One of the best parts of HeroesCon is the Saturday night art auction. It runs for hours and hours and benefits charities and the convention itself. Artists of every stripe donate original works for the event, some made well before the show, some made at the tables during the day. The auction is especially good for me as I spend all my cons behind the table alone, and this is my best chance to mingle and meet folks.
I made a piece back in 2012 of a notion I thought was clever: Magik and Amethyst going toe-to-toe. They have quite a lot in common and debuted within months of each other.
Now I was talking about the Saturday night auction, but there's a second on Sunday on the convention floor. This auction is for the smaller pieces by less prominent artists, and that makes sense. The Saturday event is geared toward big spenders with big bucks, and the pieces most likely to get that cash get the Saturday limelight. My piece above was sold on Sunday. Good news: It was bought. Nice! And no it couldn't have made the Saturday auction. It's too simple. It doesn't have the polish (and frankly the pedigree) the Saturday crowd expects. But I wanted to get into that crowd one day.
This year, I decided to give it a crack, and I had the time in the weeks before the con. I initially wanted to donate a Savage Rogue, but I saw Bridgit Connell had made one, and she has the polish and pedigree. If I'm picking auction pieces, hers would make the cut. No contest.
So I let my considerations percolate in the back of my mind. Then I caught some of Avengers Endgame on basic cable, and I saw Thor. I love Thor's arc from Ragnarok to Endgame. When you consider that his Ragnarok to Infinity War is basically a week long, his spiral in Endgame and desperation to prove himself hit hard. So let me make a token of my appreciation for that guy. It started with sketches.
I worked up some pencils at 11x17 and then transferred them to another board to lightbox, ink, and color.
Then I stabbed at it with some markers, working first with the face. If that didn't work, there was no need to work up the rest of the piece on that board. I would need to start over.
Then I just dove in, relying on online reference pics of Thor's costume. His Infinity War and Endgame costumes are the same, but the latter is seen in such darkness during the final battle that it had virtually no color in the photos I found. I had to run out and get decent big violet markers for the clouds, and then I worked those two shades with a variety of grays. This is a mix of markers: Spectrum Noir and Azure and genuine Copics. And then I went over the whole think with brush pens and some Sharpies.
I hope it makes the Saturday cut. That would be a feather in my cap, a suggestion that I've improved in the last 12 years.
