Uh sorta. Cartoons like this generally just had black ink to work with unless utilizing color for a Sunday edition.
So shading is usually done as a series of black dots (as above) rather than a smooth tone. Empty areas can be shaded this way but it can be very obscuring to detailed areas like faces. A lot of B&W print comics are like that.
Hell one of my favorite web comics 20 odd years ago had nonwhite characters that you only really saw when he colored panels.
Yeah, Franklin from Peanuts tended to be a bit difficult to read facially sometimes because of the shading. Watterson once said that black and white shading could be tricky since the eye, being lazy, was drawn to empty white space.
So often in black and white comics they just forgo skin tones, especially in a more simplistic style like Larson’s. If you look at Watterson’s art, for example, his Sunday strips do show some darker kids, but in the daily black & whites they’re generally all drawn ‘white’.
Also keep in mind that Larson is white, and so him making fun of black people probably wouldn’t go over well.
Just to note: Bill Watterson made Calvin and Hobbes. I think you’re accurately referencing him with that statement, though Charles Schulz made Peanuts.
Yes, I know. I was referencing two different artists; one that did try to have their darker-skinned characters be that way even in black and white, vs one who didn’t because he was concerned about how the comic would read.
Uh sorta. Cartoons like this generally just had black ink to work with unless utilizing color for a Sunday edition.
So shading is usually done as a series of black dots (as above) rather than a smooth tone. Empty areas can be shaded this way but it can be very obscuring to detailed areas like faces. A lot of B&W print comics are like that.
Hell one of my favorite web comics 20 odd years ago had nonwhite characters that you only really saw when he colored panels.
Thank you for explaining that but I just scrolled through and didn’t see a single non-white person.
Yeah, Franklin from Peanuts tended to be a bit difficult to read facially sometimes because of the shading. Watterson once said that black and white shading could be tricky since the eye, being lazy, was drawn to empty white space.
So often in black and white comics they just forgo skin tones, especially in a more simplistic style like Larson’s. If you look at Watterson’s art, for example, his Sunday strips do show some darker kids, but in the daily black & whites they’re generally all drawn ‘white’.
Also keep in mind that Larson is white, and so him making fun of black people probably wouldn’t go over well.
Just to note: Bill Watterson made Calvin and Hobbes. I think you’re accurately referencing him with that statement, though Charles Schulz made Peanuts.
Yes, I know. I was referencing two different artists; one that did try to have their darker-skinned characters be that way even in black and white, vs one who didn’t because he was concerned about how the comic would read.
It wasn’t clear from first glance, so cool: glad to hear it was of no mistake.