ESeffinga

I think if there is anything that hurts a piece, it is less about fresh to market, as stale-to-market from being flogged religiously all over every marketplace available. We have all seen the pieces put up for sale on eBay, and CAF, and Heritage, and CLink, etc. That even may have had 7 or 10 owners in the space of 2 or 3 years. Or have been for perpetually for sale for 2 or 3 years. It can create a stigma around a piece, and people wonder what is wrong with it, or just are afraid of feeling stuck with it. The reality is if there is such a piece and someone wants it enough to keep it, there’s no reason they can’t and shouldn’t buy it (assuming it hasn’t been through the Coolines art factory), but that stigma can stay on a piece for a few years. It does eventually fade. Especially as new people come into the market unaware of its past, or past sentiments about it in the collecting community. Time heals all wounds, as they say. So long as it’s not time it’s been available for sale.

Don’t pull your hair out. Think of it as having dodged a bullet. Silver linings.

I was too busy the last couple months to invest the time to read the rules,look through all the work and participate. I need to be in the right headspace for viewing art, and I’ve been doing so many work hours for a project since Nov., I couldn’t force myself to concentrate. So I kept my thoughts to myself while this was live. I was too late to contribute to the Lowery best of as well, so I’ll sit that out. But the one thing I have always wondered with that, and now with equal curiosity for the “Budget Edition”, is how very different would the results be with the names of the artists hidden, and the names of the owners hidden? Im not saying people would judge strictly on the quality of the art, as it’d be impossible to not notice a Killing Joke page is what it is, or a Dark Knight page or whatever. But I have long wondered how many people are voting for favorite characters, artist teams, their friends, etc without ever opening up and genuinely looking at all the entries posted. It takes a loooong time. Especially if you are looking at an artists work for the first time. I’m not familiar with a fair bit of what gets posted each year, and I genuinely find looking at the work interesting. Just a curiosity that I have. I know the biases are there. Just curious how much they are there, and how results could shift if folks truly looked. Not saying it’s a problem, as you can’t make folks look objectively. They have to want to. But it sure is a great way to discover stuff you either don’t normally get into, or have been totally unaware of. And since I’m being so helpful, I think it’d be fun to have a category split between new work, and preexisting work. Maybe even put the decades against each other, or something. Encourage folks that are buying current work, so they aren’t lost in the lower end of voting against the same big trophy pieces of decades past. The list of work to look through wouldn’t get any longer, just more subdivided, like the comic OA market and modern culture are today.

Since this has turned into a “lists we keep” thread, this is one I sort of do. I don’t keep a formal list. What I do keep is any messages via CAF expressing interest in work that is NFS. Which most of the time for me, is all of it. But I do keep those messages. There have been a couple times over the last decade where I did decide to sell a piece that I didn’t have plans to sell years earlier. I’ve reached out to the folks that expressed interest. I don’t think any of them ever contacted me back. I have come to suspect the “let me know if you ever decide to sell” usually means, if you decide later this week. Otherwise, the person I am contacting A year or 4 later has no money at that time, lost interest, no longer collects, no longer uses CAF or has no manners to at least respond and let me know about any of the first three. But I still keep those inquiry emails. No idea why. And I do keep a different kind of formal list for my family, that lists each piece, it’s approximate current value (a range low to high), and a list below that of people and organizations that I trust to help sell the different types of art that my wife does not want to keep. So she has options of what to do with it and isn’t starting out knowing people and places that I would reach out to if I were her. I try to realistically update that list once a year - 18 months. It’s not a spreadsheet On the way that the first few posts mentioned, but I suppose it’s as close to that as I get. And I do it for someone else more than myself.

Where art is concerned, I resemble that description. Appreciate the thought. Other areas of life, less so, but hey that’s life.

The only spread I keep is the grin on my face, when I view the art around the house.

https://sadtrombone.com

Holy Necro-thread, from the golden age indeed.

I don’t have any oil paintings behind glass, and some of then have been hanging on my own walls since 1995. All good so far. Just a quick dust with a light duster every once in a while. And a quick wipe of the bottom sill of the floater frame as necessary on the canvas pieces. The ones on board, I usually put in traditional frames (though I have done silicone on floaters before too) but still no glass on acrylic or oil paintings on canvas or hardboard. Just the frame around the piece. Easy peasy and nothing more than that. Paper and thin paper based boards go behind glass cause a quick dust or wipe won’t keep them clean. Have specifics or pics you wanna ask about? By all means, I’m sure I and others are happy to share what we know and do.

Aunt may still wins...

Coming by, and price are seldom the same thing, from where I sit. Do we see them less, sure. But how much of that is less demand for them, rather than some form of scarcity?

The mindset of the person that buys a $50 print at a frame store and spends $500 on archival custom framing. None of which is money they would ever gt back if they ever outgrow the art they frame in one way or another. I won't specifically call it polishing a turd, or bejeweling a pig, as that casts negative aspersions on the art itself. But there is such a thing as overdoing it. As someone who is super self aware and archival with my art as possible, and who is insanely familiar with all framing, there's things worth doing and things that are overkill. Unless he plans on hanging it in his rugby's practice space, or has kids flinging paint about the house, a simple canvas floater is good enough for most artists, most galleries, and most collectors. I think it'll work for that head sketch just fine. If you sneeze on it. Wipe it off. It's a marker doodle, yeah? There is being cautious and careful with the art, and there is being foolish with money. Sometimes these things cross over pretty heavily. Blastarr should absolutely do whatever he wants, of course.

Is that marker on canvas? Do whatevever strikes your fancy, as far as the framing goes. The more you spend the more you have tied up in a giant headsketch. Glass isn't necessary with paint. Probably not marker over that gessoed canvas either, but if it's marker I'd keep it as far away from any lighting as possible. not just sun, but your interior lights as well. Also the gesso may yellow fairly quickly with time, depending on it's source. Gessoed canvas is generally intended to be covered in paint. Exposing it to light may or may not see it "age" over time. Beyond that, for canvas pieces, I think a canvas floater mount is cleanest. And they can be bought to size for cheap from places like pictureframes.com. I think even DickBlick.com might have some pre-finished ones available. Betting this is a standard pre-made/stretched canvas at that 16" x 20" It'd just come down to personal preference and the depth of the canvas, as to what look you want the frame to have. For example: https://www.pictureframes.com/custom-framing/black-picture-frames?frame_type=355&popular_frame_sizes=1381

Didn't so much skip it as give it short shrift. The OP's question was about Skottie Young. NC101's question was a bit more specific, as regards to appreciating the mark making of comic art. My urging is only to step outside of comic art for a wider view. The world is a big big place. I'm not speaking at all to collector values to him, as frankly that is what this board discusses ad nauseam. I wanted to stretch out a bit was all. NC101 said, a fair bit off topic, but this was the thread he asked in. Is what it is. And as Vodou says in his post, that stuff is super important if you are thinking about money regarding art, and not strictly aesthetics and art understanding. Hence my parting lines about taking the good with the bad. We all gotta find our happy place in there somewhere.

It's a good read, and very informative. Scott did a great job, and I wish more comic fans gave it a proper look. Enjoy!

I'm not 100% sure I know what you are asking for here. If it's about the hobby of comic art collecting, and the variety of ways comic art is created and it's effect on pricing, the thread Blastaar posted is a good place to start. In general, read as much as you can of this board. Take every bit of art advice you read with a grain of salt, and apply it to your own experiences as it makes sense to do so. There are almost as many opinions on any topic in art collecting as there are collectors giving them. If you are talking strictly about digging deeper into art appreciation and understanding the ways of artists create their art (i.e. the forms and effects of mark making, and it's dynamics and composition. Noticing things like the loss of immediacy from a pencil rough, to the stiffening effect that can come from tracing during inking. Or even comparing and contrasting art styles and their pros and cons, who's good at what, etc... there are a number of avenues to explore, but the biggest most general one is look at everything. Old, new, good and bad. Look at it all. Observation is important for any artist. Observation is equally important for any art collector. Some work will be obvious in what sets it apart. Other work will require more careful study. Not everything has to come to you at a glance. Is it just a bowl of oranges? Is there something else happening that needs further consideration? The world of comic art is vast ( V A S T ) but don't stop there. Look at other art. Look at illustration. Look at anything that you have the opportunity to. All throughout history as well. The very best teacher is experience. Drawing yourself is a great way to understand the work of others, BUT that's not what I mean. I mean, you can read all the writing by someone else in the world (especially me) about a visual medium, but it is truly only the direct observation of it that will really yield the most concrete understanding of that work, and how it stacks up against all the other work you've seen. Become an art sponge & filter. Check out CAF if you aren't on there, as it's an amazing resource. Really spend time there. Use it to go back to and look up artists work that you don't normally look at, Make friends with other OA collectors. Get yourself to any gatherings, con events or other opportunities to see original art. Seeing the colored published work is often distracting at best and misleading at worst. Look at the real deal in the flesh. You don't have to own it all to see it all. Look at work you like and at work you don't like. Think about why that is. Look at the corrections. Look at the methods and materials the artists use. Pay attention to the little things. A smudge can be the sign of an amateur, or a great master, depending on how it is used (intelligently and with purpose, vs accidentally). The original work speaks for itself. Or at least it better. There are some books that can help, if you want to read in between visits to every art museum at every city you visit, or Cons you are able to attend. Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud is a great book, done in a simple and easy to follow way. It's more fun than a textbook, using the very medium he is discussing. Gary Martin and Steve Rude's Understanding Inking is a solid book as well, for understanding some of the nuts and bolts of how inking is not just a form of drawing outlines for a pencil piece, but the dynamic changes it can make to a single image. There are countless books on general art composition, theory and philosophy. I like Molly Bang's book How Pictures Work, if you want to get into a real understanding of composition. Beyond that there is so much available out there. Andrew Loomis had some incredibly solid books on drawing, etc. The more you understand these things, the deeper your understanding of what comic artists are doing as illustrators and storytellers, and where they fall short. The more info you absorb, the more you'll know what appeals to you and what doesn't. You may also discover the things that were "good enough" before, don't hold up as well and your appreciation of them may decline. On some level with most comic art, you have to find a balance between knowledge, sophistication and nostalgia, and take the good with the bad. Not everyone in comics is going to be Mazzuuchelli (even Mazzuuchelli in the early days). Sorry for the TL/DR for those who could give a fig about this stuff.

I shouldn't laugh, but I did.

IG was not even in the top 100 in 2016. #32 in 2017. #1 in 2018 (hello movies). Back down to #12 in 2019, if the sites I just read have the correct stats.

Dd you post this so we'd see Infinity Gauntlet in the top 12, or so we'd see that Walking Dead and/or Saga were both 3 times as popular in the same time period? I'm curious to see how popular these same books are in another decade tho. Assuming we make it that long.

Pretty sure Skottie is working with digital thumbnails printed as bluelines and then inked. From what I gather, his digital pencils are generally loose guidelines, and then the piece is drawn in ink. Which is to say if you are looking at older forms of comic art with separate pencils and inkers, you would be used to tight(ish) pencils from one guy, and then an inker that comes along and interprets the first guy's drawing to finish things out. Some take more liberties than others. What Skottie is doing is often giving himself the rough composition as blueline, and then doing his actual drawing over that skeleton. I'm sure some pieces are sketched out a bit tighter than others, but he adds so much character in his work. it'd be dumb for him to draw a bunch of expressions or details twice. And he is also one of those creators whose linework is about spontaneity and attack. You can't fake that by tracing it, and he is brilliant at it in the way that Watterson is. So he waits until the inking stage to really flush the drawing out. I think of it like a blueline thumbnail under the ink drawing. So, it's a bit different than a lot of artists work. Others have been going this way for a while. And I don't mean blueline, I meant skipping tight pencilling. Ashley Wood for instance, has abandoned any penciling, and draws straight with pen and ink on paper in order to capture all his spontaneity, but he also means the pieces that don't look great get trashed. So his "original comic pages used to be made up of a series of panels. THe last few years he's become so good at doing his thing, he is doing whole pages without pencils or piecing them together. That is supremely ballsy and freaking hard.

Otherwise known as I Hate Fairyland.

It also is a humidity and temperature issue. Moisture is in the air all the time. It tends to condense on glass (or plexi), and over a long period of time it can cause different issues. In the case of inked comic work, I'd mostly be worried about ink sticking to the glass when pressed up against it. Or the paper can stick, if a decade of little tiny bits of moisture get in there and condense and dry, condense and dry for years. Not something you can see happen. Doesn't look like a problem until you try to remove it. The surface of the glass can also heat up, which can cause paper to become brittle over time, if it's essentially baking the moisture out of the paper for years and years. Spacing the glass from the piece alleviates these issues. If you are a collector that frames something and take it out of the frame for the next big thing every couple years, chances are nothing would happen. If you are a collector that is going to leave your piece in the frame for the next 2 years, you better think twice about it. Also I don't think it's a super great idea to leave art in mylars unmoved for decades either, though I'm sure most pieces do ok being in storage in closets, books, portfolios or whatever. But if they were out on display in an un-sealed mylar, unmoved for a decade or more, I could see a few of them having similar sticking issues, potentially. Less of the paper warping issues. And of course keeping the work out of the sun, and away from fluorescent or incandescent bulbs has the greatest longevity/archival benefits.

Buy both, regret nothing...

^ This is only if you are evaluating the Marvel superhero work (which I expect many people gravitate to because they love characters more than art and artists). It is worth reiterating Skottie also is involved in his own creator owned work, and they are absolutely not "always variant covers and never the main covers". I still say buying more or less any art as investment is dumb move. Somewhere to park your money that you can enjoy? Absolutely. If you get a return on that money over decades of enjoyment, bonus! But investment only? There's generally better avenues for that.

Watched this one a long time ago. Came up today in a conversation. It is about photographer Gregory Crewdson. I’m posting it here thinking about how so many folks are all about pencil on paper as the only thing that matters in Something like comic art. I think too many “art” collectors think of a photograph as instantaneous, and therefore not involving the creative consideration that drawing does. But folks like McKean show just how much pre-planning and other creative endeavors can be involved in generating an image. Many dislike the collage non-painted work for comics pages and covers. Or look down on folks like Tim Bradstreet for instance. I think this doc might give people an inkling of what kind of work can go into capturing a specific single image. https://youtu.be/bqtyUkGSS14