Squaremania: Batman

Way back when I originally started drawing animals in the squaremania style - I had wanted to do some human characters as well.  I was preparing a gallery show and ran out of time...so the only things that existed, at that time, were the animals.  At the time I was working on a napoleon drawing - but it never went anywhere...

Anyway - I was looking at a toy magazine today at the bookstore and saw a bunch of DC comic heroes and decided they'd be a good fit for Squaremania - so I'm starting with Batman...and I'll see about getting to the other characters...

Dr Manhattan: Who Watches the Watchkids?

I finally had the chance to read the comic "The Watchmen." I've always heard a lot about it...and, most recently, because of the talks of a movie adaption, I had to see what all the fuss was about. Was this going to be another horrible take on a movie like The League of Gentlemen was (I never saw that one, because of how bad the reviews were)...but there have been good things said about The Watchmen movie.

So I read the comic - started to anyhow - I'm about three quarters of the way through. It's quite a good story. And I hear the movie is supposed to be quite faithful to the book.

I got the idea to do the Watchmen this last Saturday while I was at the bookstore. I didn't have my laptop with me, but I wanted to get started with it, so I this first version with pencil and watercolor. The colors turned out quite a lot nicer than the scan lets on...but even still, I wasn't going to be satisfied with it until I could get the drawing into my computer and do it for real.



This version I changed a little bit - I actually got some reference for the earth, so the world looks a little more realistic. I would have done stars in the watercolor, but lacking salt, I made do with a starless sky.

The Sandman: from Marvel's Spiderman

I would assume this is the most popular version of the Sandman. While the Sandman from DC/Vertigo Comics is quite the cult fave, Spiderman's long time nemesis stands out as the most iconic. The Marvel Comics Sandman was invented in the 60s to menace Spiderman (and in classic Stan Lee fashion, each hero or villain's name described their ability).

Originally I was just going to draw this version of the Sandman. I went online because I wanted to be sure about his costume - for some reason, a green striped shirt...he also had striped hair (but I don't understand why...so I didn't draw my version that way). While online I discovered the other two versions of the Sandman, so I had to draw all three. They all come from different times in the comic book history and all represent a different interpretation of what a character called Sandman would be.



And now on to other characters...I think my couple will be Pinocchio and Peter Pan. Hopefully I'll have those out this next week some time...

The Sandman: one version

So I was all set to do a version of The Sandman (from the spiderman comics)...I had the drawing all finished and went onto google to make sure I had the correct colors - I typed in Sandman and three different comic versions came up. They weren't 3 different versions of the same Sandman, they were three different characters throughout comic history with this name. One of the ones that struck me the most was this guy dressed in a green suit with a gas mask on. I thought it would be fun to do a version of all three of the characters, and the gas mask guy was the first.

In the upper left hand corner is the first comic character named The Sandman. He's pretty much a knock off of the Green Hornet, with the green suit, 'mad men' hat, mask (although his is a gas mask) and gas-gun. It's the 'golden age' Sandman.

The upper right hand corner is the DC comics version of The Sandman. He was created by Neil Gaiman (and while the comic is named "the Sandman," the main character, which I've drawn above, probably isn't named Sandman. From doing very little research, I believe his name is Morpheus and he's the comic's main character. The comic is called The Sandman because the main character is the anthropomorphic personification of dreams.

And finally - the bottom two drawings are the Marvel Comics version of The Sandman. And, in typical Marvel fashion he's quite literally a man made from sand. I did two versions of him trying to figure out if I wanted to draw him with a fist, or just a loose arm of sand...

Anyhow - the first one I finished is the Golden Age Sandman.

Lil' Galactus

Adelia Green Lantern

I did this drawing over the Christmas break...I got a book on the art of Brian Bolland (which is fantastic! He's one of the best artists in comics) - and in the book there were several drawings he had done of Green Lantern.Well - looking at art books always makes me want to draw - and I had an idea of drawing Adelia as several different popular characters - so I drew her as Green Lantern. It was quite a rough drawing, but had the full idea that I wanted. I tend to cringe at people looking at my sketchbook because I work really loose until I can scan the picture into the computer and redraw it in Adobe Illustrator. this was my sketch:



After I cleaned it up - I printed it out and redrew the body and the position of the hands...using those hand drawn revisions as a reference I changed my Illustrator drawing (that's the nice thing about drawing on the computer is how easy it is to manipulate the lines you've created).And finally - I used my lunch break today to paint it. I started painting it like I did my other Adelia pieces - with the scratch line technique...but as I was going through it I really thought it'd be cool if it looked painted. So I used more of a brush stroke look to the shading. And this is the result: