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.

Thormania!

Copied from the legendary Jack Kirby, king of all comic book artists. His Thor looks boyish here, almost feminine. I didn't draw Loki's upper arms because he was being carried buy 2 guys, their arms were blocking the shot.

I love to do these dark, scribbly drawings crackling with energy. I think it looks really cool, but there are definitely problems with it that will become apparent as I put some color to it.

He's just sort of holding Mjolnir up in front of himself and looking at it. Is he shaking it at somebody while telling them off? And his hair looks weird.

Hair and hammer looking better, but now he's not looking at whomever he's threatening.

Ok, the gesture is much more focused now, but you can't see his face anymore! He's looking away from the viewer. That would work in a comic book panel, especially if you can see his opponent past him. But it doesn't work so well for a painting of just Thor himself. I lost interest on realizing this, and also I had put a lot of time and effort into it and it was just getting worse as I went. In most regards I like the earliest version best, though the colors there were looking pretty pastel and have gotten much better here. Still though, I really like the idea of coloring my pencil drawings. It works especially well with superheroes I think. But note to self—make the drawing look better before you try it.

It looks to me like a comic book artist turned to the guy next to him and said "Hey man, I need a reference pic—can you lay down on the floor and let me get some pictures? And make sure to make Kirby hand.

I bought some laser printer paper for the slick surface, but found it was hard to draw on. It's too slick—lines come out super light until you press really hard, and you can't draw like that. I really like the head though.

The issue I copied this one from is the only time I've ever seen Thor wearing pointy-toed boots...

I copied this one badly at first, realized I wasn't paying attention to the shapes of the body and the stance, which was supposed to look heroic and powerful. So I redid it, using construction this time and paying a lot more attention. Still not great, but it looks much better.

Enter Thor and my Summer of Superheroes

I sat down one day in July of last year and started to do random figure drawings, as I had been doing all along, when for some reason I wanted to draw Thor spinning his hammer. I think I was just looking for some kind of action and that's what came to mind. It stuck, and this launched me into drawing superheroes for the next few months. It makes sense—I'm trying to learn the human figure and anatomy, so it's necessary to draw muscular people. The big Thor on the right is the one I drew first, entirely from my own head. Later I grabbed a comic book and copied him from the cover there on the left, but afterwards I strengthened the spin-lines of the hammer which almost obliterated the background Thor.

Playing around with comic-style shading techniques on the head, and trying a different hammer-spinning pose. Not a very good one!

What brought on all this sudden superhero silliness? I don't know.

When I drew the first Thor, I thought it looked pretty much like the way Walt Simonson used to draw him. But I looked at the comics and wow, was I wrong! This is a copy of a Thorface he did.

Another one, and a Tharm (?) Both copied from Simonson.

Soldier dude, drawn with scribbles.

I really like Simonson's style. It's hard to do, even copying.

I decided to try a couple on my own, concentrating on proportions, because I was having trouble getting that big superhero look right. I wasn't trying to make them look like Simonson's Thor, just trying to figure out how to draw a character so bulky through the chest and shoulders. Kind of weird-looking above, especially that pose! Is he falling over backwards?

I like the Thor-portioning here. Legs maybe a little short. I chuckled as I drew the exaggerated Kirby feet. He's looking pretty mighty though.

This one had ridiculously short lower legs, so I stretched them out in photoshop. Weird looking, but there's something about it I like.

... Enough that I turned it into what I can only call ColorForms Thor. This one began a tradition of coloring my pencil drawings while preserving the line work, comic book style. I really like the colors here, as bland as the non-pose is. But I realized, if you want to concentrate on proportions, don't do crazy poses. Just standing there is best. Look how small his head is! Of course that's what makes the big guys look so big.