Happy Halloween - Zombie Dark Phoenix

Happy Halloween!

OK, technically it isn't Halloween anymore, as I am posting this after 12:00am CST, but as I haven't gone to bed yet, I'm still counting it as the same night as far as I'm concerned.  In your face, Greenwich Mean Time!  :-)

For a Halloween picture, I thought I'd do a zombie version of Dark Phoenix.  Sure, Zombies in general, and Marvel Zombies in particular, seem a little over-exposed, but 'tis the season.  Oh, well--What're ya gonna do?

I left it as black-and-white for the moment, as I wanted to get this up on the blog ASAP.  Perhaps I'll colorize it in the near future...  I plan on using the same pose for a non-zombie version of Dark Phoenix I will painting in a few weeks.

Just for fun, here is the process I used:

STEP ONE:  I roughly sketched out the figure on 12" x 18" gray bogus paper (BOGUS, man!  I will never get tired of saying that...).  Bogus paper is sort of like a thicker, slightly rougher newsprint.  I prefer the gray tone, as you can add darks and highlights on top of the gray tone.  I always say it is like cheating, because you get three values (Black, Gray, and White) for the price of two (Black and White used for the drawing).  And, when you add white to it (see below), the highlights really stand out.

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STEP TWO:  I then immediately smear everything all out into a blurry mess and start tightening the linework, adding shadows, and using my kneaded eraser to begin carving out where I want the highlights to go.

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STEP THREE:  More shading and linework.  I'm about halfway finished with the drawing at this point. 

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STEP FOUR:  I begin to add white and highlights, as well as some of the final darks to the drawing.  I'm about three-quarters of the way finished for this drawing and heading into the home stretch...

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STEP FIVE:  Here, I finished all the highlights and shadows.  I will call it done for now.  I didn't intend to take quite so much time on this drawing; I intended to just do a quick sketch to post and get back to some other projects I'm starting/finishing.  The usual.  But, I once I started I just kept working at it more and more.

And, in case anyone is wondering, the "lights" coming off the top of the Phoenix wings in the costume were going to be part of a radiating light coming off the costume, as well as surrounding the figure as a manifestation of the Phoenix Force.  I may work on that further, as I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do with that.  So, I just kind of left that there as a placeholder.  However, now that I look at it again, I also think it looks a little strange out all by itself as it currently is.  Sigh...

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This was done with charcoal and white chalk on 12" x 18" gray bogus paper (Bogus, man!).  

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