I
by Kyle — Age 27 — Brooklyn, NY
The face of the pubescent boy changes fast. Previously oblivious that I materially existed, I was alerted in Jr. High by my peers that I was in possession of a large nose. A huge fuckin’ schnoz? A beak? Wasn’t there before. A kid, I was 12, a life-long drawer, pencil and tracing-paper my medium, having worked my way up the ladder from Fred Flintstone to Spider-Man to, finally, my magnum opus, a 12″ x 12″ of Spawn with cape in full regalia. A birthday brought me a book, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Finally, I thought, to learn the rules by which I could create my own characters. Those vivid splash pages in my mind would become a reality, if only I could get these secrets down. Chapter Eight, “Drawing the Human Head!” grabbed me. It was so simple and beautiful, all circles and lines. One line in particular shook me to the core. You see, to draw the profile, one needs to imagine a straight line extending from the chin to the bottom lip to the upper lip to the tip of the nose. Imagining this, it’s simple to get all the features in proportion. I tested this rule on myself. Taking a ruler to my chin, I apply it gently to my lips, making sure that I have it lined-up appropriately. Then I let the ruler creep upwards to my nose, hoping, praying, mind racing, that it will glide past my nose, grazing it ever-so-lightly. No, nothing of the sort. By more than the width of a pencil my nose violated Steve Buscemi’s schematic. Over and over would I, straining my eyeballs so to get a good view of my profile, re-perform this test with different factors, pouting my lips or positing a weakened chin. No, my nose ruined the equation. Flipping though my comics, drawn the Marvel Way, I’d look for the manifestation of this secret in Reed Richards and Frank Castle. Furtively in biology class I’d glance at the popular boys, searching for correlations between their success and fulfillment of the law. Page after page, even those miserable creations of Jack Kirby passed the test. Today I still catch myself, pen sliding up my lips or drawing that dotted line up the profile of a friend, drawing the human head.
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