Things start to get hairy—Wrapping up my 2019 posts

Oh those pesky split ends. You condition and condition, but nothing seems to work. 

I decided I wanted to start drawing hair on my figures. I was already doing that thanks to Wolverine, but that isn't exactly normal hair. Here we have a great wealth of it, on Chloe Grace Moretz in a frame grab from Let Me In. Done as another exercise in controlling edges, as well as just realistic painting in general. I put dozens of hours into this one, and got so burned out I couldn't bring myself to finish it. Was dreaming about hair and about painting it.

Here's the progression from pencil to pretty near the final image. I was filling in all the black (with a pencil) and suddenly was all like "What the hell am I Doing??! This would be so much easier in Photoshop!" Also, I cringe to see how off I got the shapes in the beginning. But careful observation gradually brought it all in line. 

And now a little burst of Fafhrd. I tried to draw him above but it didn't look right, so I grabbed some Anthony Kiedis ref (that's who I based Fafhrd's face on). No split ends here no sir—smooth and silky!

Yeah, I neglected to put hair on these, but really I was trying to work out a chin configuration. I like the one at the top that looks like the prow of an icebreaker.

But here I squared it off for some reason. I think that ship's prow chin was just looking a little too caricatured for my taste. But then Fafhrd is always a bit caricatured.

Cleanup, and slightly modified the jawline. A bit more prow-like, without being ridiculous.

... And color.

Now THAT'S some hair!! Also facial expression. My God, what's going on in here? Is it still my blog? *Checks* Yep. Wow.

Adjusting...

This is more what it looked like in the photo, but it looks too weird. I think I like the middle version, though the teeth are much better here. That eye just came down too far though.

Grandpa Fafhrd?

What a shiny head you've got! And a Mona Lisa smile. And big ears.

I suddenly remembered I used to do figure drawings and stuff.

This looks like a Pre-Raphaelite head with 70's feathered hair and a ridiculous giraffe neck. Hey, I'm trying to stretch out and do some different things here.

... And this my friends was the last thing I drew in 2019. I no longer agree with what I wrote there, those figures aren't really tight and rigid. A little awkward maybe. But I was starting to draw a full-page composition with 2 figures interacting. Squaring off to fight perhaps, or maybe—dancing? I don't know. Hey, it's 2 figures interacting! That's getting pretty high up in the levels of complexity! Maybe I should have started a little higher, thought about what they're doing and why, who they are maybe. You know, story. Ah well, there's something to work up to this year, right?

Well, I had a blast doing these daily catchup posts of my art from last year. It was fun and even enlightening taking a good look at them, more-or-less in order, and writing about them like this. I haven't done much art this year yet—a few things, but I won't be posting them for a while. I hate to say it, but after this ridiculous wealth of daily posting, my blog is going to sink back into inactivity for a while. A bit of feast and famine.

So with that, this is Darkmatters signing off for now. But I will be back. I promise.

Wolverine Warily Weasels his Wicked Way Within (...What??!)

I finally decided to draw one of the life casts I bought long ago from Haunted Studio. It's a brilliant idea—Hollywood studios have rooms full of molds and casts of the faces of stars, made every time one of them does a film requiring a dummy or prosthetic makeup of any kind. Whoever is behind Haunted Studio gathered a massive collection of molds (studios were throwing them out by the hundreds at one point!) and started selling castings to collectors, art students, and fans I suppose—anybody who might want the plastic face of a celebrity on their wall.

This is Christina Ricci. My purpose was to copy it as exactly as I could, paying careful attention to edges and shadows (and the edges of shadows). I'm amazed at the effect it creates when you get the edges all correct—the image seems to leap off the flat surface and become solid. A few more of these, with the same amount of time and effort put in, and I'll be much better at painting faces.

I thought it came out really nice, but wanted to bring a little more life to it, so I added some color here and there and some makeup—the picture screamed out for some blue somewhere.

The hair needs work, and I seem to have forgotten to add the eyebrow. I have a tendency to stop working on things a little before they're done. Really need to address that.

I also bought a life mask of Liam Neeson. I must say they're not great for drawing from because it's just the face itself without a head behind it. That means you end up drawing a disembodied face or actually drawing the cast itself the way I did here (from a photo I took of it). But it is excellent for an edge control exercise.

 There's Wolverine! The weasly wittle wascal! It looks to me like he's laying out to get a tan here, or maybe standing and seen from a little too oblique of an angle. I wanted to try one more body type, though I made him a  little too tall really, He's supposed to be built like a fireplug.

Random practice heads.

Hmmm... these guys almost look suspiciously familiar. Couldn't be—they live in totally separate publishing worlds, aside from the rare crossover event. You must be JOKING to even suggest such a THING!

Batman flutters his cape one last time before yielding the floor to Wolverine.

Drawn with various kinds of specialty markers, including a brush pen and a Fude calligraphy marker. It almost worked, but overall the lines are a bit too crude and thick.

Still fun to color in though! This was a copy from a Marc Silvestri drawing.

So was this one. You know, I'm not sure drawing Wolvie is really going to help me learn how to do hair, unless I want to paint A Flock of Seagulls. Body hair maybe...

And that wraps up my Summer of Superheroes, but there's still one more post covering my art from 2019. Stick around and enjoy one last blast before we launch into the new stuff.

The Dark Knight returns to my blog

This came out a little thicker and heavier than I like Batman to be, though a far cry from the bulky bodybuilder version I've seen recently. And I do love this classic costume. He doesn't seem to have a waist though, the ribcage is jammed right down against the pelvis. I hate when that happens.

Looks pretty good with some color on it. 

This is my attempt at the slender Batman. I imagined him somehow having a quiver on his back and pulling an arrow from it or something. Lol, didn't make sense when I drew the cape on. So maybe he's scratching his head. Hey, bats can get fleas.

These were copied from something—probably by Jim Aparo.

For the top one the idea was he's high on the wall of some warehouse over a river, letting himself fall back gracefully, doing a tuck-and-roll, and then emerging in a perfect dive. I really liked the much more graceful and acrobatic heroes of the 70's—Daredevil was another example.

Every once in a while, even during my Summer of Superheroes, I still just did generic figures in action poses. But I was definitely thinking superheroes.

This one was undoubtedly conceived as a Batman pose. 

This drawing is from one of my 90's sketchbooks. Man, I was really drawing powerfully and intuitively then!! This is one of my favorites from that period. So I decided to color it in...

I think if I kept working it I could turn this into something really good, it would just take some work. But I lost interest when the energy of the original sketch got lost. Now it's midway between that rough sketch and a more fully developed painting.

Actually, scrolling up and down this page, this piece jumps out from the rest, probably because of the unusual darkness and coloring, plus the fact that we're viewing him from the shadow side rather than the lit side. All very eye-catching.

Begin Batman

Feeling like I can draw Thor fairly well now on my own, without copying anybody. So I started doing some poses—still playing around with different proportioning etc.

I notice on the big guys I have a tendency to make the chest look flattened out. Also something weird about the way his left arm is attached to the torso—that's another problem of mine, no matter how big a character is. Never mind the expressionless face, that's still the way I'm drawing heads, like they're on mannequins. Soon I'll start giving them expressions and turning/tilting the heads for more life.

Here I really wanted to draw him big!! Almost like the Hulk—in fact my informal name for this version is HulkThor.

Liked it enough to start putting some color to it, even though it isn't a finished drawing. Partly I want to see how much I can still work on the drawing itself digitally, clean it up and add parts I left off, make any necessary changes.

Added a face entirely digitally. Looks pretty decent I think, like it's part of the original drawing.

The hair was the hardest part to add, because I needed to make the strokes bold enough to not wobble (much), but they needed to end up hitting exactly the right places. Had to try most lines over and over many times.

... And suddenly I felt I had drawn enough Thor and wanted to do a completely different body type. Actually first I just drew yet another practice head, then a second one that on impulse I put the Bat-cowl on. Then I grabbed an old comic from the 70's and copied a drawing by Jim Aparo, one of my favorite Batman artists.

Long, lean and athletic, that's the Batman of the 70's. He was also a dark creature of the night, more so than in any earlier incarnation, and largely to combat the damage done by the ridiculous 60's TV show that presented him as a silly buffoon.

Sometimes Aparo would switch to a much thinner version of Batman that emphasized grace rather than power. I didn't draw any of those here. Just wanted to mention it.