Quick Update

Well, I’m not getting the kind of traffic I had hoped here. I kind of expected feedback, heck, at least one person (that is, not a spam bot) saying hello (besides me) without a care for art would suffice…but on the other hand, I kind of don’t. Maybe I fear criticism. I am registered at Deviantart.com and perhaps I need to move or create a sketch blog there.

Anyway, I’m updating here not for anything that has to do with what I wrote above, but just to mention how I won’t be uploading and sharing anything new this week. Again. Sorry. Work has been crazy suddenly. In fact, I think my boss (and a few others?) got walked off the job today and there’s a company picnic Saturday. I will ask my sister to scan and email a Batman sketch I did a few weeks ago and share it sometime soon. It turned out okay, enough so that she asked to have it. If that’s not a good indication then I don’t know what is.
In reading over my comments: I also want to emphasize that whenever I state how I “piss off my wife” or “working with someone isn’t easy”, it’s purely in exagerrated terms. Believe me, my wife would feel the exact opposite. It’s painting, after all. Fun, meaningless BS we do at home. Just because. That is to say neither of us are ever at each others throats or arguing. I really ought to try and consider making my blogs contain less text because readers might misunderstand my meaning. And a private life deserves to be kept private. I really should know better.

The Shadow & The Phantom

Things are plenty hectic here at home and I am very disappointed I didn’t have an opportunity to post new pictures. I hope readers, if any, will pardon my delay. Here’s two new paintings with commentary to follow.

This painting has a lot of texture built up to cover mistakes. If you don’t notice, great, but it’s really there. I drew the image from my mind. Originally there was a different nose. I prefer this one to what was before, but I am still not satisfied. I found some great Frank Miller pictures online that would have worked great, albeit too late, from when he was awarded on Spike TV. This is an original picture but we had a lot of Jim Steranko reference material around. We love Old Time Radio, after all. Later on I tried to mimic the flesh tone effects Steranko captures with oil paint and I failed miserably. There was a gun in hand to the left where we covered it up with smoke because ours didn’t look so good. Turns out my wife draws guns worse than me; hers are crooked. We could have copied what someone else had done, in fact, I found a neat Two-Face picture from a Batman comic book, but it’d just look like we copied it so we didn’t approach it that way. My wife can take credit for the black paint, red scarf, and gray hat outlines in addition to the light tone of skin and all the marvelous paint I covered up. Everything else I did. Yes, I did the red in the eyes and the purple lips, she hates that. If anyone thinks working with someone else is easy they’re crazy. I know I pissed off my wife when I painted over the face and started over, but really, it looks better now. If it looks funny it’s because she and I have different ideas about how The Shadow ought to look. I kept thickening his eyebrows, messing with his nose, and continued making him ugly. I think she wanted a more handsome representation.

My wife drew the skull and painted the leaves to the right and left of The Phantom. She also did a bang up job painting the purple. I would not have done it so well. She did great and added the pecks and collarbone. I did the face tones, the shrubbery in the background, the mountains and moon, and I did some touch ups on the skull. We both contributed to the lighting effects inside the skull, which still look fake. This didn’t turn out how I expected. My wife was supposed to participate more, which was scary because it’s a wonder I didn’t ruin the painting like I normally do. I’ll cop to drawing the mask wrong. She pointed out, and yes, it does appear The Phantom has a mask that is big enough to cover the side of his face where his eyes are. I was thinking it was more like a Robin or Green Lantern mask that just stuck on, but nope, I guess it’s supposed to tie around his head underneath his purple hood.

Oh well.