Author: Steve Lieber

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 016: From One Artist to Another: Convention Advice I’ve been asked for this month’s column to write some more about conventions. It’s become traditional in essays like these for a writer to establish his bona fides, so let me start out by saying that I’ve been attending conventions as a professional…

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 015: Analyzing Eisner When I was in art school in the 1980s there were very few texts on how to tell stories in comics. My instructors were focused on drilling us in the absolute basics of drawing, but I was obsessed with figuring out how comics storytelling worked, how laying one…

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 014: Building the Low-budget World When I was a teen comics reader in the 80s, I remember asking the owner of my local comics shop (Jeff Yandora of Phantom of the Attic in Pittsburgh) to recommend some other comics like Moore, Bissette & Totleben’s Swamp Thing, Simonson’s Thor, and Chaykin’s American Flagg. When he asked me what…

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 013: On Giving a Good Critique Last year, I wrote a Dilettante column offering advice for artists showing their work around conventions. It was well-received, but I realized a short time after that I’d neglected the other side of that equation: I hadn’t said anything about how to give a useful critique, nor…

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 012: A Tale of One Wise Guy by One Wiseman As a kid in the 1970s, I had very limited sources for comic books. My family was too broke to buy new comics from the newsstand, and libraries hadn’t yet begun to shelve comics in any meaningful way. I was left…

STEVE LIEBER’S DILETTANTE Dilettante 011: Thinking About Style About a decade ago, I wrote a few paragraphs on the notion of “style” and how an artist should regard it. It’s about time I expanded those thoughts. As a young artist, I was terrified of looking generic. I wanted “a style.” When young artists like I…