Hellboy Art

Back in April of 2014, Multiversity Comics held a competition celebrating 20 years since Mike Mignola first created Hellboy.  When my freshman year roommate first introduced me to comics (later than most, I know), I immediately fell in love with his powerful graphic art style, and swashbuckling storytelling.  The competition would be a great opportunity to assess my progress.

After brainstorming through a number of thumbnails, I settled on a drawing depicting Yggdrasil, the legendary tree of life from Norse mythology.

Neil Gaiman’s version from American Gods struck me particularly, so I first envisioned Hellboy bound to it

As I researched the poetic Edda, however, I thought perhaps a more subtle moment might describe his first view of the tree, with serpents at its feet and the symbolic animals in its branches, heralding his arrival. Certainly a future visit to the zoo is warranted, but Google Image Search had to suffice for now.

Next came the drawing stage, which I neglected to photograph, followed by inking. I wanted to distance myself from Mignola’s style, and work in a more detailed pen style, using the Pentel V-Precise, which apparently uses an archival ink (via Freddie Williams II’s video on materials)

In a future post I want to go through the coloring process, but here’s the finished work.