Joking around

I've been thinking about the Joker a lot lately, must be something to do with the upcoming Batman movie. So I did something that I very rarely do: I drew a picture.

I remember reading a while back about how Jim Lee approached a sketch he did, painting the paper black and then working in white out on top of the black. It sounded like an interesting process so that's what I tried to do. I laid down a large black area, then blocked out the white of the face/hair and contour of the shoulders with pentel white out. Then I took a brush and tried to add features and rendering in black over the white, so the finished drawing is three layers (in some areas five or six as I kept whiting out and trying to correct my many mistakes)and weighs about a pound.

Maybe I should have tried to pencil it first.

The moral to the story is I'm no Jim Lee. But here's my attempt, warts and all, for the world to make fun of. No false modesty here, there's a reason I spent so many years inking and not pencilling. I could always say it sucks because Tom Nguyen has my good brushes in a box in the trunk of his car but that would just be making excuses.

You know who would draw a really kick ass Joker? Doug Mahnke!