Galactus vs. Iron Fist

Continuing on with my theme of pre-Fan Expo comissions, here's two more. This time it's of Galactus (eater of worlds) and Iron Fist (that blonde and blue eyed kung fu hero). I've doodled Iron Fist a few times in the past in my sketchbook, but I always avoided drawing Galactus -- that armour of his is really complicated and hard to draw. Don't get me wrong, the Kirby's design is great, and he makes a hell of a silhouette, but getting all those details right took a lot more time than I expected!

Like the other sketches in this series these were done on 9" x 12" bristol, in gouache and ink.

Captain Marvel vs. The Punisher

These are another couple of quick pre-convention sketches, which I painted in gouache. Like the last two, these were drawn for pick-up at the Fan Expo show, coming to Toronto in late August (see sidebar for more details). I've been enjoying drawing these, as they give me an opportunity to geek out and paint some images of super-heroes after I've finished a day of freelance illustration work.

Both of these were painted in ink and gouache on 9" x 12" paper, and then scanned and colour corrected in pshop. I did things a bit differently this time out, and drew the rough sketches digitally, using Alias Sketchbook before painting the final art in traditional media. You can check out the roughs for them below:

Pre-Convention Sketches

I'll be appearing at the upcoming Fan Expo comic convention in Toronto, at the end of august (see the sidebar for more details) this year, and this will be my second time at that particular show. Last year was my first, and I was surprised at how big and busy it was. The crowds were huge, and I was actually a bit overwhelmed by the sketch requests from collectors. I was sketching so much, I barely had any time to leave my table at all see the show itself, and I was sad to have to turn away people because I just couldn't add more drawings to my list.

In order to prevent that this time around, I thought I'd take some pre-show orders for drawings to be picked up at the event this year. I put up a little announcement here on my blog's sidebar a week or so ago, and since then I've had several emails from people who wanted to take up that offer. So, I've been taking an hour or two each night to try work on those drawings. Here's a couple of completed drawings from that pile.

These were both drawn in gouache and ink, on bristol, at about 9" x 12" size. They were both actually painted in blue gouache, but then I scanned them into photoshop and colour corrected them.

The originals are a bit more loose and not quite as flat coloured, but I thought I'd clean them up a bit before posting them here on my blog.

The Dark Knight Returns

Here's a commissioned painting of Batman and Robin that I finished recently. The more astute comic fans among you might recognize that it's actually a painting of the senior-citizen old Batman and teen-girl Robin from "the Dark Knight Returns" -- a seminal Batman mini-series from the mid 1980's. When I was a teen, that book was probably my favourite super-hero comic, and it still holds up pretty well. I have an old paperback collection of all 4 issues, and when I went to reference it for this painting, I had a chuckle at how dog-eared it had become from multiple readings.

Anyway, I had some fun working on this piece. I've mentioned in the past how uncomfortable I am in drawing Batman, so I used this painting as an opportunity to try and get over that hump. Drawing the Joker, however, is always fun.

The completed painting was done in gouache and ink, and colour corrected in photoshop. You can see the preliminary sketches I did for it below, and compare how I tweaked a few small details the road to the final art. The only major change is that I made Batman beefier and more wide-shouldered than in the pencil sketch -- something that was suggested to me by my pal Steve Manale. When I showed him the drawing, his first reaction was:

"Dude, its Batman - his shoulders should be HUGE!"