Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Earth's Mightiest Sketch Blog: The Hulk

I was very nervous about drawing the Hulk. Unlike Ant-Man, who has a weird helmet, neat costume and other little doodads I could use to distract from any major flaws in my work, Hulk is really just a jacked up guy wearing barely any clothes. There aren't any real bells and whistles in the Hulk's look, you just need to have a good grasp of anatomy, shadowing, and all the stuff I don't think I'm great at. I also remember trying to draw the Hulk as a kid and the face always looking ridiculous because when I tried to make it look like he was angry, he just crazy/constipated.

Given all this, I leaned on reference art more heavily here than I did last time. I mostly just used the reference to get the shadows and musculature right. For the face and the basic outline, I did it mostly on my own, and pleasantly surprised myself.

I was going to run the Bryan Hitch image I used for my main reference, but unfortunately the site I was looking at it on seems to have pulled it down. Bummer.

Anyways, here's mine...




Given my expectations, I'm very happy with the final results. I don't think I'd want to ever draw the Hulk on a regular basis (just figuring out where the shadows fall on his muscles would drive me insane), but I had a lot of fun with this. A big part of that was realizing along the way that nothing is too ridiculous when it comes to the Hulk's physique. Want to make his arm the size of Ant-Man's waist and then some? Sure! Feel like he could use a few more veins? Makes sense! Good times.

Speaking of good times, I totally spent a few minutes grimacing in front of my bathroom mirror trying to figure out how to draw the Hulk's face. Megan was probably pretty concerned about me, but ultimately I just ended up drawing heavily on that classic Joe Jusko painted close-up image, so it was all for naught I suppose. I still enjoyed it.

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