolf editions of Leiber's books would be released.