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.
