Comics and Class with Ron Wagner

For the past few weeks I have been taking a class from comic book artist Ron Wagner in Des Moines.  It has been a really fun experience, and already I think I have learned a lot from him.  I still have no idea what I'm doing overall, but I enjoy drawing and this has been something I've wanted to do for a long time, but never had the opportunity until now.

My history with comics:
I've never been one to run out to the comic book store every Wednesday to get the latest issue of Green Lantern, or whatever is cool right now :), but I have volumes of comics and graphic novels that I have collected since college.  These are things that I just thought looked "cool" because if something isn't visually stimulating, I'll have a hard time getting into it.  I've really been drawn towards things with lots of action and color (not a big fan of just straight black and white, although I have some).  I also pick things like this because I have no idea about the stories.  I don't know what multi-verse we are in right now, or what story is being told right at this minute, so all I've had to base my purchasing decisions on is the visuals, or if a friend has mentioned something, I suppose.  Anyway, long story short, I would call myself a casual comic reader.

I have only dabbled in comic drawing previously, and had no idea where to start.  I have made random panels, and some mini pages, and they all looked terrible.  Part of this was when I last tried comic art, which was before/during college, and also because I had no direction at the time.  I was just doing it to do it.  I have tried readying about comic drawing, and I have had difficulty learning anything from the books I own.  I just don't learn that way.  I am much more comfortable with people showing me something, then me going from there, which is why I have enjoyed watching Ron draw in our classes.  I could care less about me actually drawing in class; it is much more informative just watching his process.  I do appreciate the critiques we have been having on our work, though.  We will bring in what we are working on, and he will just magically (through his years of experience) tell us better ways to do something.  It's not in a mean way, he just says this doesn't work for me, try this.  And BAM your whole panel is better just from a little change in the angle of the view, or something like that.  It's amazing to watch.

In my first class with Ron we worked on some characters.  Our goal was make characters from 4 genres - Western, Monster, Romance, Sci Fi.  My characters didn't quite meet all of the genres, but the exercise was more about creating characters and less about the actual genres.


My first character was the riot squad type robot for my sci fi category.  Second was the sheriff crocodile.  Third was my monster/romance and the is the chick with the knife.  She was more of a metaphorical monster, rather than an actual "monster".  And then I rounded out my 4 with the cat warrior guy.  I suppose he could have been my monster, but I felt he was more of a good guy.

And now we have been working on making a "day in the life of" type of comic page.  I had a quick little story for the cat warrior, that I have been working on.

Original penciling	Added some ink and shading

We haven't actually talked much about inking yet, so the stuff I did above was just from the little bit in class then glancing through a couple comics I had sitting around from Free Comic Day.

There's more to my cat story, but this was the first page, and it's sort of a complete mini-story encompassed in one page. I have a couple more classes with Ron and hope to get some more tips/hints from him. He is very knowledgeable and a neat guy. I hope to have more interactions with him in the future.

Hopefully you enjoyed this. My hope is to continue with this comic drawing stuff. It is fun and seems to be a good medium for the stories that are spilling out of my brain.

Until next time,

 - Zach