Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This week's turnaround, as I mentioned yesterday, is from the Green Lantern section of the DC universe. His name is Saint Walker, and he is more or less the diametric opposite of the last character I did one of these for, Larfleeze.

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I wanted Walker's turnaround to work in a juxtaposition with Larfleeze. Open arms holding nothing instead of a closed grasp of a power battery. A slight smile instead of a sneer. That kind of thing. I think that my version looks pretty 'on model'; the original design (I think by Ethan Van Sciver) was a little complicated, but was then streamlined by either Doug Mahnke or Ivan Reis. It's a good costume, though I wish there was a greater concentration of the blacks of the costume on his lower half instead of upper. Just a personal preference, but I feel like the blacks on bottom would help the character look a little more weightless.

Maybe. I could be wrong. Hope you like it. See you next week!

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Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This week's is definitely fun. A little while ago I drew Lucia as an Orange Lantern. I had so much fun with that one that Lantern I figured I might as well continue the trend! This week's turnaround is Larfleeze, the original Orange Lantern. Man, he's fun. He's basically an id gone wild, gluttony and appetite and greed and obsession... really, pick any two of those things and you've got a fun-to-draw character. He's only been around for a few years now, but there's been a few artists who have drawn him already. My favorite, by a margin, is Doug Mahnke.

Doug Mahnke is the artist on Green Lantern right now, and the man is a stand-up example of consistent quality art. He's done the vast majority of the last two year's worth of issues on the book, all while keeping a (more or less) monthly schedule. His work has a slightly grotesque or macabre feel to it, which really works with the strange creatures he's called on to draw. His Larfleeze is bizarre, comical, scheming and melodramatic. Milton's Satan with a power battery, basically. (Here's some Mahnke goodness)

I wanted to keep that energy going in this piece. I got pretty close IMO. Check it.

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Turnaround Tuesday!

I started this one a few weeks back for St. Patty's Day, but various things got in the way. It's Banshee!

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Banshee is one of the characters from the 'second wave' of X-Men which made its debut in 1974's "Giant Size X-Men" #1. (This group also famously included Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler and others) Banshee had made his debut in "X-Men" years earlier, as a hero forced into villainy by that dastardly Magneto.

He hung around for the first year or so of the 'new' X-men, but since then more or less remained in the background, or at least among the second tier of X-men.

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There's a fine line when designing vaguely nationalistic heroes. You can get either the 'clone of Captain America' look (see Captain Canuck, Germany's Vormund or Russia's Red Guardian) or you get the 'stereotype of the country as a costume' look (see Saudi Arabia's Arabian Knight, Spain's Aguila or -oy- Ireland's Shamrock). I think that the later is much easier to get wrong. Just look at them! Shamrock's name is even Molly Fitzgerald! Why not just name her Leprechaun O'Guiness?

Banshee somehow managed to stay out of that stereotyped caricature of a country 'zone'. I think it's because his name implies a connection with Ireland, without any implicit 'banshee' imagery, and his costume, in its green and yellow color scheme, says 'Ireland' without knocking us over the head with explicit flag imagery. He also tended to have subtle character traits that said 'Irish': curly, red hair, longer sideburns and a pipe. He walks on that tightrope, but I think it works.

The costume itself is great too. You've got a streamlined costume with just a collar for distinction; he's a flier and needs to stay unencumbered. And those wings. Man, I remember loving those crazy wings ever since I saw him in a comic back in the early '90's.

Great costume. I think I did a decent job here. Join me tomorrow for more art goodness!

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Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This is a fun one this week; well, fun for me at least! It's a turnaround but also a character sheet for me. It's Cleopatra, but a very comic book Cleopatra.

As I've done research and preparatory sketches for an upcoming Egypt project, I've definitely tried to stay as close to history as possible. I'd like that project to have a decent amount of accuracy and consistency with the historical record. These upcoming sample pages however are a chance to cut loose a bit more. Here I can pull in some actual Egyptian design and costuming but also pull things from places like the Egyptian Revival movement (itself a subset of Art Deco) and comic books (I know, big surprise there, right?).

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Okay, here we go: This is Cleopatra. She's somewhere between an Egyptian Pharaoh, Jack Kirby's Big Barda and Elizabeth Taylor. Costume's possibly too busy. What do you think?

Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This week's turnaround is of Supergirl. There's been SO many different ways of drawing Supergirl over the years. Hell, there's been so many different Supergirls period! I'm planning on doing some sample pages with Supergirl in the very near future and wanted to get as 'on model' as possible.

Here goes nothing!

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Not bad. The on-model Supergirl right now is a fairly youthful, fun character. Pretty close to her Silver Age roots. For someone that is supposed to be a teenager, I have to say this iteration of the character is far more comfortable to me than the one created previously by Michael Turner. I found that Supergirl a bit too sexualized and 'fake', in every visual definition. I don't know that a sixteen year-old should look like she has collagen and breast implants.

There's plenty of characters for whom a more adult, audacious look is fitting. Power Girl. Emma Frost. Phantom Lady. There's a lot. I don't believe that Supergirl is one of them. I'm glad DC (for right now, at least) agrees.

Turnaround Tuesday!

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

(Intro if you're new: Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!)

This week we're doing one of the super-heroes best "equipped" to fight villains. And that's where my boob jokes will stop.

Ladies and gentlemen.... Power Girl!

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Power Girl is, in summary, Superman's cousin from a different dimension. (There's a migraine-level amount of further detail, but go to Wikipedia and don't blame me!) Why Power Girl has such "crime fighting advantages" when Supergirl (Superman's cousin in this dimension) doesn't is beyond me. Maybe it's cause Wally Wood didn't create her!

PG's a great character, with a lot of personality. Big, in-your-face (that's not a joke there. Stop it.) and very engaging in the right hands. If you're looking for some good Power Girl stories, some of those 'right hands' would be Geoff Johns (who wrote a great arc in JSA Classified #1-3) and Jimmy Palmiotti (who wrote the first year of her most recent series). Both writers collaborated with my favorite Power Girl artist, Amanda Conner. Conner gives Power Girl such a range of emotion and expression, while still conveying the action and drama that the story might need.

Do yourself a favor and go check some of that stuff out. After you check out the turnaround, that is!

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Turnaround Tuesday!

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!

After last week's Spider-Woman turnaround, I realized this week was already screaming out at me. It's as iconic as you can get. Ladies and gentlemen...

Spider-Man!

(I, as a card-carrying comic book artist and nerd, of course know this costume by heart. I just wanted to draw him and thought it'd be great. It was also a chance for me to draw a little bit more of an 'open line' Spidey, meaning one where a lot of the detail is left up to the coloring stage. That seems to be where the character is right now. See here)

Enjoy!



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Turnaround Tuesday

It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. The fact that you're drawing them in three fairly static poses means that the defining elements of the character have to be displayed in small, subtle ways. And they're fun!

Last week I talked about the expansion of the Green Lantern universe, and the creation of a multitude of new characters, including the one that I drew, Indigo-1. This week I'm also doing a female character who functioned as an expansion (theoretically) of a male character's corner of the universe. In this case the male character is Spider-Man, and the expansion female character?

Spider-Woman!

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There's actually been a ton of Spider-Women (women? womans? hmmm...) over the years; seriously, go make your head hurt here. The funny thing about Spider-Woman is the motivation for her creation back in the 1970's. What's that motivation you might ask? Why, one of the oldest motivators of all... Money! Indirectly, in this case, as it was actually protection of copyright. It's a funny story, and the details can be found in an installment of Comic Legends Revealed. Funny, right? Not exactly artistic inspiration!

Anyways, despite her...uninspired origin... the character has gone on to achieve a decent amount of love from both readers and creators alike. Part of it's that awesome costume. It's a great use of a spider motif without being at all a swipe of Spider-Man. She's starring monthly in The Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita, Jr. and Klaus Janson. It's a good book and I recommend checking it out.

Anyways, enough jibber jabber. Here's your turnaround for the week!

Turnaround Tuesday!

Welcome back to my new-and-improved (or at least consistently updated) artblog. It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. Last week I drew Batman; not the 'normal' Bruce Wayne, but rather his momentarily replacement, Dick Grayson. (He was the first Robin, if you didn't know) This week I'm sticking to the DC universe, but doing a character who is pretty far from iconic, at least at the moment.

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Geoff Johns, one of comics' most notable writers at the moment, has helped bring a renaissance to "Green Lantern" in the last five years. He was the mastermind behind last year's big crossover "Blackest Night", which was a lot of crazy, super-hero fun. One of the things that Johns has done during his tenure on GL has been to introduce the idea of various of colored power rings besides the green ones worn by the Green Lantern Corps and the yellow ones worn by Sinestro (and, as of recently, his own corps). We've know got red, orange, blue, indigo and violet laterns all traipsing around the universe.

Most of these 'Rainbow Lantern's' stories were told pretty completely during "Blackest Night", but Geoff Johns has left, so far at least, the Indigo Lanterns as a bit of a mystery. They are described as a tribe rather than a corps and they are powered by the emotion of compassion. (All the power rings are powered by some emotion or other) They don't ostensibly have a leader but their main representative is the enigmatic Indigo-1. She's who we're tackling today.

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I'm going to draw the turnaround and then drop some thoughts that I have, but right off the bat I can tell that this costume breaks the Ron Frenz Rule of comic costume design. You didn't know there was such a thing? Well, go read that link while I finish up this turnaround and then we'll meet back here.

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So, did ya read it? Pretty straightforward. Anyways, yeah... kinda weird costume, but I think it fits the character. The Indigos are described as a tribe, and the makeshift look of Indigo-1's costume (the tattoos, the torn elements, the bandages...) add to that and reinforce it. Speaking of the tattoos... I don't think anyone's decided where they go, and what goes where. Every book she's appeared in gives me something different! So I winged it.

The Indigo emblem on her chest doubles as a lock for the collar she's wearing, which is a nice little deviation for the Indigos. (I thought this was new, and in fact its' only been portrayed this way her last few appearances. It's a good change.) It's touches like that (and also her braids, the emblem on the head, and a few others) that made this more interesting than I figured. You get a lot of her personality from the look, and I think after this I'm going to go immerse myself in some Indigo-1 comics.

She's a fun character to draw, Ron Frenz rule be damned!

Turnaround Tuesday!

Welcome back to the fifth week (or second month, if that's your fancy) of my new-and-improved (or at least consistently updated) blog. It's Turnaround Tuesday!

Turnarounds are a great way to get a feel for a character and to see if you can get a handle on their look and personality, even more than a pin-up. Last week I ventured into X-men Land, and drew Rogue, but this week I'm jumping into firmly patriotic territory. It's Captain America.

But with a twist.

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Let's see if I can do this as non-nerd and concisely as possible (for those of you out there who speak neither comic nor Klingon). Captain America, we all know him, yeah? Well, he had a kid sidekick a looong time ago named Bucky. Bucky died.

Easy so far.

Well, a couple years ago we 'learned' that Bucky actually hadn't died, and he had been a sleeper agent for the Soviets. He met up with and tried to kill Captain America, but then got all better. Then Captain America died and we were left without a patriotic defender of our great, great nation.

Enter Bucky. (You still with me? Good)

Bucky is now running around as Cap (even though the original recently came back from the dead; but that's another story). He's got the shield, but a slightly different costume and he generally has a gun with him. First the turnaround, then some thoughts:



I like the costume. It works really well in the context of a new, slightly uncertain Cap. The dark colors and the streamlined American iconography reinforce this. There's something intriguingly jarring about Captain America holding a gun too. Like Batman, the image of this hero holding a firearm has almost always had direct connotations about the story. It was designed by Alex Ross, who can design costume pretty damn well.

See ya tomorrow!