I happen to be published in Greece by the fine people at Jemma Press, and a while back I attended Athens Comic-con or Comicdom Con as it is officially named. They had an artist alley and aspiring comic book artists just like any good comic-con. The difference I noticed…was the difference between each of their styles.
In the U.S. as skilled as many of the up and comers are…there is often not a sneeze worth of difference between their styles, they tend to follow what’s hot, or maybe the zeitguest. I have a big box of comics people have dropped off over the years and you could guess how old each one is by looking at the illustration style. There was the image era where everyone drew like image, the time when everyone drew anime type characters with big feet, the noodle armed web comics style era. It’s not down to the last man…but there are trends and the glut of up and comers tend to follow it. NOW…this could be, and I would guess it is, less due to laziness and more due to how you learn. Most of us start out as wee youngsters drawing from our favorite comics, and that’s kinda the template of learning we hold onto. You have things you think are good in your brain as you are drawing and at first your style tends to mimic that. It will in many cases take years for your own personal style to come to evolve and develop.
Must be different in Greece, maybe more emphasis is given to art in general so that they don’t start out drawing from comic books but start out just drawing. Or who knows…I’m not an anthropologist. The point is that every single sample or person in artist alley’s style was strikingly different from everyone else.
and many of them were really f*cking good.
I’ve kept tabs on many of them and kept tabs on Greek illustrators in general. It took me awhile but I’ve finally gotten around to making a feature on this page of Greek illustrators, so you can see what I mean…and to just see some really nice work from over there.
This time we have
Since his first appearance in 1986 in the Greek satirical magazine “Para Pente”, he has been working non-stop as a political cartoonist and comics creator for a variety of local papers and magazines. His work has been collected in 16 albums (so far). These include both collections of one-page strips, (the norm in Greek newspapers and sites) and longer works like the fantasy/adventure “UGH” (also available in Madefire Motionbooks format) or his latest pop-culture noir mystery “Yesternow”.
More of his work can be found here! https://derveniotis.deviantart.com/
If you are a Greek comic book illustrator, or trying to become one, or can recommend one. By all means, contact me. I have a few Greek illustrators in mind to show off, and after that…I’ll keep the feature going as long as I get good stuff sent my way. So, don’t be shy
contact me via email
douglaspasz – at- arseniclullabies.com
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Douglas and his work can be found here
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