This month I had the pleasure to interview Derik Hefner. Soon as I saw some of his work I knew I had encountered a kindred spirit. I am grateful he gave me this opportunity to answer some questions about his inspirations, his projects and being involved locally with the Artistic Community.
Looking at your work, especially the graphic novel you are working on, you obviously are a fan of the medium. What comic book artists inspired you and what writers fired your imagination?
The first artist I could recognize by style alone was John Byrne. I was 6 when the first issue of his Superman series came out. I was slightly confused at the time as to how it could be Superman’s first issue, but Byrne’s art was so distinct, his characters had mass and substance and form, and his backgrounds were full of gritty detail. And Terry Austin’s inks brought out all of that perfectly. Classic X-Men was coming out then too, so Byrne had a big presence in my early formative years, right when I was really getting sucked into comics in a big way. Other influences span the gamut: Will Eisner, Möebius, Bill Sienkiewicz, Chris Bachalo, Frank Miller, Paul Pope, Becky Cloonan, Sean Gordon Murphy, Gabriel Bá, Fabio Moon, Jamie Hewlett, Jordi Bernét, Mike Allred... I could go on and on with the artists I’ve picked up this or that from. Every artist’s style is a sort of Frankenstein’s Monster in that way. But looking at my work now, I can see that Byrne is the standard from which I’ve deviated. All the weirder influences just dress up and distort that Byrne skeleton, which is baked in.
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| John Byrne |
As for writers, in comics, Chris Claremont was a huge influence. Over his decades-spanning X-Men run, he put you inside the heads of such a large cast, bouncing back and forth between thought bubbles and third-person narration in a way that you rarely see anymore. He provided an interesting lens through which to view the world. A community of people who would otherwise be loners, misunderstood and reviled by the world in spite of (or because of?) the fact that their cause is right and just. And taking the brunt of all that negative energy and giving back something positive instead. That resonates as loudly now as it did then.
Other writing influences, both within comics and elsewhere, is another long list (and I know I’m going to leave a lot out someone that I’ll regret not mentioning later), but immediately springing to mind are Grant Morrison, Brian K. Vaughan, James Robinson, Alan Moore, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, Rick Remender, Jason Aaron. Early Vertigo comics are a high point of what comics can be, and I revisit those often. Outside of comics my reading interests are varied, but with fiction I tend to gravitate towards magic realism. Which is probably a testament to the comics influence, since when you think about it, virtually all comics could be considered magic realism. Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, Neil Gaiman, Chuck Palahniuk, Etgar Keret, Haruki Murakami. I’ve been singing the praises of China Miéville for several years now. Jim Thompson, a fellow Okie, is another favorite. Hunting down his books has been an ongoing project.
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| Derik Hefner |
When I see your work I am reminded of Farel Dalrymple and Troy Nixey who worked on Mike Mignola's Jenny Finn. Also your panel layouts and camera angles look very professional. Do you do story boards before committing to a layout?
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| Jenny Finn |
That’s very flattering! I wouldn’t point to either of them as direct influences, but it’s always interesting to hear what others see that I don’t. Someone recently compared my work to that of Brendan McCarthy, whose name I was more familiar with than his work. That led to me checking out his collaborations with writer Peter Milligan, and damned if I didn’t see it. If I was on the outside looking in, I’d think he was one of my biggest direct influences, yet I’d had almost no exposure to his work (outside of his covers, which were mostly painted). It’s a great experience, coming across kindred artists like that, arriving at the same place from different routes. It’s like when you make a new friend that you feel like you’ve known forever, but through art without any personal contact. It’s a form of connection that would be unavailable if not for art. Let me make clear, I’m not putting myself on McCarthy’s level, but it does feel like we inhabit the same creative world, and I’ve been greatly inspired by his work. Sounds like I need to do a deep dive into Dalrymple and Nixey now!
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| Brendan McCarthy |
Regarding panel layouts and angles, my prime directive as a visual storyteller is to lead the eye through the page as naturally as possible. Time is conveyed through space on a comic page, so an awkwardly placed panel or word balloon can create a hiccup that takes the reader out of the story momentarily. If you look at film, every shot occupies a space of exactly the same shape and dimensions. So leading the eye through the story involves considerations like having the focal point of a shot— the area of the screen you’re looking at— be the same focal point when you cut to the next shot. And then characters can move around within each shot, or the camera can pan around, and the eye is led around through time and movement.
With comics, you’ve got to create the illusion of time on a static canvas, through the use of space. You have to figure out how to break up into panels and find the best way to lead the eye through them. Film is very informative in composing the shots in the panels themselves, but getting those moments to work together to tell a story, that’s what defines comics. I work all this out at the layout stage, which would be the equivalent of storyboarding, I suppose. There are a lot of considerations that go into making a compelling page composition, both in form and function. Ways of guiding the eye. Subliminal, of course— you don’t want to be thinking about that while reading, that would defeat the whole purpose. There are many choices that have to be made on the way to delivering a story that are never seen by the reader except in their final, aggregate form. I try to make most of these choices in the layout stage, do most of the cerebral work there. It makes the rest of the process go much more smoothly. The hand can be more loose and playful while the brain is doing the heavy lifting, so once I’m at the inking stage my mind can rest or wander while my hand does its real work. This balances out my process, as it allows for more confidence in each of the stages. Confidence is essential in the creative process, so being conscious of it, cultivating it, and keeping an open channel for it running through from beginning to end is a good practice. That confidence— or lack thereof— always shows in the final product. That’s the energy captured in a piece, and ultimately, the transmission of conscious energy from one mind to another is the reason we have art.
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| Derik Hefner |
Looking at your current project, there's a lot of esoteric themes, I imagine you have quite a library for reference. What kind of books do you have?
Grey Magick deals with themes relating to different belief systems. The human condition, the nature of consciousness and the mental structures we’ve built to harness and organize it. As well as the things that dwell outside those walls, the chaotic unconscious elements. I’ve had firsthand experience with a variety of belief sets... I was a devoted Christian in my early adult life, and I’m far from that now, but along the path I’ve taken deep dives into different strains of mysticism, examined some of the different magick systems, and have had personal experience with a few different types of cults. Grey Magick is my way of making sense of all this disparate pieces, by encapsulating the different views into characters and letting them interact through narrative. It’s a more interesting way to talk about it than a single point-of-view essay, and because some of the views expressed by a character might be a view I once held but have since discarded, I can at least give a fair voice to those views since I know what it feels like to hold them, and how they affect the rest of one’s thought processes. Some points of view discussed may not appear in a very favorable light, but I can at least be fair.
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| Grey Magik: Derik Hefner |
Regarding things outside my own experience, I want to be fair to those too, so I’m a research junkie. Most of that happens on the internet— it’s a lot easier to gain access to things like ancient manuscripts and grimoires in digital form— so I generally have about 30 open tabs for quick reference. But I will always prefer physical books when possible, especially subjects of long-term interest. Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Israel Regardie, Grant Morrison; books on psychology, philosophy, anthropology, mythology, neurobiology. Books on the craft of writing, and a handful on the Enneagram, which I’m deeply fascinated by. I suppose the common denominator is the study of consciousness.
And I’ve got lots of comics, graphic novels, and art books on hand for visual inspiration. Always.
What books are you currently reading?
I don’t have the same kind of time available for reading these days, so it’s a slower process, but right now I’m reading Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (again) and Helen Palmer’s Enneagram, which I’ll follow up with Taking with the Left Hand by William Patrick Patterson, which is in part a reaction against Palmer and the Western approach to the Enneagram. It’s all about getting as many different perspectives as possible.
What music do you listen to while you are drawing?
I tend to do most of my writing and rough layouts in silence. As a musician it’s easy to get distracted by music, and it’s better to keep my entire mind on output mode in that stage since that’s where more of the decision making and mental work is done. Once I move to inks and color, that’s when I let in the music. Usually instrumental, but really anything I can get lost in. Lately I’ve been exploring a cluster of really moving instrumental bands like Meniscus, Totorro, Russian Circles, and Toe. Tool is always a great go-to for making art. Fear Inoculum got flak from some fans for not being aggressive enough, but listen to it on headphones while making art. You’ll get it.
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| Derik Hefner |
I notice you sell Tees as well, do you judge the market and target it or do you create and just hope for the best?
When I do my own shirts (as opposed to commissioned designs), it’s usually pretty organic. I like to make prints of most of my illustrations, but there are some that just feel like they need to be on a shirt. The most recent line of shirts I’ve done are based on a horror icons series I did for Inktober 2019. My friend Steven Jones, a musician and a screenprinter, approached me about turning some of them into shirts, and it all fell into place. Steven is a master, his screens are so faithful to the original drawings down to details I never thought would translate. It’s been a great collaboration, and we’re about to do a new one this week, which I’m very excited about.
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| Derik Hefner |
I also notice that you are pretty active in the artistic community with pages on Facebook, personally I find it important to inspire and feed others creatively. Is this something that you hope to continue and are you finding personal growth as an artist from these endeavors?
Absolutely! A strong artist community is something I was missing for a long time. I feel like we have that in Inkslingers, in ways I never could have expected when I booked that first show of 6 artists. I have been tremendously inspired by the artists there, and have made many dear friends through it. I’ve also recently started teaching a week-long comics art workshop in high schools. I just started in spring of 2019, and the pandemic cancelled this year’s classes so I’ve really only begun that journey and it’s already one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
What would you tell someone that is just starting out, that's trying to create their own comic or artwork for that matter?
As a cartoonist or comics artist, your focus should be on storytelling above all else. Even if you are not the writer on a project or have no desire to write, you are a visual storyteller. To do that effectively, there is a lot of craft to be learned. But it’s all in service of story. Whatever your role in the process, learn about all the aspects of making comics. Writing, penciling, inking, coloring, lettering. Familiarity with the entire machine will enable you to be better at your part of it, whatever that is. It will help the entire team move more efficiently toward that greater goal of telling the story.
Coming back to community, find every avenue you can to connect with other artists, no matter how far along you are on your path.
Most importantly: if you want to make comics... make comics. You don’t need permission from anyone to do that. But if you still feel like you do, there... I just gave it to you.
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| Inkslingers |
What tools do you use primary when doing your work, especially your graphic novel. I take it that you are traditionally inking. I also like the way you use your palette, it seems to accentuate the inking, kind of old school...was that intentional?
I’ve actually been all digital for the past couple years. It took a while for digital tools to be on par with traditional tools, both in result and the feel of the tools, but the Apple Pencil for the iPad Pro changed the game. And since any comic or print you hold in your hand has to be digitized on its way to becoming a comic or print, it only makes sense. It cuts down on supply costs, and eliminates time-consuming steps like scanning and stitching together pieces of multiple scans. But aside from those kinds of steps, it’s been an aid in my growth as an artist. I can take greater risks with my inking, and be more bold than I would with a traditional brush, since clean-up is considerably easier. With traditional inking tools, there’s a little more inhibition, knowing that whatever you put down is permanent, unless you want to break out the white opaque paint and spend 20 minutes fixing it. No more accidental ink spills that make you have to start all over. Working with digital layers is life-changing when you come from traditional media.
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| Derik Hefner |
Too see more of Derik's work and projects check out
Head Space.
If you like what I do and want to support it I have new Tees available on
Teepublic
Or if you wish, you can support INK at
Patreon.
