I am not an artist, nor am I a colorist. If I WERE a colorist, I would be a worse colorist than I would be as an artist.
It's not just a matter of specific skills of art and coloring that I have never possessed, it's also my admitted lack of creative imagination in those two areas!
Oh, I have an almost limitless creative imagination in the area of WRITING! This Blog, my many APA and fanzine writings of yore, and my professional comics work bear testament to that. But, even if I had sufficient skills in the areas of art and coloring, my work would at best rank as pedestrian, as I have scant (all together now) creative imagination to apply to said work.
Art is, of course, a matter of subjective taste. Meaning that while I (and, presumably, most of you) really like things like THIS...
...Or THIS... ...Or THIS...
...I do allow for the possibility, remote as it may be, that there COULD BE some folks who actually like THIS...
...Even if it's only the artist himself, and possibly his editor!
But, when COLORING fails, it's pretty much universal! For instance, take the cover of HAWKMAN #6 (DC Comics, Cover Date: February-March, 1965) and its titanic struggle between Hawkman and a great winged-gorilla.
Hawkman says: "Got to bring my mace UP -- before that massive fist comes crashing DOWN!"
MASSIVE FIST?! WHAT MASSIVE FIST?! Without squint-staring really hard, do you see any massive fist?
Quick aside: It has nothing to do with the quality of the digital image used above. I have the actual comic here beside me as I write this, and the "real thing" looks exactly the same!
It would seem to be a matter of too much dark brown concentrated in what should be a critical area of the illustration!
Let's assume there was insufficient room for artist [The Great] Murphy Anderson to position the gorilla's arm and fist elsewhere on the cover, as the dramatic focus of the piece is the gorilla about to smash Hawkman into a fine Hawk-puree! (Sorry, but my keyboard doesn't allow for the accent mark, and spell-checker isn't offering it either!)
But, perhaps just the slightest bit of gradation in the dark brown might have made a difference, or maybe a better-defined outline of the gorilla's arm and fist to separate it in depth relative to the gorilla's wing! Then again, the coloring techniques of the Silver Age were far more limited than they would be beginning in the 1980s, so I don't have a definitive solution to offer.
But, that's why I’m Not an Artist (...or Colorist), But… I'm still left to ask "Massive fist? WHAT massive fist?!"
Oh, and for a "massive fist" that you actually CAN see clearly, try this on for massive-size!
Oh, THAT massive fist! Got it!
No, actually Superman got it... right in the super-breadbasket!
