Week 6: Vengeance With An Ax

Just a quickie this week.

To me, the most interesting thing about the Crow is that its a spirit that embodies a person to exact revenge and that the deceased person's occupation/lifestyle informs how they look.  Admittedly, most of my knowledge of the Crow comes from the movie, so I started there and tried to go as far in the other direction as I could.  Getting away from more gaunt, rock star look, I tried to find a bulkier build and more "blue collar" profession to start with.  I leaned towards a lumber jack because I still thought that would be scary as shit coming at you through the city or forest.

When I started with the rest of the Rust Belt Monster Collective, I knew that I wanted to strengthen my digital work flow as well as try as many different "looks" and techiques as I could.  I tweaked my Cintiq settings to try and get more of a sloppy, brushed look and kept the clean-up to a minimum.  I knew from the beginning that I would stay black and white, but added the halftone values later to try and give it a more "indie" vibe.

See some of the process over at my blog: still-reaching.blogspot.com
Twitter: NeedYourDisease

Week 6: Craig's Crow

I know just enough about this character to get me in trouble with people who really know him. I must admit that most of my knowledge comes from the Jason Lee movie peppered with some art I've seen over the years. Happily researching The Crow and doing the piece has turned me into an admirer. I think the Crow taps into the same vein that appreciates other justice bringers like Batman or Ghost Rider while allowing you to empathize with a truly pained character. Sure it's all sorts of Goth and Emo but it's good Goth and Emo.
I've learned a lot with this piece. Friskett will resist bleach, you can use a hair dryer when your toned paper is being bleached and xylene transfer does not work on cold press, toned paper that well. Perhaps the easiest thing to learn is that the combined smells of Clorox and Xylene gives you a pretty good headache. My intention is this was to be all traditional, mixed media but once the transfer didn't take it quickly got thrown into Photoshop. So it's a pencil drawing on top of a bleached toned paper moon with the rest of the colors in Photoshop. If you would like to see the drawing before anything happened to it check it out here.