I wanted to include some looser, more moody pages in my portfolio that were a little bit more natural "me" feeling than some the other stuff I did that I probably over-thought to the point of making some poor storytelling choices. This is supposed to be Hellboy returning to Earth from Hell, only to discover that Hell beat him there.
I love drawing animals.
I think that last panel is one of my better renditions of Hellboy. In his panel at ECCC, Mike Mignola said he designed Hellboy to be a character that A) he'd never get tired of drawing and B) he could draw really terribly and have the character still be recognizable.
That Ogdru Jahad (based on Mike Mignola's design) was a lot of fun to draw, but overall this piece feels rushed to me. I wanted to do a lot more with the sky.
Mike Mignola's Hellboy and its spin-off B.P.R.D. (published by Dark Horse) are the only comic book series I still follow. From what I remember, the movies are so tonally different than the comic that they are basically a bad parody. The comics are steeped in mythology, folklore and classic literature from all over the world. In one comic, Hellboy finds himself in Japan fighting evil decapitated heads (based on an actual folk tale) while later, in Hell, he watches a puppet show of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. It's crazy stuff. This is actually a drawing I did a while back for a fan art contest - I didn't submit this. You can see the one I did submit here.
One of my favorite monsters from Marvel Comics. I first learned about the Man-Thing from a Spider-Man collectable card set (apparently they had a "team up"). Man-Thing is a silent hulking swamp creature who guards the nexus of alternate dimensions and whose touch burns the flesh of fearful evil-doers.
Believe it or not, I don't remember ever having owned the book Where the Wild Things Are but I really like the Spike Jonze movie.
A couple speed paintings done in Photoshop. I've spent so much of my life sketching in pencil, it's strange trying to approach color in this way. I'm a terrible painter.
Didn't get a comic page done this week because I was working on these submissions to Multiversity's 20 Years of Hellboy art contest. These are two parts of a triptych (the third will depict Hellboy in Hell). Compared to the epic Gustave Dore inspired lineart of the second, I don't think the first holds up so well, although I do love drawing kid Hellboy. I think the second drawing is probably one of, if not the best illustration I've ever done.
