Art Wisdom from Steve Brodner — Gary L. Schroeder

Steve Brodner was one of my first illustration heroes. I just loved his work and his unique fluid style. While the creation of the Internet has generally been regarded as a bad move, it does have its upsides—one of which is that it connects people who in the Old Days would never have met. In this way, I discovered that I could take classes from Steve because he taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. At first, I took a distance learning class conducted entirely online. Later, after I moved to Manhattan, I had the opportunity to take classes from him in person. During those classes, I would jot down things he said as we students scribbled away in our sketchbooks. I’ve collected some of that wisdom here.

A drawing I made of Steve during a class.

Some Quotes and Pearls

“Story, point of view–if done well, the accuracy of the likeness is not critical. But it depends on what you want. If your idea and story dominate, you don’t even need to be a great artist.”

“The solution is always in more sketching.”

“It can’t all just be out of your head, you need to use references.”

“Draw from the elbow, the shoulder—more power than just the wrist.”

“Allow something to enter that is unbidden.”

“The eye…the brain…the hand.”

“The pencil takes you around the face.”

Om shopping your work around: “Expect rejection. Eat rejection for breakfast.”

“Story drives the face: relationships, experience, character.”

“White is a color. It’s one of the strongest colors along with red and black.”

“I care about the decisive line.”

See: Daniel Pelavin, Stephen Kroninger, Anita Kunz, Travis Louie.

Blind Contour Drawing

“You’ve got the controls built in—get rid of it!”

“Push. Push your arm!”

“There is a conversation between the thing and what you feel about it.”

“This is an investigation. Warming up…the process of communicating between the eye, brain, and hand.”

“Elbow action—fling it out! Stop caring. Caring is not in the lexicon of blind contour. Get rid of control.”

“On the head, start from the inside, out. An oval imposes control, which we want to destroy.”

“This is not polite. For some people, modifying an image to make a point is bad manners.”

How do you know which aspect to push? “You don’t know, you feel.”

Broken Line Contour

“The goal is to allow things to fly apart that you tie together. Maximum crazy! Deconstruct and reassemble.”

Broken line contour but using only straight lines, aka “Sticks.”

The Hurricane Method

“Unhinging where lines start to lose gravity, things will start to separate. As outer lines grow more violent, the inner lines gain more civility. Interior: exacttude. Wildness on the periphery calls attention to the sedate quality of what’s inside. A way to liberate line.”

“Starting from the middle, swirling out.”

“Lines start to buck and carry on in ways that are asking you to take command of them as they carry . This is NOT blind drawing. Feeling of driving, magnetic attraction. Finding lines of power–the driving force in making a powerful piece. A physical experience. Somewhere in this realm–and I almost always rip the paper when I’m doing it.”

“A format for accessing power, a kind of strength. With a little anger, with a little vengeance–if that kind of thing comes easily to you.”

Shadow Hunting

This is a metod where we look for areas where shadows bump against areas of brightness. By focusing on filling in the shadows only, the rest of the face will appear all on its own.

The S-shape Method

“Lilt, a sense of dance. Gives a feeling of life, modernism. When the line dances, everything dances.”

“To whatever degree the caricature appears, that’s up to you.”

Portrait done using the S-shape method of getting into the face.

See Istvan Banyai: strong pencils taken into Photoshop so it looks like pen and ink.

“All drawings that I admire have lines of power.”

“Lines should be alive and influencing each other. Allow the face to almost draw itself.”