The story so far...

With my Daredevil pieces finished (and drying) I have started working on my next set of work.
For my next character of focus, I am working on DC comics character, John Constantine.

Constantine is an anti-hero of sorts, he's a British biblical sorcerer and exorcist who drinks and chain smokes. His story goes from growing up in Liverpool around an abusive father, as a teenager he learned his family were decedents from a bloodline of mages and with this knowledge he learned to practice magic and left home in the 60s. In the 70s John became a part of the occult groups and joined the punk scene after seeing the Sex Pistols. His reckless behavior was cracked when a group exorcism failed and as a result a young girl was dragged to hell. After this point John has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and travels the world as a supernatural specialist for hire.
Constantine was originally based on the appearance of the musician Sting, but one of the great character traits is unlike other comic book characters, Constantine ages in real time, currently aged in his 60s.

For my Constantine work, I plan to look into Punk artwork (although this isn't my focus), macabre and horror artists, smoking and pubs in art work.
I have a few compositions in my sketch book of what some pieces could be and I already have a few background shots. I plan to use my uncle as the model for my work because he was a punk himself.
Here are some early study's I've done for this work, looking at a young and old image of Sting and trying out media, as well as a drawing of Johnny Rotten.

 

Finally
Here's some work I did at college recently that I'm rather proud of

This life drawing painting was done in 2 hours using a limited palette of brown, blue, yellow and white. I've done one of these in the past but it's more just coloured in, I like this piece more because it picks out the key areas of colour so your eye can fill in the rest.

And finally, here's a quick ink drawing, touched up with oil pastel. It's not one of my best self portraits I've ever done, but it certainly isn't bad. This piece was took roughly 2 hours as well working from a mirror.

Finished Daredevil Pieces

After a few weeks working on them, my Daredevil pieces are now finished. Below you can see the development on my work leading up to my final pieces. By working on all three simultaniously, there is a common theme between each piece which works well as a transition between the images.

Alternatively, watch the development process in this video:

 

These early stages are just acrylic primed boards with a quick sketch of the compositions done in oil pastels. I colour coded the base layer to signify which painting was which. Example, I came to refer to each piece as Blue, Yellow and Red.

I used a pallete knife to scrape oil paint down the wall to create a rough stone texture

I decided collage was the way to go on the wall. I pva glued newspaper down on the wall and primed it with yellow acrylic paint, just as a coloured base layer.

I repeated the pallete knife scraping effect on the wall and stuck the collaged newspaper element onto the wall

 

Here are the final pieces.

My favorite of the three pieces is probably the second one. This is because there is a lot of changes in the piece, in colour and shape, it's a busier piece but not over crowded. I like the angles of the models and background and I think the composition works really well. My least favourite is the third piece, this is because the piece is quite empty, I think the composition is weaker because there is no main focus on the image and it's more so all the same focus. I like how all the angles are different between the pieces but maybe I could have painted a bin or something either in the background or foreground to give it some more depth. The first piece, because  haven't talked about this yet, I like. I think the brick work is really well done and my colours on the piece are really strong. I would have liked to work on the figure a bit more but based on the material of the costume and what my model was wearing in the photographs there wasn't a lot of light to work with. I think the collaged elements work really well in this piece in particular and the depth is done successfully. I also managed to sign my work succesfully in these paintings, which is something I struggles with a lot because I have a long signature. I managed to sign them very subtly.

Interesting Article

I came across this blog article just now and after reading it, found the comparisons very insightful.
http://actionheroesfineart.blogspot.co.uk/
I've always compared comic book artwork to that of any other painted characters such as religious paintings or mythological paintings, and this article presents the fine art similarities very well. It's a great analogy to read as it compares the work of Peter Paul Ruebens and his anatomy pieces to the dramatic exadurations of Jack Kirby or famous battle paintings to those of comic book battles.