Homage

A few people seemed to think I traced this homage I did for ASM 323. Others tried to shame me because they thought I wasn’t drawing original art.

I find that to be comical because, like all my work, I share the full process both Live on Youtube and in complete Timelapse process here on IG. You can watch me from beginning to end, obviously not tracing.

And even if you didn’t see me not tracing when I drew it, if you have even remotely sharp of an eye, you can see that they’re not the same.

I used to paint portraits for a living. I got to a point where I could paint a fairly decent black and white portrait in 45-60 min. This takes some fairly extensive training of the eye to know how to recognize where shapes go. Not just using the main shapes, but the negative space “shapes” as well. Which is why these two match up with some accuracy, even though I was freehanding it.

But I also made some changes. Some I liked, some not as much.

Spider-Man in the McFarlane version looked great the way Todd did it, but when I tried to replicate, my brain did NOT like that his head basically cannot move that way. You can’t have an almost flat to the wall body, AND have a full frontal face. So I lifted Spidey’s torso off the wall a bit to make that more anatomically feasible. You can see this in the shortness of the torso in my version of ol’ Webhead. I also did the hands and feet slightly different.

Conversely, after it was all done, I wish I put more attitude in Caps pose. Todd did a great job of pushing the hips forward, leaning the shoulders back, and tucking his chin. My Cap, while good, is a bit stiff comparatively. I also could’ve done a better job at Caps hand inside the shield.

As far as copying goes, they’re right. I’m no fan of people blatantly copying someone else’s work.

I do homages mostly at client’s request or on rare occasion just to compare how my work looks stylistically next to some of the GOATs. And while I do want people to be homaging MY work, I consider it a sign of respect to do an occasional homage here and there. And I gave Todd his flowers in the caption of my posts. So there. 😅