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Steve Lieber Can Criticise Your Art Portfolio Without Even Having to See It

This is legendary, and you read it first today.

Steve Lieber is a comic book artist known for work on Superior Foes Of Spider-Man, Detective Comics, and Hawkman, as well as co-creating the comic Whiteout, turned into a movie directed by Dominic Sena ten years ago.

Lieber studied at the Kubert School for comic book artists and graduated in 1990. He has appeared at a lot of comic conventions and seen a lot of comic creator-wannabe portfolios. Today he winnowed his advice into one set of principles that could apply to the vast majority of portfolios he has seen over the last three decades and at the behest of Gene Ha, put them into a shareable list…

So this is for every comic book artist wanting to break into the industry–and probably for a few who already have.

Thanks to Steve Lieber for giving me permission to share it further. Lieber also adds:

This is lettered in a custom font that was created for me by the great Tom Orzechowski, based on my own hand-lettering on the first Whiteout GN.

Other comic industry added a few other provisos on Facebook, including:

David Marquez: It's like you're talking directly to me

Scott Dunbier: Nice job, Steve! I would add 12A—characters should usually be positioned in order of who is talking.

Gene Ha: Zander Cannon taught me that trick!

Michael L. Peters: Also, avoid vanishing points too close together unless doing an intentional forced perspective or fish-eye lens look… ( then show on scrap paper that trick you showed me for figuring vanishing points no yardstick could reach, even on the biggest desk)

Steve Lieber: That trick:

Chaz Truog: Telling me that "your best work is at home!" makes me want to say, "Then why am I looking at this $#!t?", but I don't, because I'm trying to look like a nice guy.

Scott Dunbier: I once did a portfolio review at a show and the guy was just awful, lousy story-telling and horrible anatomy. I suggested several things, including that he might want to consider taking life drawing classes. I told him if he couldn't afford classes he could just go to the park and draw people. He waited until I finished and then said, "I TEACH life drawing." I laughed and said, "oh, well!"

Robert Hack: Steve, you reviewed my portfolio a few times at old Pittsburgh Comicons. They were the most helpful reviews I ever received. I'm now passing along tips you gave me when I review people's work. Thank you.

Matt Hollingsworth: I had a guy show me his stuff once and, yeah, it was horrible. He asked for advice and it was just too much to deal with so I just boiled it down to "try to spend 10 hours/week drawing". He lost it. "TEN HOURS! WHAT THE HELL?". At the time, I was working maybe 100 hours a week. I told him if he couldn't manage to draw for ten hours a week, how would he do with 40 or 60 or 80.

Any more tips to pass on?

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