An Old One

Here’s an old picture I drew, probably about 12 or 14 years old now.  Not bad, not great though.  No shading, no real depth and a bit out of proportion.  Shows movement pretty well though I think.

Captain Cold

Winter has been long and awful here in Central Ontario and I have been reading The Flash mostly this month.  It seemed appropriate to draw Captain Cold!

 

Art Project

After taking over the basement at out house it sort of became agreed upon that the less travelled downstairs area was mine to decorate.  So clearly there are a lot of super hero things about already.  I got the cover of Batman #1 (new 52) and Superman Unchained cover #1 printed off in gigantic format and have them on the walls along with some statues and large toys.  Out in the hallway though I thought that I might put up some of my own art, so I have been busy creating things!

Have a look! This is just a taste thought really.

Cover Song

In the world of comics there are a few images that are instantly recognizable.  Like the cover of Action Comics #1 from the 1930’s for instance.  If you are a Superman type of person I can just mention that cover and the image of it comes into you head.

Recently Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder have done a Zero Year story line on Batman were they have been able to pull a few old images from the original 1930’s Detective Comics and put them in their book.  The one I of course recognized was the cover of Detective Comics #1 with a new spin on it, involving it directly in their story.

So I was thinking about that the other day and took a crack at it as well.  Here is what the original and Greg’s looks like, and then my own too.

Pencils

I’ve taken to drawing on my lunch time at work.  I can still chat with people and socialize so it’s a bit better than sticking my face in my 3DS.  Yesterdays work was not so great, I just couldn’t get the image from my head onto paper. However, Mondays drawing turned out very well I think!

I found a good pose that conveys action.  Actually its from karate.  And it’s because it’s defensive that it works I think because it’s the defender that is really ‘in motion’  I was trying to draw the follow up punch yesterday and it never really came together, I think because when I envision a punch the thrower of said punch has base and is grounded.  It looked like a good punch, but not a good superhero punch is all.

Anyways, here is the one I like.

Neal Adams

I regularly listen to the podcast – Fatman on Batman, I’ve mentioned it on my other blog a few times.  Kevin Smith’s last guest was Neal Adams, an amazing artist.  (You can find it here).  One of the things he mentioned was that all the great artists of the history of ever traced their paintings, or at the very least had models.

I spent some time this evening doing just that.  I have discovered a couple of things in the process.  If you trace like you did as a kid – without ever picking your pencil up of the paper, the drawing will look like you traced it.  The lines will wobble around and whatever, it just looks ‘traced’.  To me at least.  So I got on to tracing, but doing it sketching style so it would still end up looking ok.  Well better than ok actually!

I think the point of the whole exercise is to train your eye for proportion and where shadows go and that type of thing.  I took a couple drawings tonight right from pencils to colours. I’ll share them here.  Be sure to check out the Fatman on Batman too, Neal is a fantastic story teller!