INUVIK
Inuvik residents had an opportunity at a new craft this week.

Talented young sketcher Chanelle Dalby was one of the Inuvik youth who showed up for a workshop on sketching for comic books at the Centennial Library on March 3. Shawn Giilck/NNSL photo

A handful of people – most of them youth – turned out for a chance to attend a hands-on workshop on drawing for comic books March 3 at the Centennial Library.

Evan Munday, an artist from Toronto, led the workshop.

Munday has worked in the comic industry for years, as well as writing and illustrating graphic-novel style books and illustrated books. He's known for the Dead Kid Detective Agency series, as well as the science fiction Quarter Life Crisis series.

Munday said the Dead Kid Detective Agency has drawn some comparisons to the venerable Nancy Drew stories, albeit a more modern version.

"It's sort as if Nancy Drew was a goth," Munday said with a smile.

He began drawing while still in public school, and was pulled into the comic world well before that.

"My mom was an enabler," he said with a smile. "She'd buy my brother and I comics when we went grocery shopping. That was back in the day when you could readily buy comics at those stores."

Now that comics are generally found in speciality shops, Munday has moved his career into other, associated fields such as the illustrated novels he produces.

He also compared them to the popular Hardy Boys series – short novels with lots of illustrations.

At one time, Munday said he and his brother worked collaboratively on the stories. His brother dropped out of the hobby around the time they entered high school, but Munday kept going. He didn't have a good explanation for that, other than that he was drawn to, well, draw.

He was in town for most of the week, and was also planning on leading workshops at East Three School.

He led the spectators through several exercises, beginning with a sketch of the famous Harry Potter character to gauge their relative abilities.

"How many of you have tried doing your own comics?" he asked the audience.

Several had, including Chanelle Dalby. She was one of the most talented sketchers at the workshop, judging by her work on the Harry Potter assignment.

"I just give up when I try to make my own comics," she offered shyly to Munday.

Other comic fans comics were there, including Parker Burns.

He enthusiastically told Munday about his fondness for the Archie comics.

Munday told them one of the secrets to mastering the field is sheer repetition. It's a labour and time-intensive craft that so far has no real shortcuts to eliminate the manual labour aspect.

He said he learned and refined his craft largely by trying to replicate what he was seeing in the field over the course of several years.

Munday didn't advocate outright tracing so much as copying, which gives artists the chance to learn the craft at a very fundamental level that almost becomes reflex while developing style quirks of their own.

He also showed the audience some quick, practical, shortcuts and tricks to simplify the drawing process.

Faces, for instance, Munday said, should always start with an oval shape, while legs and arms are cylinders.

Lighting is particularly useful for establishing the mood of a scene, while budding artists should always remember to exaggerate the motion in their scenes and panels to properly convey the desired emotion and reaction.

Dalby and Burns said they found those tips the most useful.

"It's been really good," said Dalby. "The angles, the light and the shadowing were things I really liked."

"I liked the shadow and light information," Burns added. "His comic books were my favourite."