Anyone who follows my social media presence knows that I have complicated feelings about art. I have always primarily identified myself as a writer, but I periodically find myself dabbling in sketch art despite limited natural aptitude for it — an activity that invariably ends in frustration given that my aspirations quickly outstrip my talent. So it’s with a mixture of reverence and masochism that I will often watch gifted technicians effortlessly spin off drawings and paintings that I could never hope to create. And yet that’s not why I’ve become (not-so-)mildly addicted to Jim Lee’s live streams on Twitch. Instead, I find that I like to watch his art videos simply because they make me feel better about the world I’m living in. Moreover, based on the reactions of my family, I’m pretty sure the feeling is contagious.
Unlocking The Fanboy Within
On my part at least, this sentiment is somewhat fueled by residual fandom of DC Comics’s Chief Creative Officer reaching all the way back to the 1990s. I do, in fact, own one of the several variant covers to Lee’s best-selling X-Men #1. And I enjoyed his runs on Superman and Bat-Man following his stint at Image. Nevertheless, I’ve never really followed individual comic artists with any particular fervor. And while my family and I have been attending comics conventions in our region for a little less than a decade, it’s been for a variety of reasons only loosely tied to the comics themselves.
My spouse, sometime sci-fi/fantasy author C. L. Schock, has typically attended for the purposes of market research, while my kids and I have focused on collecting swag ranging from posters to Funko Pops to LEGO mini-figures. Even on the occasions when we’ve met creators like George Perez, Ethan Van Sciver and Ron Frenz, it’s been to get comics signed or to buy existing art — not to observe their process. It was only a happy accident then that I should happen to stumble across Jim Lee’s Twitch stream — or more appropriately a YouTube compilation of his videos— a little less than two years ago.
Happy Little Muscles Instead of Happy Little Trees?
Lee’s videos are tutorials, ostensibly for would-be artists looking for tips on the respective crafts of penciling and inking comic art. However, they’re also much more than that. For starters, they’re usually filled with various technology-driven misadventures. The legendary artist, who is now in his 50s, often struggles with issues related to his cameras, his microphones and any number of other environmental factors. But rather than this being a distraction, these forgivable technical lapses enhance his charming demeanor; they help to humanize and ingratiate him to an audience that might otherwise be intimidated by his body of work.
Just about everything that Jim Lee does, in fact, works to this effect. Casual, self-effacing, soft-spoken, and candid, Lee doesn’t come across as a titan of his industry. He’s just Jim. He talks about his travels — completed and upcoming. He’ll chat with his wife or his kids if they happen to wander into the room during the streaming event. He reminisces about his experiences in the industry and his collaborations with other creators at DC Comics and elsewhere.
And though it’s often said that extremely talented people struggle to teach — as they’re used to being able to naturally perform at a high level — Lee is very much aware of the fact that his audience is largely made up of 18- and 20-year-olds looking to pick up the tricks of the trade. So he’ll often stop mid-sketch to flip his page over and demonstrate some technique of shaping or shading. As he explains, he interprets many complex aspects of anatomy by deconstructing them — the hand is a pentagon with its base at the wrist, the shoulder a valentine’s heart, the biceps and triceps islands of light in an ocean of shadows. (Note that he once illustrated the first of these principles — quite literally — by drawing a pentagon on the back of his own hand.)
A Little Something for Everyone
To be clear, Jim Lee isn’t Bob Ross — though I do walk away from watching his videos with a similar positive feeling. Whereas Ross’s focus was to create art that his audience could emulate even in real time, Lee sketches rapidly and at a high level of difficulty. So while my youngest child and I are routinely inspired to create our own art after viewing one of his live streams, we don’t really attempt to duplicate his results. And I think that’s okay because it’s not critical to our enjoyment of an experience that transcends the instructional. Just watching Jim Lee make art is a pleasure in its own right.
It’s not without its drama either. I wouldn’t call his style impressionistic, and yet I would often — in the early days of following his stream — find myself wondering how, with perhaps just 5 or 10 minutes left on a project, it was going to round out into a finished sketch with his usual level of quality. And then he’d surprise me by dabbing a piece of tissue paper in ink and rendering a dramatic backdrop in 30 seconds of work. Or he’d grab a whiteout pen and — with just a handful of precise strokes — wrestle a clearly defined image from out of the dark background he’d spent the last quarter hour saturating with marker. In some ways, I suppose you can credit his use of multiple media on a single project — a pencil, a pen, a Sharpie marker, a whiteout pen, tissue paper, a credit card (yes, a credit card dabbed with whiteout, to create flecks of “Kirby crackle”) — as one of the reasons why there can be so many twists and turns on the way to the outcome.
Owing to his numerous production and travel commitments, Lee’s posting schedule can have its ups and downs as well. But I don’t know that I’d consider his streaming events “appointment television” anyhow. Many sessions can last a couple of hours and cover more than one project. So it’s not unusual for my family to watch them in pieces over multiple occasions after they drop to YouTube. That eliminates the opportunity to participate in the conversations associated with the live stream — as the artist will often respond to comments bubbling up in the moderated chat — but it suits our purposes and allows us to enjoy on an on-demand basis.
Visiting with an Old Friend
Something about Lee’s demeanor and delivery combined with the seeming ease with which he draws makes each video feel like you’re checking in with an old friend. That’s marvelously refreshing at a time when the posts showing up in my social media don’t feel particularly social. So I highly recommend that you give one of Lee’s live streams or videos a try. I guarantee you’ll learn something — be it about his technique, his ongoing projects, his career or simply his daily life. And that’s the kind of reality TV I can’t get enough of — since Jim Lee seems to be one guy who is genuinely here for the right reasons.
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