Will Eisner on how an artist's style changes over time

YRONWODE: The style of inking you use in A Contract with God is quite different from what you did in The Spirit - you're not using the coarse brush that you used to use - there lot of fine pen lines. In fact, and this is sort of off-the-wall, I don't know if you're into Winsor McCay at all...
EISNER: Of course I know his stuff very well.
YRONWODE: ...Well, he started off with a relatively simple inking style in Little Nemo in 1905, but when he got older and began to do those editorial cartoons during the last 10 years of his life, he got into an extremely fine crosshatching style -- he avoided solid blacks altogether at that point...
EISNER: Yeah, sure- we all seem to go that route. Michelangelo too - in his later years he began to have a looser approach to his carving. The unfinished statues that you find in Plorence are an example of that. And Milton Caniff - look at the change in his work over the years. As one gets older, as one matures, the tight line, the finely constructed line, loses its value. Perhaps one gets more interested in the theme than in the technique.

People don't remain the same, they change over the years. The only features that never altered their structural line are features like Mickey Mouse. Even Al Capp changed - although he never loosened up to the point of sketchiness. When you have a strip that's very very personal to the artist, a strip which isn't drawn by formula, you'll find that the art will change. Usually it will tend to get looser. There's a lack of patience with having to retain that heavy line. In The Spirit that heavy, very controlled line was an effort to retain color, color which had to be applied after all by someone else. We had to give them what we used to call "trap arcas." Now that's not necessary- the technology has advanced, color can be applied in other ways. Besides, I like that loose line I think it looks nicer... more expressive.