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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

A Super Break: Getting ready for his 75th!

Life has been nutty recently: just a lot more of it and a lot less time for myself... or too tired to draw when I do get some time! Whatever! Suck it up Bautista! Let's get to this post!

Superman's 75th anniversary is this year (and coming up in something like 2 months?), so I wanted to draw a pin-up for it. At the rate I'm drawing and posting, I KNEW I had to get started on this early. In general, I've been practicing on drawing Supes for awhile so this pin-up kinda reaches way back I suppose.

I started sketching out Superman's face. Trying to get a feel for it, until I come up with something satisfactory. And while other artists just get their doodles out perfectly, I am quite the opposite, almost all the time. Nothing comes out looking remotely great. I call it pooping on paper.



There's no possible way I can get it right the first time. So to work around that, I just draw a bunch of drawings (poop!), hoping that with each iteration (pooop!), I'll get close (poop poop!). I never really get THE one perfect drawing... Just get maybe real close, so it's not sa horrible mess! Sorry for the gross analogy, but after having a baby, anything related to poop is totally normal.

Once I'm close with his face, I start to work on his pose. It's the same process, a lot of misses but, at least for me, very necessary. Here's a digital sketch of me trying to still figure out his face and just pushing forward with a pose even though I hadn't worked it out yet.


So that was a sketch pose start and fail. However, I think the look of his face was coming along further this time around. I go back to the drawing board and start sketching more poses.


I liked how that bottom right corner one looked, so I decided to start fleshing that out in photoshop.


I tightened up the details of his arm a little in the sketch. Then started to ink and make up the details along the way. I put him in his new 52 outfit. And to tell you the truth, I think it's actually growing on me, lines and high collar and everything!

Supes Saluting and looking off to the right. At what? At this point I didn't really know...
After the inks, I started thinking about what background to put and instantly Superman flying in space popped into my head. So I googled up some earth in space pictures and proceeded to try working it into the image. However, I found after adding the blackness of space behind him, that element didn't seem to work. Also Superman always struck me as a brighter, daytime character anyway, so I decided to change it a bit.


I added some basic colors that were pretty bright. And I was messing around with some effects for the sky.


The sun rays weren't quite working but there's something about the beams that I initially liked. The straight angled sun rays seemed to compete against the curvy background. I switched it to be more like speed lines that went with the curve.


That's where I am so far. My final post for this won't probably be until June, in time for Supes' birthday. That's it for tonight! I am TIRED! Good night and God Bless!
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