With Todd taking a hiatus from blogging, Occasional Superheroine shut down and a lot of my other usual sites updating more and more infrequently, I was starting to feel a little unplugged. So I wasn't about to take that crap from Christian. Brother hadn't posted diddly in TWO MONTHS! I knew I needed to post another sketch soon, preferably of a female C-lister, so I decided to kill two birds with one tennis racquet. I challenged Christian to a "sketch-off." I gave him, as the one challenged, the choice of character. He deferred back to me so I hit him with Hellcat. (After Jack of Hearts, I wanted something simple.) I managed to knock mine out pretty quickly and held onto it because Christian is apparently going all out and doing something pretty cool. But my schedule is turning to s*** with a quickness. As a matter of fact, I'm starting to feel a lot like this guy every Friday:
Anyway, I decided to post mine while I have the chance. I hope you like it. I did. I liked it so much I started to feel like I'd seen it before. And I was right. Remember this?
Mike's been gone for nearly three years now and I'm still copying my big brother. I guess if you're going to steal, steal from the best. That drawing, for some reason, was always one of my favorite of his sketches.
Remember to keep checking back at Christian's blog. He should have his Hellcat rebuttal up soon. Hopefully, he's having fun with the challenge. I sure did. Maybe we can make it a regular thing.
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The last several sketches, I've noticed that I've been having trouble focusing my eyes. When I do my thumbnails and layouts, everything is fine. But when I start inking, I can't quite tell where to lay the pen nib. It was getting fairly alarming because the same thing was happening when I tried to read at night. My eyes couldn't focus on the words on the page. One night, when I was inking, I took off my glasses to try rubbing my eyes, thinking that would help. And, boom. Everything clicked into focus. Now when I ink, I have to take my glasses off and stick my face about eight inches from the page.
I need friggin' bifocals!
It seems old age keeps tapping me on the shoulder to remind me he's catching up.
Funny thing, though. I was admiring a Spider-Man commission by John Byrne on his website and in the thread he mentioned that he had just started having the same issue! He'd also figured out the same solution (taking off his glasses to ink.) As he's about ten or fifteen years older than me, I feel a little cheated. Lucky bastard!
5 comments:
Yeah dude--at a certain age the eye sight just sort of pops, and all you have is shit. It started for me last year at 43, and now I can't read the $5.00 words in video games for my kids at 12 feet on a standard resolution TV.
It wasn't gradual, it just sort of "snapped." I'm still in denial, so no glasses for me yet.
I do miss my infamous eagle vision... used to be able to read the copyright notice on the bottom of the eye chart... I can't wait for my bladder to go--I assume that is next (my mind went years ago).
Don't remember if I complimented you on this yesterday at the Con. Nicely done, ol' chap. And, yes, my rebuttal will be forthcoming.
Nice Hellcat!
And the eyesight thing. I started wearing glasses in my 30's and moved to bifocals in my 40's. The thing is, not long after I got the bifocals, my vision changed again and now I can much better without my glasses.
I hear you about the bifocals.
My eye doc mentioned them last year and I told her no way, I'm too young to even think about them.
But, dang, if I didn't notice trouble reading almost immediately after that.
As for the Hellcat, I did think of Mike when I saw it, but not based on the pose, but because she has a realistic body shape, something both I and my bride love about Mike's work.
Great piece, Matt! I don't really think it's *that* similar to Mike's piece though. You did a great job, in any event!
I've had the exact same issue with my eyesight, and it happened in exactly the same way, while inking! I now have to ink the same way as you. Anything I do that requires precision, in fact, including using my iPhone to type this comment, is done without my glasses, from six inches away! This all began around 40 as well. Sigh.
Really looking forward to seeing you and Suze next weekend!
Best,
Rich
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