Artist Research - Jae Lee

Often I won't look to comic book artists for my inspiration because unless they have a fine art style to them like the work of Alex Ross or Dave McKean the comic book style of art generally looks the same. Jae Lee's work stopped me in my tracks however. It does share a similar style to most comic book illustration with his ink drawings looking similar in tone to Frank Miller's Sin City work, but the difference I've seen in his work however is how human the characters are. Most artists draw a character like Batman or Superman and that's what the outcome is. If I were to quickly draw Batman, it would look like the character in appearance and background but with no care put into it. Jae Lee's interpretations on the characters takes them into a sense of reality. Superman is often portrayed as a man built into the image of a god, exadurated muscles, big chested and strong. Lee's interpretation depicts him with more of an ordinary, believable build and with a subtle sense of muscles and strength. To me this is how the character should be depicted, the costume itself is a uniform that defines him as a higher powered being, the powers and abilities do that job for the artist. It's as if Lee's interpretation emphasizes the "man" in "superman" where other artists would work the other way around. Lee clearly uses models for his work which is a trait that we share, and his attention to material is really impressive.






His artwork has a bold illustrated style and it clearly a hand crafted piece which is probably why I like it so much. Like I said there's a sense of realism within the pieces because of the facts that the characters are treated humanly, looking at the way he's drawn Batman's cape and how it flows in this piece gives you an idea of the type of material he envisions it's made from. They are drawn at interesting angles as if it's a camera angle from a photograph. If I could take anything away from Jae Lee's artwork it's the emphasis on the human side of comic book characters and thinking away from the normal way they are perceived. I need to think about how to effectively draw and paint materials like this Batman piece to convey how I perceive these characters.

 Finally, Composition. These three pieces are examples of Lee's cover artwork. You can see there is a theme to his work in that all the characters are predominantly centered and not quite, but almost symmetrical. the colour palletes generally match up with the objects and they all convey strong contrasts of dark and light.