Will_K

Re: the Christmas piece

Still not a Schulz expert...

The signature looks off.  In almost every example I've seen, the H never goes into the U.  Schulz wrote SCHULZ with the letters separated, not connected (e.g like -script writing).  I have seen SCHULZ with the letters connected in a sketch that doesn't look like Schulz drew.

Sally looks awkwardly small under the Christmas tree.  The clouds look kind of crappy.

Note, according to Wikipedia, by 1969, Schultz left Sebastopol for Santa Rosa.  Wikipedia says Marcie first appeared in 1971. 

I'm more or less a student of the Gene Park school re: the future of collecting original comic art.  I thought Halperin mentioning his son's opinion that "comics and comic art are going to appeal to his generation more than any other collectible" was an interesting point.  Granted, the reasoning is that comics characters pervade the culture.  And that point has been debated before.  But let's say it'll be a slow burn and there's no way to know their affect on the market 10, 20 years from now.

But it's interesting to compare what people have collected over the last 50 years and how those collections have fared.  I'm talking Barbies, matchbooks, Matchbox, GI Joe, baseball cards, Hummels, antique furniture, high-end fine art, movie posters, Beanie Babies, barber chairs, etc.  Do comic books and comic art have more staying power than these?

I'd be scared as heck trying to apply the "Andy Robbins method" to my collection.  But I'd love to listen to him comment on anything.  Doesn't even have to be related to comics.

Did we really have to wait until the 2nd half to get a "Dark Knight" reference??  Other than that, it was another great podcast.  Thanks, Felix !!

Not an expert either.  But Peppermint Patty's frown in the bottom panel looks all wrong.  Schroeder looks wrong in the bottom panel as well.  As you mention, the line thickness vs paper dimensions is way off.  For something like this, I'd expect the paper to be at least twice the size. 

And, Schulz was a storyteller.  He could definitely tell a story in 2 panels.  There doesn't seem to be any story here.

7 hours ago, delekkerste said:

I would argue that, from a storytelling perspective, no, it does not matter if the art was photo-referenced, unless it is done to an extent where it becomes distracting to the reader (e.g., swiping well-known likenesses of people, or very distinctive poses, composition, etc. from other popular media).  

From an artistic perspective, though, yes, I would argue that it does matter.  I really enjoyed CrossGen's fantasy series "Sojourn" back in the 2000s.  I think the artwork by Greg Land really worked too, for the most part...from a storytelling perspective.  But, the photoreferencing/swipes became more and more obvious over time ("hey, that was the pose from the SI Swimsuit issue!"), to the point where I felt it did become unnecessarily distracting.  ...

Exactly !

7 hours ago, eewwnuk said:

Michelangelo used photo referencing for his art?   

It would be fair to say Michelangelo used models.  And he probably wasn't the first artist to do so.  Search: Gregorio Landini. 

In my CAF Premium member Q&A from 12/25/2008, since those artists had passed on, my Top 5 Black Canary impossible commission list was:
1) Jack Cole
2) Nestor Redondo
3) John Rosenberger
4) Dave Stevens
5) David Wright

And since Nick Cardy's passing, I'll mention a commission I proposed to him.  I think its complexity required more thinking than he'd want to do.  My idea was to have a 1960's style party.  A packed room full of characters he's drawn.  If you've seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, there's a party that you could barely navigate, that's kind of what I was going for. 

7 hours ago, thethedew said:

I've asked about that already.  It seems they'd thought about it but decided against it.  Probably privacy issues.  Not unreasonable.
(But I am curious about who's following me.)

7 hours ago, thethedew said:

I'm following 181, and followed by 55. It would be interesting to be able to ID those who follow you. It might lead me to discover galleries out there I don't already know about.

It would be like knowing the identity of your secret admirer.  I expressed my concern to Bill Cox as well.

BUT on your CAF main gallery page scroll down to the bottom and find the About the Owner block.

Click on the the link :

View [you name here]'s Site Activity on CAF

Among other things which were already public, you (and others) can see who you've recently added to your watched galleries .

I guess CAF's "compromise" to seeing who's watching you is to tell everyone who you recently started watching.

I find that odd.

I follow about 900 galleries.  Around 1/2 of them haven't had an update in over a year.  Of those, a handful of them are definitely worth the wait.

On 7/3/2017 at 10:24 AM, JadeGiant said:

My appreciation of comics is art first and then story  -  I can't read a great story if the art is bad but I can easily do the reverse. 

Well, let's not say "bad".  OP mentioned "isn't all that good" (in hindsight).

I doubt most people are nostalgic for anything that they thought was "bad" at the time. 

Except for certain music from the 1980's.  Maybe.

1 hour ago, Panelfan1 said:

I was actually thinking about this - its that art that we originally loved and are nostalgic for today, is clearly not the best art ( as seen through the lense of someone who has been collecting art for a while and such has a better/stronger? Sense of quality) but we are afraid to admit it.

In some other thread, I theorized that the nostalgia is driven by the story.  Maybe the art wasn't so great (in hindsight).  Maybe there wasn't an awesome splash page.  Maybe it wasn't drawn by one of your top 10 favorite artists.  BUT you looove that story.

Sometimes there's that magic where maybe the story's better because the writer X works well with artist Y.  But there are times when I see what's special to some comic art collectors, I'm just so glad it's nothing that would interest me. 

4 hours ago, The Voord said:

I've forgotten WTF this thread was supposed to be about . . .

Well, that wasn't too hard to admit.

Heritage has their auctions archived.  If you wanted to come up with your own estimates, at least you have that information at your disposal. 

I think others have mentioned how difficult it is to get past results from other online auctions. 

CAF does have some auction info but maybe it's a lot to go through.

It shouldn't be all that hard to admit at all. 

Nostalgia is the main driver in this hobby.  Without naming names, I think a lot of the most "desired" artists aren't particularly good.  And can only assume it's because of nostalgia.  They wouldn't fall into my "top 10" mainly because I didn't read their comics.  So you can either say I'm unbiased or more biased because of that.  Either way, those artists are in many top 10 lists.

On the other hand, if you ignore collecting and nostalgia altogether and you're a kid that's judging a comic book on it's artistic merits.  Maybe you're not a really kid.  You're an art critic.  Do some portfolio reviews at the conventions.

On 5/27/2017 at 7:30 PM, comicwiz said:

The most impressive of the three happened by way of a mutual friend asking me to check out this guys collection. My friend knew nothing about it, and I was basically called up one night to appear at his place. I had no idea what this was going to be about, but as a collector, I always see these types of situations as a PR opportunity with potential to get my foot in the door to buy stuff I collect.

 

I understand why you would've gone to see this collector. 

But (if you can say), why did this collector "out" himself ? 

I would not say all pencils are prelims.

I would not say only inked pieces are not prelims.

The separation of pencils and inks and digital media are blurring all the lines. There are new rules being written.

It's a very strong statement for Malvin to say "the comic was published direct from tight pencils "

But to say "the comic was published direct from tight pencils "...

wait for it...

"that were digitally inked "

in parentheses

weakens the point.

Would I have bought the original piece ? Probably not.

But if I did, would I have gotten it inked ?? Highly unlikely.

This has been called a crime against original art collecting.

Jae Lee is not the collector that owns the piece so he may not care about the value to collectors but I wonder how he would describe what he did. Would he describe the pencils as a prelim?

I'll continue to read but I don't think I can "contribute" anything more to this discussion.

I think you misunderstood what happened. The comic was published direct form tight pencils (that were digitally inked by Jae Lee for publication). Mike bought the pencils, then had Jae Lee physically inked it forever. It was not a "prelim" but rather the only original art to the published page.

 

Malvin

As far as I'm concerned, the pencils are prelims. The digital art was published directly, not the pencils.

Does it matter how tight the pencils were? What if they were loose pencils? At the most, I might say these pencils are the "original pencils". I guess that's why it's sacrilegious.

There's plenty of discussion about how the process of getting the art to the printers is changing the hobby. This is another point of discussion.

For the OP, I'm curious, what exactly did you ask Jae Lee to do?? The inked prelim (that's what I'll call it) looks very, very close to the published piece. Was that what you asked Jae Lee to do? I imagine he just lightboxed the published piece.

After 3 years, I'm surprised that Jae Lee would even want to revisit a piece and essentially "copy" the published piece. If he was of the mind of "re-imagining" the page and ink over the pencils without the intention of copying, that might have been more interesting.

I'm also wondering how people would compare this to Gerhard working on comiconxion's pieces. Noone seems to be upset if Gerhard works on other artist's convention sketches. So if Gerhard (instead of Jae Lee) went over Jae Lee's pencils, would the reaction be different ? Are prelims more sacred than convention sketches ? A lot of artists didn't even save their prelims, at least not the bulk of their prelims.

Brunner.

 

A professional inker friend who works for DC sells his artwork, and people always ask him if it's digital pencils, blueline pencils and/or original pencils.

 

He has a mixture of everything in his portfolios for sale. He retorts, what do you think? and can you tell the difference? To which nobody can.

If noone can tell the difference, will your inker friend say what pieces are what ? After a while, maybe even he can't tell or remember.

Now, suppose someone can't tell the difference and buys a piece from your inker friend. And maybe the inked piece changes hands a couple times. Later on, a separate piece with the "original" pencils appears. What should the owner of the inked piece be thinking?

Who knows, the "original" may be falsely labelled as a prelim. Or alternate version, there are a good number of postings doubting whether art is unpublished or alternate versions of published pieces or just fakes. Unfortunately, there's no way to catalog every piece of paper that passes through an artists hands. Or document an artist's process to tell what they did on any credited work.

It's not a matter of the "scarlet letter". It should be about knowing what you are buying and whether or not you think it is worth the asking price.

- if you've ever seen the original pencils vs the finished inked work on certain pieces, or if you notice you mainly like a certain artist when inked by one artist vs another (Kirby pencils w/ Sinnott or Stone VS Coletta or Royer inks) - -

For certain pieces, I think some people might prefer Kirby's pencils vs inked bluelines of Kirby's pencils.

I'm pretty sure that "letter of authenticity" is a complete fabrication. I agree that no reputable company would return a form without a legible name or contact details on it somewhere. Hopefully no one will be fooled by this.

At the very least, it should be printed on letterhead.

I know it's better to be proactive and discuss and ask questions before buying a piece. And caveat emptor, etc. But with all the comments about how badly this and other pieces appear not to be "original", does anyone think we could be actually helping these sellers ?

Just looking briefly...

The shading on Supe's right hand is different. The piece on CAF has the hand shaded up to the sleeve. Just partial shading on the ebay piece.

Also the right thigh. The piece on CAF has longer stokes towards the knee than on the ebay piece.

The ebay piece is definitely "inspired" by the piece on CAF.

Great idea, Lee !!!

Comment: The typed question/answer format has it pluses and minuses. On the plus side, it keeps things brief. On the minus side, there's no give & take which could lead to interesting tangents, but we can't miss what isn't there.

Either way, I enjoyed the read. Also, any time I've seen Mitch post something on this board, he's brief and to the point.

Mitch is the only art dealer that I had regular dealings with. My first Cardy cover (also my first Cardy piece) came from him. It was in a catalog but I actually bought it at a show. Quite a few of my favorite Cardy pieces came by way of Mitch. Man, I sent Mitch so many checks, I wouldn't have to look up his address, even now, it's burned into my brain.

I still have all of Mitch's Graphic Collectible catalogs since I began receiving them.

Helpful hint, I unfolded and flattened the smaller catalogs so they are 8 1/2 x 11. They're less bulky. Then you can save them along with the large, true 8 1/2 x 11 catalogs.

It appears that most of the forgeries we see are one-and-done drawings. I can't recall seeing a forged "printed" cover, splash, or panel page, with all of the markings you'd expect from such a thing (DC stamp on the back, company art board, production notes along the border, etc). Have you?

I'm not a lawyer but here's a conspiracy theory... is it possible that "We Present this art in the manner of the artist" gives the seller an out if anyone questions whether or not the art was drawn BY Jack Kirby ??

Could the seller say... Well, we didn't say it was drawn BY Jack Kirby, we just said it was SIGNED "Jack Kirby".

Conversely if someone drew something in Kirby's style but the art is SIGNED "Charles M Schulz". Noone could realistically claim the art is drawn in the manner of Charles M Schulz

How can you go wrong? It comes with a guranty!

Well, in very small red print it does say:

"To Fallow Ebay Rules and Regulation We Present this art in the manner of the artist"

See:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-art.html

You got a fanboy, dude!

I'd say I'm be the opposite of a fanboy. And I think the podcast generally advocates against "fanboy-ism". I think it suggests being a little more deliberate about how you spend $$$ on this hobby.

Listening to the Gene Park (guest starring Andy Robbins) podcast for the 3rd time (so far) today.