Recoloring an older piece of Superman art, retro-style!

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With Zuck tucking-tail and deciding to improve Facebook by transforming it from a "frustrating social-media platform" to "a wretched hive of scum and villainy" I've decided to move my usual posting shenanigans to Bluesky, and to make more frequent use of this blog and make it something other than a repository of long-form thoughts on horror-flicks. We'll see how that turns out, but in the meantime, have something new and non-horror related.

So, I've been a fan of Superman (and comics in general) since I was a young child. I've also drawn since I could hold a pencil in my hand, and I'm mostly self-taught. 

However, I've been dealing with slowly worsening Carpal Tunnel Syndrome over the past 15 years or so, which has made drawing a tiring experience. And even before that years of chronic depression slowly but surely chipped away at my desire to draw at all, but I managed to refocus my creative energies into Transformers customizing from 2008 to 2022 or so.

Back in 2015 I decided to do a piece of artwork that I could "retire" on should I be unable to continue drawing. In the time since, I have completed nothing of any real consequence. While I ended up happy with the line-work, I was never happy with the final finished and colored piece, mostly because of my  awkward placement of the background element.

After seeing a piece of bronze-age styled artwork by HylianLibrarian shared over on the Superman subreddit, I was inspired to pay heed to my old-school roots and go retro. I purchased a copy of Clip Studio Paint Pro over the holidays, and to color it I used the 4-color KRAFTTONE brushes and paper textures by True Grit supply, all as a supplement to my ancient copy of Paint Shop Pro 8 (circa 2003) which I resolutely refuse to relinquish to the dustbin of graphic-design history. I also followed up the purchase of Clip Studio by buying myself a new scanner, and even a new drawing tablet, the HUION Inspiroy H1060P, which I like thus far, and it should prove useful in making corrections and additions to my my traditional pencils & inks approach to illustration.

 

 
 
At some point in the future I might dive in further to add more old-school hatching and spot more blacks, but I'm pretty pleased with it as is. I hope you enjoy it as well, and watch this space for more artwork as I go back and color pieces I allowed to languish for too long. 

 



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