Creating Comics!

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Creating Comics

Creative Process

I draw a lot of my inspiration from the assorted “pretty girl

jobs”—such as model, burlesque performer, and go-go

dancer—that I’ve done in the past. With any looks-based career,

age is your enemy. Dorian Deconstructed #1 [left] is a meditation

on time, art, and artifice. It’s gigantic, and I did it stream-of-

consciousness style from my head. I would doodle one part

in mechanical pencil, ink it, then pencil in another part. Once

I’d inked the entire piece, I erased the pencil lines and colored

it with kolinsky brushes and Holbein gouache. I diluted the

gouache so it was more like a watercolor, and painted large,

solid areas by wetting them first. Because I prefer to work on my

fine art when I’m mentally fresh, the whole process took about

three weeks.

The central figure is based on London cabaret performer

Ophelia Bitz, whose mischievous grin is truly inspiring. The title

comes from The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s tale of a

dandy and his aging portrait.

Title: Dorian Deconstructed #1

Media: Pen, ink, mechanical pencil, and gouache on paper

[Above left] is another fine art piece, based on the vanity and

endemic cocaine use of the New York art world. I started by

doodling a compositional sketch in my notebook, did the under-

drawing in mechanical pencil, and then searched the Internet

for reference images of pigs. Moral? Always carry a sketchpad.

Title: Gutter Glitter

Media: Pen, ink, mechanical pencil, and gouache on paper

M

olly Crabapple is an award-winning artist

and writer, and the founder of Dr. Sketchy’s

Anti-Art School, a cabaret life-drawing class

with nearly fifty branches around the world.

Crabapple learned to draw in a Parisian bookstore.

She later drew her way through Morocco and Kurdistan,

and once into a Turkish jail. Back in New York, she got

her first illustration job doing covers for Screw magazine.

She now wields her drawing pen for the New York Times,

the Wall Street Journal, Playgirl, and Marvel Comics. Her

work also hangs in galleries across the United States.

Crabapple is the author of Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy

Day Colouring Book, a heavily illustrated burlesque activ-

ity book, and the artist for Backstage, a webcomic set

in the vaudeville halls of old New York. The Associated

Press compares her work to “a limerick shared amongst

good company in a Victorian parlor.”

Molly Crabapple