This is another series I did around COVID. This time, my attention went to jazz players. I remember there was a scandal in the United States where a police officer killed a Black man for no reason. At that time, one begins to wonder how it is possible in this day and age. I also realized how many people just don’t seem to care about that kind of news.
I have always been a lover of jazz music—not a connoisseur, but enough to appreciate how jazz and blues are fields where white and Black people have worked together to create something good for us all. For these portraits or pin-ups, I used calligraphy nibs (I don’t remember the numbers), and I created a very nervous line for all the drawings. In some of them, I used a brush. All of them are very clean, with no background—just white space around the silhouette.
Then I was taught in school how hard it is to draw things simply, so I kept them without viewing them as “not so good art.” Comic book art is a great example of where you can find masters who use simple lines to create their work, mostly European artists from the '70s (there are some Americans too). I recall greats like Hugo Pratt and Joe Kubert, just to mention two from each side.
These days, in the comic book field, it is very common for each panel and page to be complex, considering that a comic book page usually requires at least six skilled individuals: the writer, the penciler, the inker, the letterer, the colorist, and the editor. It’s a teamwork effort that yields wonderful results. Fortunately, there is also a movement (mostly a tradition in Europe) where artists who do everything themselves are highly valued, appreciated, and encouraged in their craft.
That said, the comic book field is a very challenging place to be, even now with the advantage of self-publishing online. For this series of pin-ups, I also used some acrylic markers I found. They come in a bright variety of colors and are easy to use, so I wrote the names of the musicians on each piece. This adds great appeal to the black-and-white silhouette surrounded by white space. This is also a theme that I plan to approach with more planning in the future.