Belated 4th of July

If you live in a large city like I do, then you probably have various illegal fireworks going off all around the city at various times of the day and night during the weeks surrounding the 4th of July. So that was my inspiration for this quickie piece I did. I finished it in gray markers instead of my usual watercolors, because I had recently been reminded of Tim Sale's work. Now if you don't know who Tim Sale is, go check out his artwork. Go on, I'll wait for you....


Back? Good stuff, huh? You probably noticed that most of it is in black and white, and grays. There's a reason for this..Tim is color blind. His work gives off a very noirish feel. I wanted to see what I could do with just grays, black and white. So here's Captain America.

This version I tweaked in PhotoShop to get rid of the blue pencil marks. Unfortunately, as a result, it also lost some contrast. One of these days I'll learn the right way of removing blue pencil, but for now, it looks like I'll have to keep trying by trial and error. Here's the same picture taken with the camera from my phone:

So, while this one is darker, a lot of the original contrast is kept intact giving it a better feel.

Finally, you may have noticed my logo in the bottom right of the picture. Maybe it's vanity, maybe I saw a cheap deal, but I had rubber stamps made of my logo so that I could stamp my work when I was done. Too arrogant? Does it take away from the artwork, or is it no different than a signature? Let me know what you think below.

Enjoy.