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!?!