Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 31, 2025 | 1 comment

FRANCO’S FREE-FOR-ALL FRIDAYS!

By FRANCO

The Long (Contoured) Halloween. 

Back when I taught high school, in my intro drawing classes I would start with the basics. Contour drawings. For anyone who knows about drawing, you’ve probably heard about contour drawings. Students hated them for the most part. Especially when I would employ tactics like: No erasing or drawing in ballpoint pen. Or making them draw with their hand in a paper bag so they couldn’t see their paper.

To the students, this constituted cruel and unusual punishment. To say the least, they were vocal about their distaste for it — but there was a reason. I would describe contour as a seeing exercise, not a drawing exercise. It would force students to really take a look at what they were trying to draw instead of looking briefly and then making things up when they went to put it on paper. During that time from looking at the object to their paper, things would get lost in translation. Extra lines or fudging things to make their drawings work, which is OK but ONLY after you learn what is really supposed to be there.

One of the things I would have them draw in contour was pumpkins and gourds. They had a bunch of lines and curves, so you really had to look at them if you wanted to make them look at all realistic. They were perfect for contour drawings.

What does this have to do with Batman: The Long Halloween? Written by Jeph Loeb with artwork by the late, great Tim Sale, and first published as a maxiseries in 1996 and 1997, this is the perfect book to talk about on Halloween. (Its latest sequel, The Last Halloween, written by Loeb with an all-star cast of artists paying tribute to Sale, wrapped up this week, actually. Old Sale illustrations were used for the main covers.)

The Long Halloween is also the perfect book to talk about contour with. I have always thought Tim’s drawings, especially in this series, look like contour drawings. They’re not, but the look is there. They appear deceptively simple, like a contour. Contour is the elegance of trying to convey something with simple lines. Imagine a little ant is crawling along the edges of an object and you are trying to follow that with your pencil or pen on paper to capture that without looking down at your paper.

I practice what I preach. Sometimes I do contour drawings as a way to brush up or warm up. So I thought the most fitting thing for this Halloween was to do some contour drawings from the book. It’s actually an apt metaphor: The story follows a line through the Gotham rogues gallery to find the culprit Batman is looking for. If you think about it, though, the book isn’t even really a Halloween story. It reminds me more of Batman: The Animated Series than a regular Batman book, but it’s in the title, so I’m going with it. It’s a book I like and the art style is so far from my own that I decided some contours were in order.

I did the three pieces in this column as practice in ballpoint pen and directly from my observations of Tim’s work. Lines and shadows.

Draw what you see. I like pumpkins. And candy.

Happy Halloween. And Happy Friday!

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Want more FRANCO’S FREE-FOR-ALL FRIDAYS? Come back next week!

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MORE

— It’s OK to Acknowledge BOB KANE’s Role in Creating BATMAN. Click here.

— NEW YORK COMIC CON: From an Artist’s Point of View. Click here.

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Franco and his forehead have traveled the world and he writes and draws stuff. Franco is the creator, artist and writer of Patrick the Wolf Boy and Aw Yeah Comics! Franco has worked on books/comics, including Tiny Titans and Superman Family Adventures. Franco was also a high-school teacher and is one of the principal owners of Aw Yeah Comics retail stores. Dan made Franco add that he has won three Eisners.