I have always been a black and white guy, thinking primarily in terms of values, light and shadow rather than color. So materials like soft charcoal, Conte Crayon, or black Prismacolor pencils were my tools of choice when I was learning to draw. My parents had all the Illustrated Classics, and before I could read I was scribbling imitations of NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle and Rockwell Kent. Later on, looking at Bill Mauldin’s Army and anything by Jack Davis introduced me to what it meant to really draw the figure. In 1972 when I started working in Chicago, art directors were casting about for black and white art that would work well in newspapers, notorious for hastily produced half tone separations and poor quality reproduction. Since line art always seemed to print well, and stipple mimicked the look of continuous tone art without the technical problems, it was a perfect solution. For the next twenty five years my work was based almost exclusively on this technique. B...
