On Drawing Like Moebius: Based on a Question from Tumblr

Hey thanks for the question! I'm a complete amateur and Moebius is, in my estimation, one of the most skilled visual artists of the last century so please take everything I have to say with a grain of salt while I answer your question. This all comes from my own experience and I am still learning. 

First of all my main piece of advice for anybody drawing anything: if you want to get good, assume that you know nothing, start from the beginning, practice fundamentals, and draw every day, even if it's just for like 15 minutes. No amount of art advice is worth anything if you don't draw.

Now to address your question about how to replicate a 'Moebius-like Quality,' I would say what you need to do is study him very carefully.

When I first started drawing seriously and getting super into Moebius and all that I made the mistake of thinking 'Okay, this is just simple lines and bright, mostly flat colors underneath. Not too hard to replicate.' Which couldn't be further from the truth. Moebius' art has this thing about it where it can often appear really simple but you try to recreate it and you find yourself hitting a wall. Let's look at an example:

This looks like what I said, right? Clean lines, striking color palette. But there's more to that. First of all, the fact that the gigantic flat black shape at the bottom of the piece conveys simultaneously the impression of the girl on the left leaning against the chest of the central figure and the boy on right fading into the back of composition while not containing any detail itself should clue you in to how much of a master good o'l Gir is and how much thought and knowledge had to go into designing this piece. There's more.

If we zoom in on the head we can learn a bit. This is the focal point of the piece and, as such, this is where all the detail is. Where lines are used sparingly throughout the rest of the comp, here they provide an abundance of detail for the central figure's elaborate headdress with contour lines defining the shape of the yellow crest and other lines throughout intimating textile patterns. The colors are striking but they're not just random bright colors.

There's the light blue of the background, a smattering of desaturated purple/red colors in the headdress, and the yellow of the crest. Let's look at a color wheel:

You should notice that yellow is on the opposite side of the wheel from the entire blue-purple section. Yellow contrasts with blues and purples. Thus, just that tiny bit of yellow is enough to make it totally pop out from the rest of the more desaturated blues and purples in the piece. So, not just some random bright colors, but some carefully thought out areas of low and high color contrast.

Let's look at another example:

A small piece but so effective. Notice how in the top, the horizontal lines begin super tightly packed and spread to create a gradient from pack to white. Notice how the line weight increases between the shadowed and light sides of the mushroom cloud to brilliantly indicate a core shadow. Notice how the horse and rider are mostly just black shapes- but they're composed in such a way that your mind knows exactly what they represent. Notice how the hatching that creates the ground texture also points towards the cowboy's head as a focal point.

Another one:

Look at the linework on this. The way he varies the lineweights to indicate changes in value. The way each line describes the form of the figure and his clothes. How the lines create texture. No line here was put down by chance- each one has a purpose and Moebius knew the purpose of every mark he put on a paper.

So, I guess part one of my answer is you gotta really put the work into being a good artist and use Moebius as your guide. Get good with pens, be able to vary your lineweights, be confident with all different kinds of hatching styles, etc. Read up on color theory and see how Giraud applied it. Every new thing you learn, take that knowledge and use it to study your favorite artists and see how they applied it. That's how you learn.

There's a little more though and this applies to the content of Moebius' art.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the Moebius' concept art for the unmade 1970's Dune movie with a screenshot from the new Dune movie. What makes them different? As bizarre as the Moebius design is, it feels a hundred times more real to me than the armor pictured on the right. There's a specificity to it. Where the Moebius design feels like the result of generations of tradition and culture resulting in an outfit as elaborate, unconventional, and distinctive as that of an Ottoman Janissary, a Landsknecht, or a Samurai, the image on the right looks like a generic assemblage of armor plates with no history behind them. 

As fantastic as Moebius' work is, it definitely has a basis in the real world. I mean, he spent years illustrating a gritty, down-to-earth cowboy comic. All his designs feel distinct and specific and I would venture to say that a lot of that comes from taking an interest in real world cultures and traditions. 

I think this is true of all real good science fiction and fantasy artists. They know how to take something from the real world and twist it to their own ends. 

I hope this answers your question and helps you find joy in creating art. That's what it's all about.

For more reading, here's a William Stout article on the subject: https://www.williamstout.com/news/journal/?p=3806

As a postscript, I'll include some other artists that I think anyone who is a fan of Moebius should check out.

Sergio Toppi:

Katsuya Terada:

Katsuhiro Otomo:

Mark Schultz: