Character Art- EPIC from Dark City Comics

 

After reading about my Custom Art Sale on Facebook, Lonnie Lowe Jr. of Dark City Comics reached out to me to do a drawing of his character, Epic. 

Epic (rough). #2 wooden pencil

He wanted a drawing of Epic shooting eyebeams. I did a bunch of sketches from different angles that I wasn't happy with before I got to this one. The character's cape bunches up around his neck in a distinctive way in the original design, concealing part of his face. I wanted to draw emotion on the face, but part of his grill would be obscured by his costume, and more by the effect of the eyebeams, so I needed to work that out to get it right. After a bunch of uninspired compositions, I really liked this one.

Epic (inks) Sharpies, water based brush marker

So I light-boxed this onto some 110 lb Wausau paper I bought today. Because the pencil rough was well-composed, this was pretty straight-forward. I didn't need to change anything other than to define the gauntlet that is showing there. I could pretty much "see" the inks I wanted to lay down when I was drawing the sketch, which is why I didn't tighten it up at all in the pencil stage. I think it helps the inks have the right amount of freshness and bounce to them, instead of just tracing a finished pencil drawing.

Epic by Samax Amen

After looking at the piece on the blog preview, I went back and drew in some more hair and darkened some of the grays. NOW I'm happy with it! I guess it's important to note that while I usually draw with colored markers then desaturate the image to get my "inked" images (cause that's how I roll), I decided to draw this one in straight black and white since the customer was buying the original, not a print. That's also why there's none of the halftone screen/zipitone effect I am so fond of. I just laid in the grays with a gray bush marker. So there's no photshoppery on this one.

So that's that. Interested in getting a piece of your own? Click here for details on my Custom Art Sale!

-samax

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