How I Created This Drawing

A process post about a particular image that a lot of people liked.

Several people liked this image when I posted it to my notes. Thanks to all who did! I think a lot of people responded to the complicated image and —thank goodness—felt like I had pulled it off.

But I don’t just pull this stuff off out my head. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into something this complicated. I’ve had the idea to do a graphic novel about the theft of composer Joseph Haydn’s skull for some time, but it took me a few years to be able to pull it off because I wasn’t all that good at drawing interiors and placing people in them. Here’s what all went into it.

Fundamentals

I had the good fortune of good art teachers in both middle school and high school, and I am forever indebted to them for teaching my the fundamentals—in this case, perspective was something I learned from them.

BTW I have tried to contact my middle school art teacher Lynn Dorr to share my work with her, but I can’t find her. I know she’s out in Oregon somewhere. If you know her, let me know!

Sketching

I posted a while ago about how I got into sketching again—both pictures I found online and plein air sketching at places like coffee shops and art museums. Mainly, since my graphic novel would take place in the late 1800s in Vienna, I found lots of images of rooms, places, and the like, pinned them to a Pinterest board, and just sketched those. Here are a few I used:

And here are some sketches I did:

I forget who told me this, but the goal of doing sketching from reference photos is that when it comes time to draw the real thing, you’ve already got what you need in your head. I sketched a bunch of rooms and furniture so that when I wasn’t drawing a particular room, I could conjure one from what was in my head.

Reference Photos

Because I was drawing the concert hall at Esterhazy Palace, I had to get the details right, or at least mostly right. I gathered some reference photos of the hall to use for the photo and other panels. I wanted to show the size of the hall and all the ornamentation. They sure don’t build them like they used to! But I knew I didn’t have to be completely accurate; I just had to get it mostly right.

Details

I knew I didn’t need to draw every single detail, especially the paintings on the ceiling. The main focus is on the characters in the hall.

I learned a ton about suggesting certain things by looking at New Yorker cartoons, such as those by Charles Saxon. He’s one of many masters of New Yorker cartoonists that were great at this. Check this out! You can see I borrowed a lot from him, and worked through some of the intricate details of the panels by suggesting them like he did here.

And then I drew it. It took a while. The perspective was tricky, and so was making sure all the panels lined up. A lot of careful study went into composing the panel, and as I said in the note, I’m quite happy with how it turned out.

Do you have any favorite methods you like to use to prepare a panel? Let me know!