Masters of the Universe: Fisto

I'll admit it. After the high of comic con I've been at a pretty serious slump in trying to get my comic book done. Granted, there are many other factors that have kinda put a mental block on me getting back on the saddle and drawing issue two of The Bomb Squad, but I really can't blame anybody else.

Anyhow, while trying to get over my artist block, I drew Fisto for this upcoming art show. I went back to using my old school Caran Dache technique I learned in college from my old teacher, Tony Gianello (I think that's how you spell his name). It's a process where you layer 'scribbles' of crayon lines on top of each other, focusing on mass and blending color with each layer that's put down. If memory serves me right, it's a process that similar to egg tempra, but a whole lot more forgiving.

I'm pretty rusty at it, but it sure was fun to bust out the caran dache again. I'm starting to get nostalgic about the ol' college days, but I'll just skip to Fisto and spare you.

I began with a few sketches of Fisto's face, really quick ugly little sketches, but they help get the ball rolling.



Afterwards, I draw him in an action pose. I wasn't really thinking about composition at this point, but luckily the piece was simple enough so that it wouldn't be such a big issue later.


I picked up a nice 16 x 24 piece of masonite from home depot and scribbled a rough first pass of the composition.


You can see I was trying out a circle shape as his 'background' but it really wasn't working for me. I took a picture of the sketch in progress and put a simple graphic shape and messed around with the background colors in photoshop. I think I like the sharp angles better than the lame circle I had initially planned to be behind him.


I went with the blue color and started trying to match the color with the caran dache crayons. Something funky was going on with his foot in the foreground so I scrapped that and drew a new one.

With this caran dache crayon medium, I spray a clear matte fix over the piece every now and then. The coating acts as a fresh new layer for me to draw on, preserving the colors underneath and helping me not mush the colors around when I work on top of them.


The foreground foot was starting to feel a little better, but now there was something weird with his knee.

So after another coat of spray fix, I changed his knee. I also shrank down the size of my signature, I always feel like my signature gets so intrusive sometimes. Anyway, here's the final piece: Fisto in yo' face!

Well, I gotta go! Good night and God Bless.