Road Warrior - the next Epic

The next large scale painting is up on the table - the Road Warrior.  This is a small scale value drawing, for what will be a 30x40" painting.

I had wrapped that Oz painting last winter, thinking that was going to be it, but some plans have changed, and I'll be doing a lot more coming up.  Next on deck, Predator, and a Superman I&II combo...

A Bad Day for Captain Solo

8x10" Acrylics and colored pencil - done as a gift for Star Wars Action News hosts, Arnie and Marjorie, for giving me now over 300 (!!!) episodes of Star Wars podcasts to listen to while working.  I finally had a chance to meet them at an SDCC breakfast last Friday, and brought a long a little something to show my appreciation.

This is the paint over the pencils - with this one I used a palette knife to create the underpainted gesso texture, to give some areas that flat, paved look, like the block of carbonite itself.  I really like how it came out, I'll try that again!

Avengers Assemble!!!

OK, time to pack these up and head down to Comic Con, in San Diego!  This will be my 12th time going...I've seen it go from manageable to completely insane.  In the Olden Times, you could walk the aisles easily, long lines sure...for creators and celebrities (actually related to the industry) but never got overcrowded, really.  Busy, yes.  Before eBay, it was the place to go to fill in your collections, everything was for sale - now it's mostly a showroom for stuff coming out six months later, in the midst of a mosh pit at a 1989 Anthrax concert...

Iron Man

Final!  Red metal is hard.  That's what I learned here.  Not that I didn't know going in, it was part of the challenge to do this one...but I think it came out pretty successful.  I tweaked the current Iron Man costume, and added a little bit of mobility to the suit, that I couldn't see in the comics.  The one thing that I need to work from this, the A-10's are a little lacking; I wanted to focus the detail and color on the main figure, so I left off some contrast and detail, and I don't know that the out of focus and shaky cam I wanted really came through?

Anyways, I do like this one a lot, and I think there's growth from Thor last month, then Cap, Hulk, and now Iron Man - I felt they got progressively better.

Here's some in-progress images:

I actually did some matte work on this, and separately painted the figure from the background.

Then I flipped that mattework, and covered Iron Man, and airbrushed the background.  There's also a bit of paint in the energy ports...

Captain America 02

Take that, you Ratzis!!!

Captain America 01

Cap is on the board!  Here's the pencils, wash, and texture stage.

And now, some color with the airbrush pass.  No matting with this one, I wanted all the colors to share each other at the edges, even though it was kind of a pain in the ass to keep the main colors separate.

Also I wanted to experiment with a less opaque coloring technique, and see if if would add anything to the time period...feeling....ambiance?...with letting more of that under-texture come through.

The final tomorrow...

HULK 02

WHO PUT CHOCOLATE IN HULK'S PEANUT BUTTER!?!

HULK 01

Well, I got a little ahead of myself in the process archiving - I had done the first pass of green, with the airbrush, before realizing I didn't get a pic of the pencil drawing and wash.  Not that it's any different from the original sketch.

Well, maybe except for one thing, the aspect ratio of the canvas is 12x18", with the final frame is 11x16.5", so I had a little more space, that I drew out more of his lower lip, and crow's feet around his eyes.  Something I hadn't considered in the sketch transfer, so I kind of winged it, and it's not great.  Of course, if anybody ever framed this painting, they could always matte it to the correct ratio.  It's not really that big of deal, but it's something I should probably consider if I ever get to do a Marvel cover for real.

Now this is the finished paint pass, there's a little bit of wrinkling that the sun is picking up and making it look more warped than it actually is.  Of course all those wrinkles flatten out as soon as it gets cut off the deck...

This is after all the pencil work is done, and I go back with washes (and a bit more airbrush) to blend the mediums better together - in this case the pencils on his brow made it look a little like separated sections, rather than folds and creases over a single form.  A quick wash with the base color. and everything blends and softens, making it come together.

Tomorrow, the final...

Bounty Hunters Painting 02

The final painting, now with stars!  I like making stars...with an old toothbrush.  There was a good back and forth with the space background, I learned a lot with the Optimus Prime painting, and brought that into this one, and it worked out even better.  I did texture passes with the light colors too, not just the blacks, which made it a little more organic.

Again, I'm struggling with getting good photography with these bigger painting - it's 20x30" - too big for the scanner, but this is the best pic I could get.  It has some digital artifacting that's messing up the colors a bit.

All right, time to break out the green paint, and get back to the Avengers...

Bounty Hunters Painting 01

Remember this, from a year ago?

Well, I finally made a painting of it...here we go.

This is the drawing, with black acrylic paint to deepen the blacks, and set up the wash for the outer space background.

I masked off the figures, and created the soft light blend of space, with water blots sponged up with paper towels, and lots of soft airbrush, back and forth-ing between the black and purples, offset with a cream color.

This is the color pass with the airbrush - no masking - just blending the edges with overspray, with the plan being to tighten up the forms with the pencils.  (Sorry this is so blurry, didn't realize it until I had already started on the pencils.)

And so the pencils begin.  This about 50% done at this point, timewise; I see this as the halfway point, the drawing and paints are completed, but picking the colors and rendering with the pencils take a long time, and then there's the give and take between the paint and pencils in the final touch up phase, to be posted later in the week!

The First Avenger!

America, F YEAH!  Happy 4th of July everybody!

And of course, the less patriotic, black and white sketch version.