Mark Kistler is an American artist who hosts drawing instruction programs for children, young adults, and their parents to teach the freedom and joy of drawing. [1]
Mark Kistler is an American artist who hosts drawing instruction programs for children, young adults, and their parents to teach the freedom and joy of drawing. [1]
He was inspired as a 15-year-old by Napoleon Hill's book "Think and Grow Rich." He wanted to follow his passion of teaching children to draw. He set a goal of teaching 1,000,000 children to draw by the age of 18. Stopping short at 400,000 on his 18th birthday re-set his goal to hit the million mark at 21 and continued teaching hundreds of kids at schools. In 1983 wanting to address the lack of drawing specific how-to-videos in art stores he began to approach video production companies to create a drawing program to make drawing accessible. One of the production companies he approached was already preparing to produce a children's painting program, upon learning about the opportunity Mark convinced the company to change their focus citing the lack of available programming specifically geared to drawing techniques. The show developed into Maryland Public Television's 1985 production The Secret City . [2]
Mark starred as the host Commander Mark, an enthusiastic space man teaching drawing techniques to viewers at home and the on-screen characters Zebtron, Metaman and Cindy the Dragon. The show was broadcast to 11 million PBS viewers each week, far surpassing his original one million student goal. His art style is a cartoon 3D style that is focused on basic drawing techniques such as foreshortening, shading, surface, size, overlapping, contour, and density. [3] His first book "Draw Squad" was released in 1988. In 1990, Mark was brought back to host a new Public Television program "Mark Kistler's Imagination Station." The show demonstrated to viewers techniques on how to Draw-In-3D and having fun while doing it.
In 2010 Mark was awarded an Emmy for the series for "teaching kids to draw in 3-D while imparting messages of self-esteem, and appreciation for literature, science, classic art and the environment. [4] He continues to teach students in classroom settings, has produced several drawing books and DVDs, and currently hosts live and streaming drawing tutorial videos to members through a subscription model on his website. [5] His use of enthusiastic tag lines for viewers such as "Draw, draw, draw!", "Art Attack!", "Art Animals!!", "Yeeeeahhh", "Sharpen your pencils!", "pencil power!", and "Dream it, draw it, do it!" continue to be referenced as inspiration for other artists such as Jerzy Drozd, Lee Cherolis [6] and Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade. [7] [8]
He portrayed Commander Mark in The Secret City , a fictional space-themed series where he taught child viewers skills and vocabulary to become better artists. [9] Each episode included a segment where Mark would add to a large 12-foot mural that was added to each episode using a technique or several techniques learned throughout the series. The mural was inspired by his mother, who let him and his brother draw a mural in their childhood bedroom when they were young adolescents. The mural from the show had to be re-created 20 episodes into the production of the original 65 episodes due to broadcast cameras not being able to pick up the fine-lined artwork on the original light-colored background. The mural color was changed to a dark orange and had to be re-drawn by Mark by tracing over the original. Following the production MPT station VP Michael Styer and friend, co-creator, and executive producer Robert Neustadt allowed Mark to keep the entire mural. The mural was so large it had to be shipped freight in a large crate to contain the 12-foot completed artwork. [10] It currently hangs in his mother's classroom at Carlsbad High School in Carlsbad, California until Mark plans to relocate it to his home in Houston, Texas. [11]
Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface. The instrument might be pencils, crayons, pens with inks, brushes with paints, or combinations of these, and in more modern times, computer styluses with graphics tablets.
Jack Kirby was an American comic book artist, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He grew up in New York City and learned to draw cartoon figures by tracing characters from comic strips and editorial cartoons. He entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s, drawing various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, before ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby regularly teamed with Simon, creating numerous characters for that company and for National Comics Publications, later to become DC Comics.
A pencil is a writing or drawing implement with a solid pigment core in a protective casing that reduces the risk of core breakage, and keeps it from marking the user's hand.
Neal Adams was an American comic book artist. He was the co-founder of the graphic design studio Continuity Associates, and was a creators-rights advocate who helped secure a pension and recognition for Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. During his career, Adams cocreated the characters John Stewart, Man-Bat, and Ra's al Ghul for DC Comics.
A penciller is an artist who works on the creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms, with a focus on the initial pencil illustrations, usually in collaboration with other artists, who provide inks, colors and lettering in the book, under the supervision of an editor.
Robert Liefeld is an American comic book creator. A prominent writer and artist in the 1990s, he is known for co-creating the character Cable with writer Louise Simonson and the character Deadpool with writer Fabian Nicieza. In the early 1990s, Liefeld gained popularity due to his work on Marvel Comics' The New Mutants and later X-Force. In 1992, he and several other popular Marvel illustrators left the company to found Image Comics, which started a wave of comic books owned by their creators rather than by publishers. The first book published by Image Comics was Liefeld's Youngblood #1.
Alfonso Williamson was an American cartoonist, comic book artist and illustrator specializing in adventure, Western, science fiction and fantasy.
Dan Spiegle was an American comics artist and cartoonist best known for comics based on movie and television characters across a variety of companies, including Dell Comics, DC Comics, and Marvel Comics.
Emil Samuel "Zeke" Zekley was an American cartoonist who worked on several comic strips, notably George McManus's Bringing Up Father.
Bryan Hitch is a British comics artist and writer. Hitch began his career in the United Kingdom for Marvel UK, working on titles such as Action Force and Death's Head, before gaining prominence on American titles such as Wildstorm's Stormwatch and The Authority, DC Comics' JLA, and Marvel Comics' The Ultimates.
Ralph Reese is an American artist who has illustrated for books, magazines, trading cards, comic books and comic strips, including a year drawing the Flash Gordon strip for King Features. Prolific from the 1960s to the 1990s, he is best known for his collaboration with Byron Preiss on the continuing feature "One Year Affair", serialized in the satiric magazine National Lampoon from 1973 to 1975 and then collected into a 1976 book.
John Thomas Alexis Craig, was an American comic book artist notable for his work with the EC Comics line of the 1950s. He sometimes used the pseudonyms Jay Taycee and F. C. Aljohn.
Pappyland is an American half-hour children's television series, originally written by Jon Nappa, who also wrote The Logbooks of Admiral Jake Book. The show starred acclaimed cartoonist-artist Michael Cariglio as Pappy Drew-It, an artist/49er-type character who lived in a magical cabin in a bizarre land with many different creatures and people. More than 30 half-hour episodes were written by children's writer Eric J. Roberts, who also served as executive producer. Children's author Benette Whitmore wrote 35 episodes and introduced the character, DoodleBug. It was originally broadcast on WCNY-TV in Syracuse, New York and many other PBS stations from May 24, 1993, to September 3, 1999. Thereafter, the show was moved to TLC and began airing new episodes from September 30, 1996, until 1997, with reruns airing until February 21, 2003. More than half of the show was shot on bluescreen.
Gene Ha is an American comics artist and writer best known for his work on books such as Top 10 and Top 10: The Forty-Niners, with Alan Moore and Zander Cannon, for America's Best Comics, the Batman graphic novel Fortunate Son, with Gerard Jones, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, among others. He has also drawn Global Frequency and has drawn covers for Wizard and Marvel Comics.
Howard Porter is an American comic book artist from southern Connecticut.
The Secret City was a television series designed to teach children how to draw.
Mark Kistler's Imagination Station is a public television series where artist Mark Kistler taught children and adults to draw using techniques such as perspective and shading. The program was originally presented by TV station KIXE in the Redding and Chico areas of the U.S. state of California. Kistler also released some publications of teaching techniques used in the show. It had a short reprise later in the 1990s but did not continue to run past a few episodes.
Charles J. "Jerry" Grandenetti was an American comic book artist and advertising art director, best known for his work with writer-artist Will Eisner on the celebrated comics feature "The Spirit", and for his decade-and-a-half run on many DC Comics war series. He also co-created the DC comic book Prez with Joe Simon.
Jack Katz is an American comic book artist and writer, painter and art teacher known for his graphic novel The First Kingdom, a 24-issue epic he began during the era of underground comix.
Learn to Draw was a syndicated series of 15 minute drawing lessons from Jon Gnagy. It was shown from 1950 to 1955 and Gnagy "never earned a cent directly from the show".
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
