Influence Spotlight: Jim Lee

This will be a regular feature on my page where I will talk about influences on my techniques and styles. Hopefully I can introduce you to new artists, or give you a different way to look at artists you already know.

First cab off the rank is going to be Jim Lee. The reason I will go with Jim Lee up first is he is the reason I got interested in, and stayed interested in comic books. I started reading comics around the time Jim was working on the Uncanny X-Men. I eagerly purchased the “new” X-Men when he released it, and have been heavily invested in his work ever since.

My favourite piece of his work to date (as a penciler) is Batman Hush – the artwork in that series was amazing, and was pretty much the first time I really read DC comics.  It is amazing to look back at how much Jim Lee developed as an artist between his early work on the Punisher War Journal through to his more recent stuff. I was not much of a fan of Jim’s work in the Punisher series, but looking back now, I can see where he current style has developed from.

Jim Lee has been criticized in the past for having no real artitst depth to his art, almost saying his work is plastic and generic. I disagree, I do think his style is perfectly suited for the spandex and cape brigade or Marvel and DC comics, but I also don’t have a problem with that. He excels at drawing action and movement, and that is exactly what draw people into most comics, it is also the element of his style that I would dearly love to master.

Anyways, below are some amazing pieces from Jim Lee and also some links to Jim Lee related pages, so you can check out some of his eye candy.

Learn about the man himself here -> Wiki 

Check out some of his amazing art here -> DeviantArt
See a complete database of comics he has been involved in here -> Comics DB