Doctor Doom
A time-capsule sketch from my early experiments with comic-book inking
This one’s a bit of a time capsule. I drew this sketch of Victor Von Doom about thirteen years ago, back when I was really trying to figure out how comic artists handled inking and shading.
At the time, I was experimenting a lot with cross-hatching, especially on the metal arm and the mask, trying to echo the look of the older comics I was reading. I leaned heavily on reference photos while working on it. I remember struggling to get the shadows behind the cape dark enough using pens alone, and eventually just grabbing a permanent marker to push the blacks where I wanted them.
When I finished it, all I could see were the problems. The fist bothered me the most—the geometry felt off, and the depth-of-field effect I was going for didn’t really land. The cape, though, always felt solid. I used a reference of Mr. Sinister to help sell the lifted shoulders and give the silhouette a bit more presence.
Looking at it now, it reads very differently. Instead of feeling unfinished, it feels like a snapshot of experimentation and learning. With some distance, it actually holds up pretty well.
