Arthur Adams (comics) - Technique and Materials

Technique and Materials

Adams has a reputation of being a "tight" penciller, and admits to a slow pace, which limits the amount of work he does. When he penciled Fantastic Four #347 - 349 in 1990 for regular writer/illustrator Walter Simonson, who needed a break in order to catch up on his own work on that title, Adams managed to pencil the first two issues in five weeks and four weeks, respectively, but was considerably late on the third. In a 2007 interview, Adams stated he tends to produce 2/3 to 3/4 of a page a day, and can also ink at that rate, but can do up to two pages in a day if he is under pressure, as when he produced Cloak and Dagger #9 (1986) in 22 days, for example. Another example is the 1989 one-shot Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem, which due to changing deadlines, he completed at a quicker pace. Adams singles out one page of that book that he drew a half hour as his personal record for speed, but decries its poor quality.

Adams usually works from 10am to 4 or 5pm, and often works another two to three hours after dinner. He prefers to work from a plot rather than from a full script, a result of Ann Nocenti's dense Longshot scripts, though he has worked from a full script, as with his work on The Authority. Though he says he prefers group books because they more easily allow him to hide his "bad layout skills", he is nonetheless comfortable with solo character books. He begins drawing thumbnail layouts from the story he is given, either at home or in a public place. The thumbnails range in size from 2 inches x 3 inches to half the size of the printed comic book. He or an assistant will then enlarge the thumbnails and trace them onto illustration board with a non-photo blue pencil, sometimes using a Prismacolor light blue pencil, because it is not too waxy, and erases easily. When working on the final illustration board, he does so on a large drawing board when in his basement studio, and a lapboard when sitting on his living room couch. After tracing the thumbnails, he will then clarify details with another light blue pencil, and finalize the details with a Number 2 pencil. He drew the first three chapters of "Jonni Future" at twice the printed comic size, and also drew the fifth chapter, "The Garden of the Sklin", at a size larger than standard, in order to render more detail than usual in those stories. For a large poster image with a multitude of characters, he will go over the figure outlines with a marker in order to emphasize them. He will use photographic reference when appropriate, as when he draws things that he is not accustomed to.

In the early part of his career, Adams' pencils were embellished by inkers such as Whilce Portacio, Dick Giordano and Terry Austin. When Adams attempted to ink his own work before becoming a professional, he initially used a Croquille pen, but after meeting Mike Mignola, he was spurred to switch to a brush, which he used for a year or so before returning to a Croquille. He eventually began to ink his own work, which he prefers to do. Beginning in the late 1990s, he began using the Staedtler Pigment Liner, a felt-tip pen. He prefers pens to brushes because pens feel "looser", and cited this as his reason for using felt-tip pens when he inked "Jonni Future".

Although Adams has experimented with painting with watercolor and oil paints (his 1989 covers for Appleseed were rendered with a combination of ink, watercolor and color pencil), his color work is so sporadic that he says he has to relearn what he has forgotten in the interim each time, and is usually dissatisfied with the results.