Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Nightmare

NIGHTMARE

Here's the original entry from "The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe".

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My next submission to the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe: REDUX EDITION is Nightmare.  I went with a vaguely manga-esque appearance for Nightmare this time around.  I tried to think of a few things which would be creepy enough to be the embodiment of someone called "Nightmare", hence all the extra eyes and teeth, and sharp things.  :-)  This time around, I decided to go with a painted submission, rather than with a more pen-and-ink, cartoony style.

For Nightmare, it was very tempting to just do a picture of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN as a submission.  ;-)  I did a two-page comic strip in the early 90's of Nightmare complaining about how popular that other white-faced manipulator of dreams is, when he's been around for a much longer time.  You know, "What's he got that I ain't got?" complaints.  

 

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STEP ONE:  Here is the light pencil drawing which I scanned in.  For some reason, the scanned image was a little dark. 

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STEP TWO:  Next, I put in an initial wash of color.

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STEP THREE:  Then I started tightening up some of the shapes and putting in some darks.

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STEP FOUR:  I started to go back in and paint the space around the tentacular cape and work on a few more details.  I also fixed the left leg, which was sticking out a little weirdly.

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STEP FIVE:   Here's the finished painting.  Unfortunately, a lot of the paper's texture scanned in for the background, which is  little distracting.  I'll take care of that in PhotoShop.  :-)

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STEP SIX:  In PhotoShop, I blurred the background out a bit, since so much of the paper's texture was showing through.  I added  a starfield I got from the NASA on a new layer and deleted it around Nightmare's body.  For the honeycomb in the background, I took a picture of a wasp's nest I had found a while back; I put them in a new layer and set the layer to OVERLAY.  I then softened the honeycomb pattern with the ERASER brush set to 25% Opacity.  Finally, I used the PhotoShop paint brush to push some whites in the various teeth on Nightmare.  I'll call it DONE!

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 This was done with watercolor/gouache on 6" x 10" Stonehenge paper, which I had glued to some hardboard to prevent warping.

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