SUPERHEROES/ART- Magneto vs. Dr. Polaris

This week’s Superhero vs Superhero drawing gave me a lot of trouble. Seeing it, you wouldn’t think it did.

This is Magneto (Marvel) vs Dr. Polaris (DC).   They’re both the “masters of magnetism,” of their respective universes. And of course they’re now chibi refrigerator magnets holding up a drawing my son Ambrose drew when he was two.

The reason this drawing gave a me trouble was because of the lack of real planning.

The first time around I roughed it out and showed it to my wife to see if the joke “read.” I had drawn the two characters their actual size, hanging off a refrigerator.  The problem  was, they were so big, they covered up the fridge and my wife didn’t realize they were magnets.  They just looked like they were floating in a kitchen, in front of a fridge.

I scrapped the idea and simply wasn’t going to do it. I drew the Human Torch vs Fire drawing I posted last week instead.

Then I talked about it with a friend who gave me the idea to make them chibi style magnets.  That’s what I ended up doing.

Thing is, then I got ambitious. I decided I should digitally paint this drawing and not simply ink it. And by “paint,” I meant, not just color but get rid of all the lines and do a full painting.  They’re simple characters, I thought it shouldn’t be a problem.

So I began the process, and quickly realized  two things, one, I couldn’t paint all that well, and two, painting the drawing was going to take WAY too long.

So I quit.  It left me feeling really frustrated and I felt, I’d failed. On top of that, I seemed I wasted a lot of time I need to get other things done.

I had roughed out and cleaned up the drawing digitally. The line work was pretty much done.  Only, I didn’t like it.  I wasn’t sure what to do, but I ended up turning the clean up lines into non-photo blue and printed it out  so I could ink it by hand. Which I did.

And then I had a fight with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pens because the ink was too saturated and wouldn’t let me make subtle lines.  I ended experimenting with a Zebra WF1 Scientific Brush (Small Size) which worked alright. Although,  I think I still like the Tombow Fude Brush Pen I used last week more.

So in the end this simple drawing gave me more trouble than I wanted it to and it left me wanting to paint.  Which I think I”ll start doing soon.