Repaneled Blog - RIP

First, it was COVERED, and now REPANELED.  It is sad to see a second blog I regularly visited (and submitted to) go away.

But, I want to take a few moments to personally thank Anthony Vukojevich for the opportunity to show my work on his REPANELED Blog.  It was the first blog I ever posted to (other than my own, of course) and really helped launch my own, modest blog--it brought my first significant bump in traffic, so you all know who to blame, now.  Also, I cannot read a comic book any longer without thinking somewhere in the back of my mind "Hey, that panel would be a GREAT submission to REPANELED" (and will continue to do so, even now that it is gone).  Granted, that list of comic book panels under consideration was astronomically long--and continually growing--and I was just getting ready to work on my next couple submissions when Anthony announced it was the end of his blog.

I am sure I will continue to redo/update panels as the muse strikes me, but it just won't be the same without REPANELED, alas.  I mean, what good is showing off if no one is there to see you, right?  :-)

Again, queue the sad Hulk music as we walk down memory lane...  Below are all my submissions to REPANELED, and a link to the process for those who are interested.

Batman: Year One #1

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Detective Comics #32

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Tales to Astonish #63

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Animal Man #19

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Eternal #18

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Fantastic Four #5

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ROM #1

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Action Comics #544

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Thanks and best of luck, Anthony!  I owe you a LOT!  REPANELED will be greatly missed!  :-)

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Repaneled: Action Comics #544

Brainiac - "Rebirth"

Here is the original panel, written by Marv Wolfman and drawn by Gil Kane.

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And here's my submission to the REPANELED site.

Brainiac is one of the great Superman villains (probably my favorite, offhand), and the robotic version of Brainiac was awesome (although, I also have a great fondness for the green-skinned alien with diodes in his head, so I was glad to see his return of late, as well).  I may have to do some more panels from this story in the future...  :-)

And, for those interested, here's the process:

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STEP ONE:  I pencilled the image on 6" x 9" piece of Stonehenge (#140) paper, which was attached to a 6" x 9" piece of 1/4" medium density fiberboard with some size/glue.

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STEP TWO:  Here's a start on the watercolor, after about one hour or so...

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STEP THREE:  Here's the finished watercolor painting.  I then scanned it into Photoshop.

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STEP FOUR:  Using Photoshop, I added an air-brush effect to make the birthing chamber look more like glass.  I also darkened the edges to put more focus on baby Brainiac.  I also made the eye flat red in color as I think it give more emphasis to that area and draw the eye in to that focal point.

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STEP FIVE:  Here's the final image as it was when I originally finished it.  I went back-and-forth, but in the end decided to crop a bit off the top,  as it seemed extraneous (and put even more focus on baby Brainiac), and submitted it to REPANELED.

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Done with watercolor on 6" x 9" Stonehenge Paper and digitally touched up.

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ROM: Spaceknight #1: Page Recreation

ROM: Spaceknight #1, Page 1

Here is the original 

And here is my recreation of the page:

I have very fond memories of ROM: Spaceknight--a comic from my misspent youth in the early 1980's, so I wanted to do another ROM painting.  The "Arrival" scene was always one of my favorites.

For those who are interested, here is the usual process...

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Step One:  First, I primed a 15" x 20" piece of #215 Crescent Board with a mixture of size (glue) and gesso.  Then, I measured off the 12" x 16" painting area, doing the panel lines in Sharpie.  For the series of three panels at top, I extended the panel lines outside the painting area, as I was pretty sure the panel lines would be painted over (I was right, and the panel edges were, indeed, painted over.)  :-)

I then used a blue-lead pencil to draw out the page. I used to do a lot of drawings with blue-line for pen-and-ink work and always liked it.  I recently found one of my blue pencils and decided to use it.

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Step Two:  I begin by laying down some color with acrylic paints...

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Step Three:  More painting...

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Step Four:  I taped off the panel series at the top of the screen.  I painted the edges with some clear acrylic medium to keep the edge as sharp as possible and to prevent paint from bleeding under it.  For the space nebula effect, I used a spray bottle of water and white paint and built up several layers of wet-on-wet paint.  When it was dried, I went over top of it with some watered down blue paint to color it.  Lastly, I took some black paint and reworked some of the edges.

Also, I wasn't paying attention and somehow got it in my head that the second panel was showing ROM entering the Earth's atmosphere, but after I read the caption again, I realized it should be much closer to the ground.  Of course, I didn't realize this until I was finished painting the panel with Earth from space (including clouds and everything) and had to redo the whole thing.  Sigh...

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Step Five:  Finished painting!  I repainted the second panel, finished up some of the fire effects (well, some of them could be better, IMHO), and pushed some of the shadows and highlights.

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Step Six:  I added lettering in PhotoShop and called it DONE!  I also sent a copy of the last panel on to Anthony with the Re-Paneled Blog.

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This was painted with Acrylic on 12" x 16" sized and gessoed #215 Crescent Board

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Repaneled: Animal Man #19

Animal Man #19 
by Grant Morrison, Chas Truog, and Doug Hazelwood

Yet another submission to Anthony's delightful Repaneled Blog.  Poor Anthony has to be getting sick of my constant spamming of his Inbox... :-) 

Here's the original: 

Here's my repaneled version:

"Animal Man" was one of my favorite comics (along with "Doom Patrol") back in the late 80's (holy crap, can it REALLY be that long ago?) and, being a sucker for meta-fictional stories, the entire story arc where Buddy Baker/Animal Man discovers he is a comic book character (#19 - #26) was right up my alley.  This moment is when, after taking peyote and tripping out, he turns to the reader and says "I can see you!".  Or, in this case, the blog reader, I suppose.  ;-)

Overall, I felt it was a brilliant run and did a much better job of setting up (and resolving) the "Second Crisis" than all of "Infinite Countdown to Final Crisis" ever did, IMHO.  Sure, "Final Crisis" had some cool stuff in it, but the Second Crisis in "Animal Man" was much better, more enjoyable, and brought back the fun, long gone characters for a while (as well as many new ones). 

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Step 1:  Here's the pencilled page on 11" x 15" Stonehenge 140# paper.

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Step 2:  Next up, I did some under painting to set up where the shadow would be on the face, using a mixture of Ultramarine Blue and Burt Sienna (it makes a great neutral color), as well as the under painting colors for the lips, eyes, and hair.  I also erased all the pencils, since they tend to get washed out with watercolor and can gray out some colors.  Gee, at this stage he almost looks like the illegitimate offspring of the Joker and John Constantine...  :-)

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Step 3:  I added a wash of skin tone over the face, which gave me a sort of base coat to the rest of the picture, which I could then begin building on and finishing.

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Step 4:  I finished up the shading, did some work on the hair and eyes, and generally tried to finish stuff up.  I intentionally left the t-shirt as a sort of line drawing, as I felt the contrast between the shaded, painted face and the line drawing of the shirt tied into the story and sort of amused me.  That and it saved me a little bit of time painting.  :-)

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Step 5:  I imported it into Photoshop, deleted the paper background, and added the lettering (copied directly from a scan of the page). There are a few things which could have been better, now that I look at it: The teeth, for example, should be shaded a bit more--I think they stand out a little bit too much.  The eyes probably need some bottom lashes, which I completely overlooked (Ha!  Unintentional pun!) until it was too late to fix..  But, maybe that would have looked weird, too, ala Alex from "A Clockwork Orange".  And the eyebrow on the right-hand side bothers me a little bit.  Oh, well... Live and learn!  Well, live, anyways...

This was done with watercolor on 11" x 15" Stonehenge 140# paper.

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Replaneled: The Eternals #7, Page 18

REPANELED SUBMISSION: The Eternals #7, page 18

Originally drawn by Jack Kirby and Mike Royer

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Here's yet another submission of the delightfully fun REPANELED Blog.  In this case, it is from Jack Kirby's 1977 series "The Eternals", issue 7, page 18.  I found most of the series run in a back issue box when I was in my late teens and scooped them up.  Grant Morrison was beginning his run on "Doom Patrol" and "Animal Man", so I thought I was used to seeing crazy-imaginative ideas on the comic page.

While Morrison is still one of my favorite writers today, the ideas put forth by Kirby are truly astonishing in their scope and grandeur.  In this case, it was the story of space gods (the Celestials) returning after millennia to check up on their genetic experiments (ie. Humans, Eternals, and Deviants).  One of the Celestials, Arishem, had a symbol on his thumb which would end the world when activated if the experiment (ie. Earth) was deemed a failure.  How cool is that?  Later issues include the Uni-Mind--a sort of group-mind of individuals given a literal, psychic form of a collective consciousness.  And that's only the beginning.  Every issue had some new concept in it (and in many cases more than just one) which thrilled and dazzled the imagination.

Sure, the execution of those ideas may have left a little something to be desired--the dialogue was a bit clunky and the stories seemed to shift around and were a bit flighty... but the core ideas within the comics were absolutely amazing.  Morrison, Ellis, Moore, and Millar... Kirby had much BIGGER, cosmic ideas and was doing them a decade or two before they even got started.

There is just something about the dynamism of Jack Kirby's work--both in the art and the stories--which continues to fascinate me and I have grown to appreciate more as time goes by.  He was truly a genius!


As usual, here's the process (click on the pictures to embiggen):

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First, I did a series of 30 second to one minute sketches to work out the composition of the panel I wanted to recreate. I used ball-point pen and/or marker on typing paper, with the images typically being about 2" x 3", give-or-take. In one of the sketches, I had considered putting in a flock of birds flying past Arishem's outstretched arm, but thought it would be more distracting and confusing to the image. The panel was going to be busy enough with all the lettering and the Kirby Crackle and such, so it didn't need the addition of the birds for drama--there was enough going on at it was.

After I decided on the composition, it was time to get painting...

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STEP ONE:  On a 10" x 15" gessoed piece of illustration board, I quickly painted a generic sky scene...

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STEP TWO:  And all of the interesting parts of the sky were then covered over by the underpainting of the Celestial, Arishem. Sigh... When will I learn? :-)

I did the underpainting in black-and-white to establish the general values (lights and darks) of the page.

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STEP THREE:  I went back in and painted more clouds/sky on the other side of the panel, as I probably should have done in the first place, had I been thinking about it for about 10 seconds.  I also added a bit more detail to the black-and-white underpainting, trying to get the shadows and highlights worked out.

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STEP FOUR:  Here's the final acrylic painting. I painted color over top of the black-and-white underpainting, trying to keep the values matched to what was underneath. I'm not entirely sold on the whole process of doing an underpainting and about half the time I just go straight into painting with color on the board.  But, sometimes, it seems to help.  **Shrug**

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STEP FIVE:  I imported it into PhotoShop and did a little digital tweaking. I added a glow to the face mask of Arishem and the doomsday glyph o his thumb with a Gaussian blur. To do that, I copied the areas I wanted to glow to a new layer in PhotoShop and applied the blur filter. I also added a "Kirby Crackle" on a new layer using the Paintbrush and Eraser tools, then selected the "crackle" and used the circular Gradation Tool going from white to black, and reduced the opacity to 60%.

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STEP SIX:  Of course, most of the Kirby Crackle I spent about 20 minutes figuring out how to create was covered up by the lettering. Again, WHEN WILL I LEARN? And why is the answer to that question always "NEVER!"? Sigh. However, even if you don't wind up using those parts in your art, all of it is good practice, I suppose. :-)

Anyways, I added the lettering, threw an 8-pixel border around it, called it "DONE!", and sent it off to Anthony for his site. Ta da!  UPDATE: It's up at the REPANELED Site today, November 9, 2011.  Thanks, Anthony!  :-)

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This was done with Acrylic paint on 10" x 15" gessoed illustration board with digital alterations and additions.

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Repaneld: Fantastic Four #5

Here's the original from "The Fantastic Four" #5 by Jack "King" Kirby and Joe Sinnot:

Here's yet ANOTHER submission to the delightful REPANELED Blog.  In this case, it is from "The Fantastic Four" #5, where the FF are transported back in time by Doctor Doom to get Blackbeard's treasure... it's a LONG story.  Well, not THAT long, but you know what I mean... and it's been reprinted plenty of times so go ahead and read it if you can!

Rather than my usual colorized black-and-white gouache paintings as done in some previous posts, this was done with charcoal on 12" x 18" Dick Blick Sulphite paper (80 lb).  For those of you who just can't get enough of the process, here it is.  For all the rest, be prepared to be bored!

STEP ONE:  With vine charcoal, I **VERY** loosely blocked in where I wanted everything to roughly fit on the page in an almost cartoonish manner.

STEP TWO:  And then almost immediately smeared the whole thing into an amorphous mess.  (That's the way I usually work with charcoal.)

STEP THREE:  I start to tighten up the drawing a bit with a 4B and 6B charcoal pencil and use my kneaded eraser a LOT--both to clean up the mess left by STEP TWO and to shape the form and add highlights.  Yes, kids, the eraser can ALSO be used to draw and not just erase mistakes.  :-)

I also settled on how I wanted Ben's pirate hat to look and, for my amusement, changed the original background guy in the panel to vaguely resemble a better-known pirate from a certain movie series.

STEP FOUR:  Ben Grimm (A.K.A., The Thing) is mostly done, now.  Again, this was done with continued layering of softer charcoal pencils and kneaded eraser to lift out lighter areas and highlights.  Time to work on that pirate fellow in the background...

STEP FIVE:  Well, here's the finished charcoal drawing.  I took a picture of it with my camera and then imported it into PhotoShop to colorize it.

STEP SIX:  Here it is colorized and cropped in PhotoShop, along with the added words.  It was basically the same method I used in previous posts: Over top the original picture, I added color on the Multiply Layer, as well as lightened some areas/retouched, and added a background with a generic Cloud Filter.

Done with charcoal on 12" x 18" Dick Blick Sulphite paper (80 lb.) and colorized in PhotoShop.

I realized a little too late that I didn't leave myself enough room to rotate the image a bit as I originally intended until after I had already copped it and got most of the way through colorizing.  I should have either drawn it at the tilted, Dutch-angle in the first place (preferred), or cropped it AFTER I rotate the image and BEFORE I start colorizing the image.  I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere for me.  :-)

Now that I look at it, I almost like the black-and-white charcoal drawing better than the colorized version.  Sigh...  On top of that, in comparison, I think Kirby did a better job of capturing the pathos of Ben Grimm (well, he **IS** the "King", after all).

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Repaneled: Detective Comics #32 - Batman Vs. Vampire

Here is yet another submission to the delightful Repaneled site.  Poor Anthony is going to be so sick of getting my submissions... :-)  (UPDATE: It was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2011.  :-)

I saw this panel and did a mental double-take: Batman shooting a vampire in the face with a silver bullet?  Let me repeat that: Batman shoots a vampire in the face with a silver bullet!  How could I **NOT** do a remake of that panel?

The original by Bob Kane, from "Detective Comics" #42.

For fun, here's the process...

STEP ONE:  I did the original painting with black-and-white gouache, which is an opaque watercolor, on Arches Hot-Press 140# watercolor paper.  For things like this, I prefer the smoother surface.  I decided to forgo any sort of reference pictures for this one, too--not sure how much of a good that that is, sometimes.  I also cheated a little bit (OK, a LOT) with the perspective of the coffin: it is completely screwed up compared to the rest of the room, but that way it showcases both Batman and the head vampire.  Sometimes reality has to take a back seat to the art.  :-)

I then scanned the painting into my computer with some minor adjustments in PhotoShop.

STEP TWO:  In PhotoShop, I created a new layer and set it to "Multiply", which allows the original painting layer to remain intact/show through while adding color.  I then put down the flat colors to begin colorizing the painting.

STEP THREE:  I started putting in more highlights and shadows.  I also did some corrections to the picture, as well as adding the gun shot (which seems a little bright, now that I look at it again.  Oh, well...)

STEP FOUR:  The painting still looked a little flat, so I darkened the edges to add a little more dramatic focus.  I then put in the lettering and sent it off to Anthony's Repaneled Blog.  

  This was done with gouache on Arches Hot Press watercolor paper measuring about 5" x 8" and colorized in PhotoShop.

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If I ever find a spare moment, I may have to do a recreation of the entire page in the future.  It is just that crazy/weird/fun!  Here's the page:

Highlights of the page include: 

• Batman peeking around a door to check on a sleeping woman in a semi-creepy fashion.
  
• Batman melting down a silver statue with a **CANDLE** (maybe an oil lamp or bunsen burner?) to make silver bullets.  Considering the melting point of silver is a little over 1,700 degrees F (over 960 degrees C), bunsen burners--let alone candles and oil lamps--generally don't get hot enough to melt silver.  Here's an interesting article about someone who tried to cast silver bullets...
  
• Silver bullets killing vampire? Werewolves, sure. Vampires? That was a new one on me.  [A little research on the internet shows that apparently they can--it's a little archaic, but it was believed to kill vampires. I guess that's why he's The God Damn Batman and I'm just a doofus posting pictures on the Internets.]
  
• Batman methodically walking through a crypt and shooting the lead vampire in the face.  Again, let me repeat that for emphasis: BATMAN SHOOTING A VAMPIRE IN THE FACE!
  
• Batman getting the girl at the end, only to fly off to the next adventure in the next panel. 

 Fun stuff!

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