The Shadow

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New art technique fer me. This was my first practice attempt I drew at the mall in the food court.

Comments and critiques welcome as always...

Kinda reminds me of McLeach, the villain from "Rescuers Down Under". Very animation-like.

Awesome! Always been a fan of the old Bronze Age heroes such as The Shadow, Doc Savage, and The Phantom. Glad to see they are not forgotten!
As for the resemblance to a Disney movie: actually this is a pretty good portrayal of He Who Knows What Lurks In the Hearts of Men. He had a huge rat like nose and somewhat vermin like features that reflected the inner beast of his past attrocities. Disney has a bad habit of taking things they think folks won't notice due to the passage of time and try to make it theirs. you can see what I mean in The Rocketeer where they had a henchman that was the spitting image of Rondo Hatton.

I think you should do the other heroes that Uncle Artic mentioned, and montage them with this piece, which came out great!

That's a pretty incredible piece. The only thing that I can pick on is the inconsistent shading pattern on the silhouette, but that's extremely trivial. I love the subtle color play between the smoke wisps and the background. Especially how clean the wisps behind the hat brim but in front of the silhouette of the map brim have been rendered.

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That's a pretty incredible piece. The only thing that I can pick on is the inconsistent shading pattern on the silhouette, but that's extremely trivial. I love the subtle color play between the smoke wisps and the background. Especially how clean the wisps behind the hat brim but in front of the silhouette of the map brim have been rendered.

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I was disappointed with the background shadow as well. I think the problem comes from painting on a dry piece of paper, I seem to recall a technique call "wet on wet" where you wet the surface of the paper, THEN apply the ink. As I said though this is a learning piece and the more I learn from it the better I'll get

If anyone has experience with watercolors or inkwash and can offer some insight on how to avoid that in the future that would be great!

I E-mailed Tim Sale and asked him about it and he responded!! Here is his response:

"It takes a lot of practice, Patrick, and the trick is to wet the area with clear water first, making sure it's not so wet still that it's shiny when you tilt it to the light (or tilt your head). But I would recommend first that you not worry so much about it. I never do anymore, and I like the texture that it gives.

Tim"

I thought that it was really cool that he actually took the time to help me out. Now I only have to drudge through the rest of my stupid workday before I gets to go home and try it out

That's awesome that he replied -- and the pic is nice, too.

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That's awesome that he replied -- and the pic is nice, too.

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Agreed! Really nice work.

Must be watercolor day... I just described this for another poster here. But let me try again with more concise info:

1) Simple Wash: dry paper, water is applied on the dry brush, to the watercolor paint, adding more water to make more color, and of course cleaning your brush in between adding water, or you will muddy your color.

So with a single stroke in whatever direction you apply to the dry paper, you lay down a stroke of either more color, or you dilute your brush with more water to bleed out the color to the white of the paper, OR how ever far you are going to spread that color into any given area you are trying to define.

Still with me? I have to start with a simple wash, because if you can't do one, then you can't do the wet on wet.

2) WOW: Like Tim said, you apply pure water, to the area you want to paint. That is to say ONLY if you're just starting. You can also do wet on wet with 2 different colors, but you gotta be really careful not to muddy them. That's why I asked about the simple wash strokes, the strokes are adjacent and barely overlapping, they are not one on top of the other, that's mud.

Okay so wet the area, now get your color on your brush, and wash it out into the wet area. Again like Tim said, tilt your head to see how close to drying your first layer of wet color or pure water is, you want it to be at least 1/2 way dry. Then apply your new wash, and the added water on the surface will create a nice bleed of watercolor with your stroke...

You can also do this with pure water, when the layer below it is almost dry, and you'll get some cool runs... Good luck, btw, here's an example to show I know what I'm talking about:

Indy done for my mom, who is a huge HF fan...

LJ

Whoa... Nice on the reply from Tim Sale...

...Didja happen to email him in Pirate Speak?

Gees what You Tube doesn't have is beyond me: Wet on Wet... the only thing is in this demo, he's going for speed and expression, not tight controlled realism or even semi tight comic coloring. Just so you know that...

Do some other searches on You Tube, great stuff there...

LJ

Very--and I mean VERY well done!