ISIDTA 12: Mexican Wrestler Batman

ISIDTA 12: Murcielago Contra Bromista (inks)
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

Hey, I finished on time.

So this week I challenged Kit to an ISIDTA, er, Challenge: take your favourite comic book character, and put them in a different job. I did this because a) I know Kit always likes a challenge, b) I know Kit is more inspired when given a subject to work from, and c) I had already decided to draw Batman vs The Joker as if they were Mexican wrestlers.

The full picture can be seen here.

So here we have Batman and Joker as luchadors. I tried to draw them as if they were wearing typical lucha costumes that were modelled to evoke the Batman and Joker characters. El Bromista has a suit printed on his tights and tasselled "hair", and Murcielago has a sort of scalloped vest-thing instead of a shirt and has a faceplate on the front of his mask.

I did a bunch of sketches for this one, trying to design the masks as well as working out the positioning and perspective of the two guys and the ropes. I was pretty happy with the way the layout turned out. Sketches can be seen here, here, here, and here.

I tried to be a lot more careful with both my pencilling and inking this week, as I really wanted this one to come out nicely. Still, mistakes do occur, and this was the first week I tried to fix some problems I made in the inks. I used a white gesso that Jackson turned me onto, and it seemed to work pretty well. The ink was a little harder to control on the gessoed surface. I used it where I screwed up Murcielago's hands really badly, and where the ink exploded from the pen while I was trying to draw the ring ropes.

I eyeballed this picture of Brazo De Plato as I tried to work out my perspective for Murcielago.

Overall, I was very pleased with the way this worked out. I had originally conceived it as a painting, and I may actually go ahead and do a painted version at some point, with a crowd and whatnot. There are some minor problems; I should've striped the "coat" part of the tights, the legs gave me some problems, the torso looks a little flat, but overall I really like it. It could use some shading and a crowd, but it turned out pretty well like it is.

In an amusing coincidence, the same day I was drawing this, my mom came by where I work and dropped off this picture that I drew when I was but a wee lad. (I was a HUGE Robin fan.)

The pencils for this week's ISIDTA can be seen here.
The inks for this week's ISIDTA are here. They look pretty good on their own.
Kit's ISIDTA for the week is here.
My previous ISIDTAs are here.