I have never been a fan of comic strips. My
brother has always loved them and cut and saved them from just about every
Sunday’s newspaper since he started to read. So this assignment, at first,
seemed to be a little challenging off the bat.
For our second post we needed to pick a black and
white comic and discuss line and shadow techniques. I chose one from the
Peanuts.
The first thing I notice when I look at the comic are
all the textural lines. Due to the lines in Patty's hair you get the appearance
of strands. The lines also show the lines or stripes on her shirt. At the
bottom of her shoes the lines create the textured of the soles. Even the grass
has a little bit of texture. Although it is just a few scribble lines and
doesn't necessarily look like grass, we can recognize it as grass due
to where is sits in the picture and the precise way it is drawn.
The eye lines are distinct in this
comic. In the first square we can see Patty and Snoopy are looking at
one another because they are drawn from a side view and we are only able to see
one eye on each character. In the second block both characters are looking out
at the viewer. We see both pairs of eyes and have a frontal view of their
faces. Snoopy's eyes are closed in the third block. Patty stays the same after
the first block, but the size of her eyes do change slightly to suggest
different emotions. In the third square they are the biggest because
she is surprised by Snoopy's kiss.
The contour lines are the easiest lines to see. They are what give each
character their shape. It allows us to differentiate Patty's
hair from her face, her cloths from her body, and gives her a specific
look. The same goes with Snoopy.
There
is no tonal rang in this comic in my opinion. It looks like it was all drawn
with the same kind of “pen” or whatever it was crafted out of. There is no
shadowing or difference between blacks. The comic and all the lines it is
composed of are all dark without change in tone.
