Marvel Merriness, Part 3

Above you can see my first ever mouse/Photoshop attempt at coloring an image! I still hadn't embraced Illustrator at this point so it's not as clean cut as it could have been, but it's still progression.

As you might tell, I was a huge fan of Joe Madureira's art on various X-Men comics, and this Wolverine was influenced/copied directly from his work on Marvel Vs. Capcom.

Wolverine as a character was never my favorite of the mutants, that's not to say I disliked him, I just didn't quite get the way some, or most, writer's approached him.  I always found him interesting to draw though. He was a short hairy little man with a temper and like with drawing the Hulk, the expressions of rage were always fun to experiment with.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I struggled to find my own style, but I still experimented with the way the characters looked a lot. To my surprise though, I've realized a little something. If you look on the image above, to the right (just above Toad) is my version of Sabretooth, dark haired and and shaven head... Me and Charlotte both agree that this sketch of him looks the spitting image of Liev Schreiber's portrayal of Victor Creed in the Wolverine: Origins movie (2009).

And speaking of the movies...

Sometimes I can be lazy with my drawings, and the first of these proves it, in fact I think it looks more like Ron Perlman than it does Hugh Jackman, heh. Anyways, the second is the original sketch of the last image, which I was truly pleased to have turn out so well, I think it looks just like him in character - It's not often than I am happy with the outcome of my doodling.

A digitally colored version can be seen here: The Wolverine

This post wouldn't be complete without some pics of my favorite X-Man, Gambit!

Over the years there were millions of drawings of him, sadly I can't locate most of them so these will have to do for now, the last image must have been a comic I had planned to do starring him, which like most of the others, didn't quite take off.

Some random X-Men characters again, Sabretooth and Storm were taken out of an old school sketchbook of mine (Storm is dated 2001, so I was 15 again). Both of the Cyclops pictures came later on, on inspired by Steven E. Gordon (X-Men: Evolution) and the other I think copied from an X-Men manga book I once found online.

Marvel Merriness, Part 2

Spider-Man was without a doubt my favorite super-hero. Like every other geek on the planet I too felt that I could relate to Peter Parker, the outcast who despite everything going wrong in his life still managed to be a nice guy. Spider-Man had such a massive impact on my life, at one time there wasn't a single thing I couldn't tell you about his life, friends and foes (I'm sure I spent many hours proving that to disinterested parties over the years as well!)

Funnily enough though, I never used to draw him so much as his rogues gallery, who in my honest opinion are also some of the greatest characters of the Marvel U (many even have, or had, their own books).

Sometimes my influences were clear, other times they weren't. For example, Black Cat (above) is drawn like Terry Dodson's version, and the rest I think are based off toys that I owned... Shocker in the lower-right corner is however my attempt at recreating his costume a little bit.

My favorite of the rogues however was Venom. I'm talking about the 90's Eddie Brock anti-hero character here. I loved the concept that Spider-Man's suit would turn out to be an alien life form, and that it would give all of his secrets to somebody out there who hated him. Above you can see some of my Venom pics, including Eddie caught in a web (which will appear digitally colored on a later post), a redesign I did for Eddie with Venom stood over him, an idea for a comic book cover image (though hardly an original one), and a Venom I believe that I copied from 'Carnage Unleashed'. To the right, you can see the same Eddie design in ink, a mid-transformation Venom, and a couple of random Venom's. Each one drawn in a different style... And below, an idea I had for another redesign - the final image, colored digitally will also appear on a later blog. I loved the idea that Eddie's shadow was actually the symbiote watching over him.

Finally, a redesign I did for Cletus Kasaday/Carnage - the idea being that he was a mental patient (much like the original) who had lost his arm in one of his many adventures in younger life. I had an idea that the alien symbiote (the offspring of the Venom symbiote) would improvise and come up with creatively violent ways to ghost-limb (like how Carnage could form weapons from it's cell structure).

Marvel Merriness, Part 1

I've always been a Marvel boy. Sure DC has some pretty big, ultra iconic characters, but I always felt like Marvel characters had all the fun. Not so much anymore, both are a bit too serious and it turns out that DC do a better job with it (even without all the characters I grew up loving).

So, to start I have The Punisher; One picture of him and I guess the start of a strip I must have felt inspired to do. I was never a big reader of Frank Castle's vigilante adventures, but every now and again a new artist or writer would find a way to pull me in.

Next is the Incredible Hulk, a character I love, but one that I didn't take a full interest in until later life. At this point I was toying with creating my own artistic style, though I was never satisfied with it. The best thing about drawing Hulk is his expressions, he has to be this explosion of rage, but also be the gentle giant. Finding ways to achieve that is near impossible, but I'm not entirely unhappy with my attempts.

Of course Captain America has to make an appearance somewhere. Though he is not a character I had much interest in, I always loved the way that other Marvel characters looked up to Cap.

Lastly for this post, like any imaginative child, I of course felt like I could create my own compelling story using many of the Marvel universe's more exciting characters. 'Unforgiven Sin' was a story featuring the X-Men, Spider-Man, Captain America, The Punisher and quite a few more! You can see below that I had started designing covers for issues, and had tried to plan out a story...

Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, which will focus on my many Spider-Man and X-Men drawings from over the years!