Figure Study

Robert Frederick Blum's pen sketch demonstrates the anatomical studies that underpin sequential visual narrative. By the 1890s, artists like Blum would pioneer the visual language of comics—panels, action poses, and expressive line work—in newspaper Sunday supplements. These foundational drawing techniques, developed through figure studies, enabled artists to convey motion and emotion across sequential frames. Blum's careful attention to form and gesture here reflects the draftsmanship essential to early comic strip artists who created *The Yellow Kid*, *Katzenjammer Kids*, and other strips that established comics as a distinct medium born from the newspaper page.