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Looks like the next round of HA and CLINK auctions should have some good stuff

Started by batman_fan,

326 posts in this topic

vodou

vodou

Posted
Posted
...and a New Mutants cover.

Formerly mine. Hated to let it go, one of my favorite Bill S. covers of the series, but the fading was impossible to ignore (check the blacks, almost gone). Was getting noticeably worse, even stored in a dark flat file! Looks about the same as I remember it so may be stable now?

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Unca Ben

Unca Ben

Posted
Posted
...and a New Mutants cover.

Formerly mine. Hated to let it go, one of my favorite Bill S. covers of the series, but the fading was impossible to ignore (check the blacks, almost gone). Was getting noticeably worse, even stored in a dark flat file! Looks about the same as I remember it so may be stable now?

 

This brings up a question.

Will it become acceptable to restore OA where the inks have faded?

 

There's no small number of pieces that are completely or partially done in marker and the fading can be severe.

 

Yeah, it's bad in one respect by covering up the work by the original artist or inker, but eventually these images might be barely visible.

It would be great if the original inker were able to be commissioned to fix the art but in a lot of cases that isn't possible.

 

Anybody see this happening in the future, or has this already been done?

 

 

 

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vodou

vodou

Posted
Posted
...and a New Mutants cover.

Formerly mine. Hated to let it go, one of my favorite Bill S. covers of the series, but the fading was impossible to ignore (check the blacks, almost gone). Was getting noticeably worse, even stored in a dark flat file! Looks about the same as I remember it so may be stable now?

 

This brings up a question.

Will it become acceptable to restore OA where the inks have faded?

 

There's no small number of pieces that are completely or partially done in marker and the fading can be severe.

 

Yeah, it's bad in one respect by covering up the work by the original artist or inker, but eventually these images might be barely visible.

It would be great if the original inker were able to be commissioned to fix the art but in a lot of cases that isn't possible.

 

Anybody see this happening in the future, or has this already been done?

 

I started discussions with Bill about getting NM27 'restored' by him and it was going to be very expensive relative to market value then. However my bigger concern, in light of how he was handling take home commissions (at the time), was I may never see the piece again. And be out the additional money too. Maybe his reputation has improved since then (I don't keep up) but if I still had this, as long as he's alive and active I'd only want his hands retouching this or sit on it as is. And there's still the big What If? of how the returned piece would come out? These things don't always work out. And price. Probably a lot more today. But if this gets $10-15k at auction, maybe it's worth the additional k's to 'fix' it? I'd still be torn in 2015 and probably default to do-nothing.

 

Answering your question, restorations by unaffiliated hands are being done all over the place. Some are better than others, some stabilize deteriorating pieces while others are purely to juice return on investment. Just like in comics (maybe the same volume players even?) Read the condition reports on carefully on expensive items and know there are serious omissions being made (intentionally or not)...regularly.

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Zaddick

Zaddick

Posted
Posted

Restoration on comic is done quite more then you know, the problem is when it's done it must "MUST" be disclosed, and that it is not.

 

When an auction house sells a work many times they are not told by the consigner that work was done, this has to change.

 

As time marches on restoration will be done more to preserve the works for further generations, we have to know what was done, how it was done and who did it.

 

I personally have no problem with tape, rubber cement and stains being conservational removed. In fact I applaud the auction as this is artwork. If the Louvre and the Smithsonian do it, why is it comic art should not.

 

Zaddick

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Kevn

Kevn

Posted
Posted
Restoration on comic is done quite more then you know, the problem is when it's done it must "MUST" be disclosed, and that it is not.

 

When an auction house sells a work many times they are not told by the consigner that work was done, this has to change.

 

As time marches on restoration will be done more to preserve the works for further generations, we have to know what was done, how it was done and who did it.

 

I personally have no problem with tape, rubber cement and stains being conservational removed. In fact I applaud the auction as this is artwork. If the Louvre and the Smithsonian do it, why is it comic art should not.

 

Zaddick

I completely agree. Things like pressure-sensitive tape and rubber cement are acidic and over time will stain and destroy this amazing art, and I'm all for competent professionals using conservative, tested measures to treat those issues. Same with tears, folds, foxing, and moisture damage.

 

Reinking raises an interesting issue. I tried to avoid the whole problem when I was actively buying OA years ago by simply never buying published pages that had been inked with markers. I knew they would fade rapidly and unevenly, and I hate that look. That said, I see both sides of the re-ink question on collectible pages that are fading or have badly faded. For me I'd personally place very little value on a page that is so faded that it couldn't be enjoyed, and no longer represents the original artist's work. On balance, I'd probably be OK with a professionally re-inked page. I think it's little different that a professional restoring lost pigment to a painting.

 

That said, the question for me becomes who does the re-inking? If the original artist is alive, that's the natural choice. But what if their skills have eroded? What if their style has changed? What if they were never any good at inking with india ink? In all those cases, I think I'd be OK with a really skilled professional inker doing a careful re-ink job. I realize in a sense it's no longer the exact same art as published, but after extensive fading, it's not the same art either.

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drdroom

drdroom

Posted
Posted
Restoration on comic is done quite more then you know, the problem is when it's done it must "MUST" be disclosed, and that it is not.

 

When an auction house sells a work many times they are not told by the consigner that work was done, this has to change.

 

As time marches on restoration will be done more to preserve the works for further generations, we have to know what was done, how it was done and who did it.

 

I personally have no problem with tape, rubber cement and stains being conservational removed. In fact I applaud the auction as this is artwork. If the Louvre and the Smithsonian do it, why is it comic art should not.

 

Zaddick

I completely agree. Things like pressure-sensitive tape and rubber cement are acidic and over time will stain and destroy this amazing art, and I'm all for competent professionals using conservative, tested measures to treat those issues. Same with tears, folds, foxing, and moisture damage.

 

Reinking raises an interesting issue. I tried to avoid the whole problem when I was actively buying OA years ago by simply never buying published pages that had been inked with markers. I knew they would fade rapidly and unevenly, and I hate that look. That said, I see both sides of the re-ink question on collectible pages that are fading or have badly faded. For me I'd personally place very little value on a page that is so faded that it couldn't be enjoyed, and no longer represents the original artist's work. On balance, I'd probably be OK with a professionally re-inked page. I think it's little different that a professional restoring lost pigment to a painting.

 

That said, the question for me becomes who does the re-inking? If the original artist is alive, that's the natural choice. But what if their skills have eroded? What if their style has changed? What if they were never any good at inking with india ink? In all those cases, I think I'd be OK with a really skilled professional inker doing a careful re-ink job. I realize in a sense it's no longer the exact same art as published, but after extensive fading, it's not the same art either.

 

I agree. What worries me is that perfect re-inking hardly seems possible. Say you have a Jack Davis marker drawing, badly faded, to be re-inked exactly how Davis drew it, but with a different tool. To recreate the specific line forms that Davis threw down with speed and confidence and even carelessness (because he was that good) the re-inker must work with painstaking care. As any artist can tell you, slow lines look different from fast lines, marker lines look different from ink pen lines look different from brush lines.

 

I've had a piece restored by Gordon G. Christman where small portions of the original art had been torn off the surface by tape. He did a superb job, but it was many hours to repair about 1 square inch of drawing.

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Kevn

Kevn

Posted
Posted

That's all true, but Jack Davis is an extreme example. A tremendous amount of the appeal and value in a Davis piece is in the exuberant and characteristic line work, usually done with a minimum of underdrawing. A lot of recent comic book art was penciled in the usual way, and then inked with markers to look pretty much like a traditionally inked page. They can be re-inked by a competent professional inker about as quickly as that inker could do a fresh pencil page. The new inking definitely won't be exact, but neither would it be if the original inker went back over it, even if they went back over it with the same kinds of markers.

 

I think there are some marker inked pages where it would be very hard to distinguish between the original version and the re-inked version. And I think that's because some of the guys who used markers didn't do it so much for a particular look (though some did), but because they wanted to control the inking, and they weren't very good with a Windsor Newton Sable brush or a crow quill nib. Get a skilled, experienced inker who knows the traditional techniques, and I think you would get fantastic results. Frankly, marker inked pages always look fuzzy to me.

 

I know a re-inked page will never be 'pure' and for some that might diminish the value, but it would be something that would look good for the next century, instead of some faded shadow of itself that has to be stored in a cold dark drawer. Anyway, that's my bias, but I'm fortunately not faced with making that decision for any of my collection.

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Mephisto

Mephisto

Posted
Posted
...and a New Mutants cover.

Formerly mine. Hated to let it go, one of my favorite Bill S. covers of the series, but the fading was impossible to ignore (check the blacks, almost gone). Was getting noticeably worse, even stored in a dark flat file! Looks about the same as I remember it so may be stable now?

 

This brings up a question.

Will it become acceptable to restore OA where the inks have faded?

 

There's no small number of pieces that are completely or partially done in marker and the fading can be severe.

 

Yeah, it's bad in one respect by covering up the work by the original artist or inker, but eventually these images might be barely visible.

It would be great if the original inker were able to be commissioned to fix the art but in a lot of cases that isn't possible.

 

Anybody see this happening in the future, or has this already been done?

 

 

 

That cover is a lot more than faded inks considering it's a painted cover. It's not surprising Bill would ask a lot to bring the colors back. I'm not really sure hat happened with the blacks as some are faded and others not so much. I don't think those blacks were done with marker.

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Koa

Koa

Posted
Posted
Restoration on comic is done quite more then you know, the problem is when it's done it must "MUST" be disclosed, and that it is not.

 

When an auction house sells a work many times they are not told by the consigner that work was done, this has to change

 

Zaddick

 

Speaking of restoration, does anyone know if this mcfarlane page in the next comiclink auction was restored? There seems to be lots of brown faded marker on that page around nice solid blacks. Can't tell if Todd just laid down outlines in marker then tightened the drawn up with india ink on a final pass or if portions of the page was re-inke but after seeing a few brown toned Mcfarlane pages recently it makes me wonder

 

 

http://www.comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?back=%2Fauctions%2Fpreview.asp%3Fcode%3D2015may%26itemtype%3D1%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26pg%3D4%23Item_1057457&id=1057457

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J.Sid

J.Sid

Posted
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Looks like his standard methods to me. Many of his pages were ink with marker details added.

 

If it had been restored, it would be unlikely that they would only restore portions of the page, right? They would have done the whole thing.

 

 

Restoration on comic is done quite more then you know, the problem is when it's done it must "MUST" be disclosed, and that it is not.

 

When an auction house sells a work many times they are not told by the consigner that work was done, this has to change

 

Zaddick

 

Speaking of restoration, does anyone know if this mcfarlane page in the next comiclink auction was restored? There seems to be lots of brown faded marker on that page around nice solid blacks. Can't tell if Todd just laid down outlines in marker then tightened the drawn up with india ink on a final pass or if portions of the page was re-inke but after seeing a few brown toned Mcfarlane pages recently it makes me wonder

 

 

http://www.comiclink.com/auctions/item.asp?back=%2Fauctions%2Fpreview.asp%3Fcode%3D2015may%26itemtype%3D1%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26pg%3D4%23Item_1057457&id=1057457

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