F is for Fantastic Four

Here are some quick notes regarding today's letter, F:

-It wasn't until after I drew all four members of the FF that I realized that I could have just drawn the Flash and saved a lot of time.
-Speaking of which, The Flash is the only major superhero that does not appear in this alphabet. Because I'm stupid.
-I colored this one myself. I used an amalgamation of a few different versions of the FF's costumes and didn't want to drive my wife crazy by looking at a hundred different reference photos.
-At the time I started drawing this, the Human Torch was dead in the comics. I assumed that he'd get better and it turns out I was right.
-Look! The Invisible Woman's hair is different than Elektra's! Yay, hairstyles!
-The Thing is a pain in the ass to draw, but I think I succeeded.
-Seriously, that fact that the flash is not included in this alphabet drives me insane. These are supposed to be "flash" cards, afterall! I may have to rectify this...

See you tomorrow!
--Brent

E is for Elektra

"E"didn't have as obvious a character selection as the previous four letters, but I think Elektra is a pretty good choice. She's been featured in two theatrical films ('Daredevil' and 'Elektra') and I'd consider her one of Marvel's more popular female characters.

There are other female characters throughout this project and I found it challenging to make them look different from each other. Not because I think all women (superhero or otherwise) look the same, but because I had to illustrate different hairstyles. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about hair (I keep my head shaved because I'm lazy), but I decided to give it a good solid effort. Most of the Elektra reference I found in comics or online had her with long, straight hair, but since she's Greek, I made it wavy. I'm not sure that I've ever drawn wavy hair before, but I think it turned out okay.

This may be the most that I've ever discussed hair.

You you guys tomorrow!
--Brent

D is for Daredevil & Donatello

This is the first letter featuring multiple characters. Originally I had planned on using only Daredevil, but anyone who knows me is aware of how much I love the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I'll be damned if I wasn't going to include them on this project!

I'd like to note that my wife NAILED the colors on Donatello. When I drew him, I envisioned him as having the same colors as the action figure that I had when I was little (the toy version of Donatello had brownish skin, as opposed to the cartoon version which had all 4 turtles as the same color of green), but when I passed the art along to her, I forgot to mention that little detail. And yet, she did exactly what I had imagined anyway. God, I love that woman...

See you guys back here on Monday for "E"!
--Brent

C is for Captain America

This is another pretty obvious one.Cap is the leader of one of the largest franchises in the world, The Avengers, which was a colossal film hit a few months ago.

When drawing the characters for each letter, I really wanted to focus on making each figure different from each other. This can be a little challenging when you're drawing most of them from the chest up, so I tried to focus on the characters facial features. I'd like to think that if you removed Cap's mask in this drawing, you could still tell that it's supposed to be Captain America.

It should also be noted that Marvel are updating Captain America's uniform in a couple of months in the comics, so this art is already outdated. Awesome...

See you tomorrow for "D"!
--Brent

B is for Batman

This one is pretty obvious. Batman is one of the biggest superheroes in the world and the star of a billion dollar movie franchise. I like this one, but if I could change one thing, I'd lighten up the the darker gray highlights on his costume. My wife colored this for me, but it's entirely my fault since I decided to go with the darker gray. It looks okay on the computer screen, but when we had it printed out to make the flash cards, the gray turned black, which I guess is okay since Batman is all black in the movies.

Originally I had planned to do a full figure drawing of Batman, but looking at the bigger picture of getting this project complete, most of these would have to be from the torso up. I enjoy drawing Batman, so I'm sure I'll have a chance to take a crack at that full-figured sketch before too long.

See you tomorrow!
--Brent

A is for Aquaman

Today begins a 26-part series of blog posts that will take us all the way through the alphabet using superheroes. This project began nearly a year ago when my friends Trey & Alyssa called me up and asked me to create some superhero flash cards for their newborn son, Liam. They wanted to use them to teach him his ABC's when he got a little older. I said yes, and immediately started making a list of characters to use. The only rule was to use all heroes, as using villains seems like an odd way to teach children how to spell. "J is for Joker. Who will murder you with a smile on his face!" Anyway, this made it fairly difficult on a few letters but luckily I'm a colossal nerd, so I persevered. I also have some alternate art for a couple of letters because the original characters that I drew weren't so much superheroes as characters from movies or pop-culture, and decided to change them at the last minute (I'll include the art for those along with the the letters that they correspond to).

Another thing of note is that most of these letters were colored by my lovely wife, Brandy.She did a great job and I'm really proud of her. (Any art that was colored by me will be noted, otherwise, just assume that she colored them.) That's enough talking, let's move on to today's letter, which is of course:

To those of you who say Aquaman is lame...well, okay, you're somewhat right. HOWEVER the current Aquaman book by Geoff Johns & Ivan Reis is a lot of fun. One of my friends asked me why I didn't use Ant-Man instead, which is also a good choice, and I guess my main reason is because I feel like Aquaman is more popular in the zeitgeist, even if it's because "he's lame because he talks to fish." Also, I had never drawn Aquaman before and it seemed like fun, which it was.

See you guys tomorrow!
--Brent

Spider-Man

I know it's been a while since I've updated this blog, but that will change now. I've been busy working on various art projects and have somehow managed to finish a few of them so I'll begin showcasing them here beginning with today's post.

A couple of months back, a friend of mine contacted me on Twitter (@BrentHibbard) to see if I could do a Spider-Man piece for her friend's birthday. I said yes because I love drawing Spider-Man, even though I was already pretty busy with other art projects. I figured I'd spend a couple of hours penciling and inking a simple Spidey sketch and be done with it. Well, one thing lead to another and about 10 hours worth of work later, I ended up with this:

 (Spider-Man Pencils)

(Spider-man Inks)

(Digitally enhanced Spider-Man)

I have to say...this is probably my favorite Spider-Man that I've ever drawn, and also the best. My wife asked me if I would be sad to give it away, but I wasn't because I had intended to give it away from the beginning, and therefore wasn't as attached as I would have been if someone had asked for an existing piece of artwork of mine. 

That's all for today. Stay tuned because I have more artwork for you tomorrow!

--Brent