Tim Bradstreet talks about his tools of the trade
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
- Tim Bradstreet's comic covers are unmistakable. Photo realistic and yet stylized they have graced the covers of The Punisher, Hellblazer and countless other books. Sitting down for a chat about his tools and methodology Tim tells about his process and tricks.
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this man is an amazing artist and he has influenced my artwork the most out of all current artists
Thanks for uploading. I really like the way Mr. Bradstreet incorporates his photo realistic drawing with a Mike Mignola influenced inking style. He's the true master of illustrative light & shadow artwork.
Bradstreet's...inking? He doesn;t ink anything, it's just photoshop buddy. Open you eyes. Masters such as Mignola would be ashamed to be compared to impostors such as Bradstreet.
@@kernunoosMignola can't draw
Tim is one of the best and a great guy!
Here i am again studying the man.
I got his autographed on a star trek comic.
Legend
Tim Bradstreet's the BEST!!!
his punisher covers are beautiful
I love this guy!
Photocopy machine n light box are his tools. Lol
Lots of popular artists in Instagram etc. use lightbox or photo references.
Like those people who sell their pencil portraits of a celeberity, your family members, or your dog. Do you really think they have time to NOT trace the outlines? They have to reach 100% likeness, with a deadline (actually multiple deadlines, at once). They don't have time to do it freehand, because if the likeness fails, it's several work days wasted. If you see someone doing something realistic, it's 95% certain that they heavily relied on reference. Very few people can draw anything realistic, without reference. This is a myth, that exists in the heads of non-artists. Pro artists know everyone uses referecenes. (Everyone going for any sort of realism anyway)
Some use the grid method, but even if you use grid method, how much difference there is to lightboxing it? Not much. Especially if your grid is dense, it becomes really close to lightboxing. Grid takes more time and labour, the accuracy is similar or slightly lower.
Of course Bradstreet uses high contrast, which makes it slightly easier to trace, since you get help with the shadows also, not just outlines. But correct outlines already help massively in getting the right amount of shadow/light to each area. It's much easier to study a photo reference, if your outlines are already correct.
Non-artists should realize, that almost nobody can "imagine" realistic light and shadow in their head. It's a myth. Art gets shrouded in this mystique, if the work process is not known. That has happened to many historic painters, for example all the famous realistic painters in my country Finland from the 19th century used photo references. They added a few things to the background, maybe change the outfit slightly, but most of it was faithful copying. And now when they are dead, they are considered "legendary painters".
"Photo realistic drawing" my ass, this guy just touches up photos via photoshop. He says it's not cheating, but he puts himself at the level of people who use photos only for inspiration, which is not what he does, he scans them and traces over them digitally. There are guys who do draw true photo realistic pieces, but they do not trace, it's freehand reproduction with a personal twist, a whole different level boys.
kernunoos At the time that I interviewed him Tim didn't use photoshop in his process. Maybe that's changed, I don't know. But the truth is that a lot of the work in the museums around the world used photo reference and sometimes things you might think of more as "tracing". There was a great documentary, "Tim's Vermeer", all about it. I would check it out. It makes you think more deeply about what we consider art. And then extend that to people who do collage and mixed media who are literally incorporating other's designs into their own. Have you read any of Seth Kushner's photocomics?
I totally agree that there is something really special about someone who is able to take something that exists only in their brain, and translate that onto a page. But I still think that people who use photo ref, whether it sits next to their page or that draw over it, or manipulate it in photoshop, are creating artwork that deserves attention.
The Comic Archive Photos for reference, there is no problem, tons of artists used it, but only as a ref. Scanning a photo,tweeking contras tto keep just the outlines and some shadows, then filling in by hand or by specialized paint program that is more than just using a photo for reference, and that is what Bradstreet does, he even says in the video he doesn't consider this as cheating, unfortunately for him, it is, because people at conventions ask for handdrawn quickies, not to look at a book handed out to them. Some people trace over their own handdrawn material, but that is not the same thing. things get even more complicated with collage, it goes from 100% hand made drawings cut and rearranged , to 100% photos arranged together and everything in between these worlds...I'll watch the program you mentioned this weekend, sounds really good.
If it's so simple why don't more people do it and make a (real) living doing so? Because it takes a very practiced brain and hand-eye to be able to put down on a page what you see.
You can't be serious, E.Guzman. It is simple and a lot of people are indeed applying that trick not only in the comicbook business but a bit everywhere today. you're either too young or just blatantly misinformed to just come on youtube and claim it needs "a very practised brain-eye coordination" to do what Bradstreet is churning out. Some people with little amount of training can do marvels with photoshop only, applying all day long crappy filters on photos and art not made by them then patchworking the results together , but could not get their way out of a wet paperbag when it comes to digitally pencil, paint or oldschool freehand draw something for real. Bradstreet tries to fool beginners by using filters on commercial photos which give an appearance of pencilled art. He even dared to release some "art" in black in white which had zero modifications other than a couple of low grade photoshop filters : the problem is that a lot of people recognized the original photos, which were movie promo shoots. The only credit he deserves is from digitally coloring the results for his fake-drawn comics.
LOL