Tuesday, July 03, 2007

CAPTAIN AMERICA

Lee's birthday came around again, and while I can't promise him a picture every year, I could definitely bust my ass to get him one this year. The original is an A2 satin print. It's quite impressive (if I may say so).

Lee and his wife Nicola have been incredibly supportive of my artwork over the last year. We met online playing Everquest 2 and Nicola commissioned me to draw a portrait of Lee for his birthday last year (see the post called, "Lee" about this time last year). The three of us became really good friends since.

The other cool thing about Lee is that he is one the last bastions of big-time comic book collectors. The second largest weekly buyer at Comics R Us, it's guys like him that keep the whole circus running. The perk of this for me is that he lends me heaps of comics that I wouldn't normally buy myself for a variety of reasons.

Lee's longest run is Captain America. So it was a no-brainer that Cap should be the subject of the piece. The trick was communicating Cap's elegance, straight-forwardness and dignity.

Happy birthday Lee! Thank you again for all your support. Wait til you see Nicola's present!

TECHNIQUE: He's a line drawing (see above) which is actually incredibly simple. With a painted grey toned background for his form. The chain mail is a texture I found on the web and then built it to cover his body. It's actually two layers (a multiply layer and a 50% overlay). The shield is a compact disc texture that I found that I then painted over and smoothed out to become the curve and shine of his shield. I'm especially proud of this effect.

10 comments:

Kelly J. Crawford said...

Holy cow, Jas, that's got to be one of the most stunning renderings of Captain America I have ever seen. Nicely done!

Anonymous said...

Nice Cap, Jas.

Anonymous said...

An extremely cool birthday present and entirely unexpected. After attending a framing course I've only just finished getting the picture from last year framed (and even jas agrees the background colour and frame look good on it). Now I'll be getting this picture framed asap. I'm sure if I have a 12 month goal of filling a room with 'Pictures by Jas' that'll keep him busy enough between his already insane workload.
Thanks again Jas!

Anonymous said...

Almost forgot..

Captain America
R.I.P

1941 -2007

Anonymous said...

Oh man, I LOVE this! And I never even liked Cap that much. He looks gooooood.

Kelly J. Crawford said...

He's not dead, I tell ya. He just can't be! *sob*

Anonymous said...

Woah, this is entirely incredible!! Stunning! Gorgeous! Magnificent! Ok. that's a lot of adjectives, but they all work :)
Did I mention amazing? lol.
Oh, and on this note - I went into a comic book store for the first time ever last week! Muy exciting :)

Unknown said...

Jason lives in Shiny Land.

*snerk* ;)

But seriously, that's all kinds of awesome, man. They're gonna be tearing your clothes off at Comic-Con.

Anonymous said...

I can only imagine that your slight lull in blogging is due to some really cool stuff you have hidden up your sleeves.

anxiously awaiting

Anonymous said...

Wow Jas, that is great!