Ben Towle

Author's posts

Back From the Old School: Showing Motion via Repeated figures in a Single Panel

Lately, I’ve been noting a lot of panels like this in the comics I read and it’s made me wonder about what exactly this technique is, how how it works, and where it came from: What it is: This is from Cyril Pedrosa’s recent (and amazing) book L’age d’or, which is now out in English …

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The Vasquez Rocks of Comics

Even if you don’t recognize the name “Vasquez Rocks,” you’ve likely seen the rocks themselves. The Vasquez Rocks are a group of distinctively-shaped rock formations outside of Los Angles that have appeared in many, many T.V. shows and movies–from Westerns like Bonanza (and Blazing Saddles!) through to relatively modern films like Little Miss Sunshine and …

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From the Sketchbook: Dogfighting Dogs!

I’m certainly the five billionth person to do drawings of dog pilots (when they “dogfight” they’re literally dogs!! Get it?!) but for whatever reason, I recently wound up doing a batch of quick watercolors of dogs in WWII-era pilot gear. Well, “for whatever reason” isn’t entirely accurate; the reason is at least partially that I …

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What I Read in 2019

In past years I’ve done a list of all the comics (and comics-related stuff) I’ve read, with a short write-up for each item. This year, that’s just not feasible given the amount of material I read and the time I have available… but here’s my list for 2019 with a few comments on things here …

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Selected Sketchbook Drawings – October 2019

I haven’t posted any sketchbook pages in forever, so here goes…  Truth be told, I’d weirdly fallen out of my years-long habit of drawing nightly in my sketchbook and have only recently gotten back into it. Why had I fallen off? I’m not exactly sure–other than that I’ve had a lot of “life getting in …

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