Batman Before & After

My wife, recently to her shock and disgust, after all these years got to witness my sense of perfectionism when I kept taking a painting out and making corrections. She feared as I do that I’d ruin an otherwise fine painting. Such was the case for the image below. I was never content with how this image turned out and I kept working on it and as history would prove it could have turned into a statistic and tossed into the trash can. I’ve often told my wife how I’ve thrown out more art than kept. If it was something I colored, you can bet on it.

At any rate, I think Neal Adams draws one of the finest looking Batmans ever. The blue and gray colors and emblem were traditional and, although I’m no authority on Batman, it seemed when Adams came around he drew Batman so he didn’t have the old Adam West mask style. Ok, I still love Superfriends the cartoon, but I’m talking about the black frame in the front of Batman’s cowl that shapes the eyes and nose. It always looked like a mask made into another mask that way. Neal Adams made the mask look convincing and spotted wicked blacks for interesting effect. In trying to keep with Adams’ vision of the character I didn’t want to bring black into the mask and I thought I got what I wanted out of it, but something didn’t seem right.

But after picking up the painting again for perhaps the 4th time I decided to try to add black and see if it finally felt right. Mind you, the painting was dated June of 2006. About mid-way, that is, the second time I took the painting out of the closet, although not pictured above, you’re not seeing the cone shapes I made with a Sharpie marker to pop out the nose.

I feel like it’s done, but am annoyed how the blue in the mask doesn’t look like the same blue color as the cape. It is. But I guess the black makes the blue look darker. So I think I learned Batman must be darker or he won’t look right.

The Phantom Redux

All right, you’ve seen my breakdowns on the prior blog and I thought I’d share how the painting is coming along. My wife and I traded the image back and forth until we were both properly satisfied with how The Phantom looks. As time allows we’ll concentrate on the background. She wants to add lightning in the sky. I do not as the past two paintings already incorporated that effect. But she deserves a chance because she hasn’t yet painted lightning. She has a nifty idea for the forest and I suspect it will turn out lots better than my palm trees and Yucka leafs. I explained to her if she doesn’t want to just have greens in the background we could add a cobblestone cave or something different, yet detailed.

The Ghost Who Walks

Here’s the preliminary work for our next painting. The Sharpie markers tend to bleed through the water-based acrylic paint so I just made some dotted lines in order for my wife to have some shading/highlighting guidelines. I let her will her own magic and try not to interfere any more than that. Since the marker lines will no doubt be tweaked it wouldn’t make sense to add more marker lines than neccesary because often times we cover over our marker lines and it’s quite a task.

My wife is a fan of the character; it’s too bad the movie didn’t do the character justice. I recently, finally, tried a few Moonstone The Phantom TPs and I really enjoyed them. The Douglas Klauba paintings are the best.

Watercolor-loo

I’m not comfortable doing watercolors. It’s even more difficult when I use $2.00 paint brush kits. I just don’t have what it takes with anything hands-on, colorwise, I hope you enjoy these samples from my watercolor sketchbook nonetheless.

Below, is my most recent addition. I painted it this weekend and only did some minor tweaks against the version you’re looking at. I hate it. The pencil and inks weren’t exactly great either. If I remember correctly I think I drew Metal Gear Solid’s Snake from a Todd toy. These images, that is, the blog would have posted ontime but I had sluggish internet the evening before.

Here’s a Batman one representing my second attempt at watercolors in my book. It’s an old painting.

The next one is my first ever watercolor in the book. I made this a few or a couple or several years back. I don’t recall, really. It’s Star Wars based, of a character of my own design, I wanted to stylise my drawing in the way fashion designers draw elegant, yet long limbed people. I dig that sort of stuff.

Lastly, it’s Wolverine. I can draw faces fine, it’s what I like best. I’m kind of hesitant to paint it. I’m sorry it’s difficult to see. I don’t want to ruin this drawing.

Better Later Than Never

Here’s a painting that sat around for a long time. I never sketched the body out to my satisfaction. Initially, this painting was my attempt to try and not outline a figure in black and instead go with a realistic type look that, say, Frazetta does with his oil paintings. It didn’t work out, thus, the painting sat around. So I picked it up and immediately inked out the body work, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best; I didn’t want to be disgusted by it anymore. After correcting the body shape I tried to envelope the fire around the body and blend it in with what came before. I hope it goes unnoticed.