Friday, April 18, 2014

Vandal Savage character portrait


And…here's another character portrait using the previous posting's stance, from a long time ago. The character is "Vandal Savage," a perennial DC Comics villain, who is immortal and evil and endlessly determined to have his way. ("Vandal Savage" has to be one of the best villain names ever.)  I was especially fond of the black and white costume, with its "jodhpur" pants and its somewhat Nazi-ish collar and epaulets. He holds what appears to be a high-tech Molotov cocktail.

He might be an immortal master villain but he looks a little wimpy in this illustration. This is because I didn't use a fashion template but created the figure by myself. You need those exaggerated fashion proportions for a mythical being. This is one of my perplexities with illustrating human figures in mythic roles and situations. Their proportions are NOT "realistic" yet all the art figure training and practice I have done demands a strictly "realistic" rendering and proportion for human figures. So when I depict a heroic or mythic character, they look like some random person dressed in a costume rather than a legendary larger-than-life figure. I know, this is not exactly a dire problem but it is a factor in my endless quest to do art work that conveys excitement and doesn't suck. 

"Vandal Savage" is acrylic on illustration board, 6" x 10", August 1988.

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