Today we’d like to introduce you to Arlen Schumer
Hi Arlen, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My father died when I was four months old, and my Mom raised my older (by 18 months) brother and I herself. I think I ended up finding my surrogate father figures in the pop culture I was surrounded with, in roughly this chronological order: Sean Connery’s Bond (the first movie I ever recall seeing, when I was around four-five years old, was Dr. No, the first Connery Bond, at a drive-in theater); Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling on television; the superheroes in comic books, pseudo-paternally teaching me right from wrong, good from evil, standing up and fighting for one’s beliefs; comic book artists like Neal Adams and Jim Steranko; and finally, Bruce Springsteen (I was art director of the first Springsteen fan magazine, Thunder Road, when I was at RISD).
After RISD, I went to New York City and began my professional career. I started at PBS’ flagship station in New York, WNET, doing TV graphics, then at NBC doing the graphics for the first year of Late Night with David Letterman (remember its baseball-script logo? That was mine!), followed by stints in ad agencies, both big and boutique-sized, as an art director/copywriter—including working for my comic book artist childhood idol, the legendary Neal Adams, at his commercial art studio, Continuity Associates, doing storyboards and animatic art, which was like going to graduate school—and getting paid for it!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
In another of my responses, I called out “the long-denigrated and dismissed comic book art medium in the eyes of the mainstream American, cultural, societal, and academic worlds.”
That is STILL the biggest obstacle I’ve faced–and faced up to, and often overcame–the stigmas that the phrase “comic books” still face in the eyes, and minds, of the many. who make the creative decisions to use, or not use, comic book-style art to solve their creative problems.
And though things, in general, have changed, albeit incrementally, for the better, in terms of comics–i.e., “graphic novels”–being more accepted in the wider popular culture, I personally feel there is so much more I, especially, could add to the verbal/visual “conversation.”
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
At the time I worked for him (mid-‘80s), Neal Adams was doing mostly advertising production art (comps, storyboards, animatics), which was preventing him from taking on all the finished-illustration comic book-styled ads that were coming in; I reasoned one guy could make a pretty good living just on the work he was turning away, and that that was what I set out to do full-time upon leaving Neal to go out on my own.
Adams had previously done, I thought, the best comic advertising to date; I could never compete with him on a pure drawing level (who could?), but I thought I could differentiate my work by emphasizing overall graphic design (from my RISD education) and good hand-lettering (influenced by that other God of Comic Art, Adams’ contemporary Jim Steranko).
I had no desire to do comic book art for the mainstream comic book companies, as I could never churn out the volume of art needed to make their monthly deadlines, and didn’t really have the burning desire to tell stories anyway–I had more of a single-illustration/poster design mentality.
So I combined my expertise in graphic design with my illustration skills (improved 400% while working for Adams!) and knowledge of, and love for, comic book art and its history, to create advertising and editorial illustrations that I’d like to think stand out from the crowd of more conventional illustration and photography.
One of my goals was to bring comic book-style art into the commercial art world with the same impact Roy Lichtenstein had brought it into the fine art world; that’s how I felt I could do my part to uplift the long-denigrated and dismissed comic book art medium in the eyes of the mainstream American, cultural, societal, and academic worlds. Though I have many more mountains to climb, I think a retrospective of my illustrations would be a good gauge as to how far I’ve come–and have yet to go–to accomplishing that goal.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
The building blocks of any great “realistic” art can be boiled down to mastering two distinct drawing categories: anatomy of the human figure and perspective. If you can draw the human figure in any and all positions, and set those figures in realistic settings via perspective, you can truly draw anything. Combine that with your own, individual imagination and way of seeing things, both literally and figuratively, and you’ll have your style.
Don’t rely on the computer to dictate your “style”; develop a style of hand-made mark-making that is uniquely yours, and then bend the computer’s software and graphic capabilities to your will. Combine that with your own life experiences and worldview, gained by intensive, ongoing introspection, and you will have a body of work that will stand out from the crowded visual reality we live in, both real and virtual.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.arlenschumer.com
- Instagram: @arlenschumer
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/arlenschumerNEW
- Twitter: @arlenschumer
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/user/arlen6658/videos
- Other: https://arlenschumer.com/product/the-silver-age-of-comic-book-art/
Image Credits
All images designed and/or illustrated by Arlen Schumer.