I thought it would be nice to start sharing my arts on this blog as well (I'm working on a side blog to have a place with all my arts up because I don't trust social medias also).
Just to explain how I think something, how I did that, the difficulties I might have encountered etc etc...
So today let's talk about my latest stuff!
It all started because people kept wondering how I felt about MCU Sam.
I don't know if it's because I'm a simp for Sam and a simp for Tim Blake Nelson so ultimatly the fusion of my two biggest obsessions would make the biggest obsession I ever had but this is the first time ever that another Sam is able to be at least as important in my heart as comics Sam is. Probably also because I know everything there is to know about comics Sam and his variants while I'm merely discovering MCU Sam. But he grew in me to the point that right now I'm more obsessed over him than I am to comics Sam. But of course I will never forget about the OG boy. So I wanted to draw them together, I thought it would be the best possible answer.
It started with a very ugly doodle. Couldn't drew MCU Sam's face properly so I just quickly doodled something (this one is, in fact, my 3rd attempt).
It's very hard for me to draw MCU Sam because I deeply love Tim Blake Nelson (his work, I mean) and I perfectly recognize his face, so it's hard for me to like what I do. I need him to be as close as possible as Tim's face, I can't take liberty like I do with comics Sam. But the goal is to still keep my artstyle and it's hard to find a middle ground.
It took me 7 attemps to pull this one and feel somewhat satisfied. That's why I mostly draw chibi version of MCU Sam actually, because I don't need to respect Tim's face when I do so it's easier to feel satisfied haha
Here're the few notes I took and apply to try to be as close as possible from Tim's face as I could :
(he's so handsome lol)
The first thing to get is his head shape. Hard to describe in my English but it's "thin" and slightly roundish. Oval.
- He has a recessed chin
- Kind of very very triangle shaped from the front also but very round from profil my fav to draw on him tbh, I like his nose
- Very thin brows (almost invisible)
- Very thin lips, especially the upper one
- He has incredibly fucking hot dimples when he smiles
- Hollow eyes also very hot
- Nasogenian folds also, not always very visible depending on the light but keep that in mind. I would recommand to not directly draw it (or very slightly) but rather add it when you shadow.
- Drooping eyelids, especially on the "outside" part of the eye (the part near the ear rather than the nose, basically) which I like a lot, this kind of eye shape is fun to draw
That's it for Tim.
The only real tip I can give you is to observe, observe, observe. Draw something, it doesn't matter if it doesn't look like him at all. Then put pictures of him and observe both your art and his face. Check the differences, spot why it's odd, one detail at a time. Only one.
As I said, took me 7 try because everytime I was correcting one thing I still had corrections to add (and I still do).
Now for Sam himself (still MCU) you gotta remember that his head is asymetrical
The left part of his brain is slightly bigger (at least the kind of "brain bubbles" on it are), while the right part is way more difformed. His brainish part invade his neck and ear.
There's also dark green hair remaining here and there (I like that they still added this little detail on him, how his haircolor also changed).
Back to his eyes, he has one white blind eye and one very bright neon green one. They both glow in the dark but the white one's glow is way weaker than the other, so it's not visible in every shot.
In fact the way his blind eye shine is very similar to an animal's eyes reflecting lights
In the way that sometimes it stop shining the same way an animal eye will stop glowing once light doesn't hit their eyes anymore, if that make sense. The way it glows is very very similar.
Now my first mistake when I first drew him on another art was to make him smile. MCU Sam doesn't smile (at least for now). The only moment he smiled wasn't genuine and it was more of a way to mock Sam Wilson rather than having him smirk the way I tend to draw Sam smirking.
For his outfit he dresses all in black atm so it's not really complicated to either draw him like the movie or to come up with your own outfit. Very simple very dark outfits.
I enjoy drawing him with his hood on (sometimes with sunglasses but I rather draw him without it because I'm literally OBSESSED with his eyes) and I personally give him a longer coat than the one we saw on the movie because of this removed shot (that was, I assume, before they changed his design) :
I love this shot, I already explain why. From the obvious death allegory, to the way he walks, the way his coat moves (and also my very obvious kink for figures in a very long coat with hood on but y'know).
That being said, let's talk about these two drawings :
Even before MCU Sam, I always pictured Sam as the Sun. Because to me Bruce is a Moon in both his personality (and the fact some of his mutations happened at night, very werewolf coded) and I wanted Sam to oppose him in every aspect (that's why I gave Sam very sharp trangle featured while Bruce is rounder/square, for exemple).
Sam is more of a Sun personality. Overly confident, talkative, egocentrical, full of energy basically (also his signature color is orange which is a warm color while Bruce is purple, a night color).
It also matches very well his God complex.
My initial idea was to play with how comics Sam and MCU Sam oppose each others in their personality while still being similar in a lot of ways. So I kept the Sun/Moon allegory because MCU Sam's personality is, like comics Bruce, cold, quiet, sad, tired. A very "night" energy (and MCU Bruce has a Sun energy, as you know, that's the funny thing with their dynamic actually, comics Sam opposes comics Bruce, MCU Sam opposes MCU Bruce, comics Sam opposes MCU Sam, comics Bruce oppose MCU Bruce, giving me infinite ways to draw them).
That's why they have the same composition with opposed mood and colors. One in white, the other in black, one is in the light, the other in the shadow etc...
I wanted to add flowers, like I often do, because flowers have so many shapes and form and meaning, you can just do everything with them. Flowers are life, in fact, without flowers there's no life. So adding them in my compositions is also a way to give more life to my creations.
I also wanted them to be somewhat "biblical", thus the Sun shape and the Moon looking like a church glasse, kinda.
I enjoy giving each characters I draw a flower. For comics Sam it's lily, for gamma irradiated as a whole it's chrysanteum, for Human Sam it's sunflower (both comics and MCU) etc...
The reason I give lilies to Sam is very simple, I like them. People often call me "lily" for short, actually, because of Lirhya (My real name and nicknames aren't related to it AT ALL lol). I have a tattoo with Sam and lilies around him and I liked this composition so much that I started drawing him with these. It doesn't have any deep meaning.
Same with the colors. Usually I would draw them black or purple. But here I made them white to match the "light" of the whole composition.
I often draw comics Sam with purple as a lil' callback to his first color (he used to be purple while Bruce was orange haha) and because I love his dynamic with Bruce which is "a different face of a same coin", a "ying yang", etc... You get the general idea. While they oppose each others, there's still a lil' bit of them in each others. In this context, it was the same idea but as a callback to MCU Sam, because like I said above he opposes comics Sam but they're still the same in a lot of ways. That's why, in the same way, you have light blue in MCU Sam's composition.
His pose means the same, similar but still opposing the other by facing another side, having his head slightly "down", smiling, while MCU Sam's head is slightly up, no smile, larger clothings etc...
Speaking of MCU Sam
I redrew the background twice. Because at first I gave him epiphyllums, for the reasons I talked about here (btw when I make that kind of random post it means I'm working and thinking a composition. I write down my own thoughts to properly process them, analyze them, find them back if I need to. That's something I would advice you to do, not necessarly online but on a notepad or whatever. Remember, composing is 90% thinking).
I ended up giving him anthurium because soon after finishing my lineart I noticed he was growing anthurium in his prison. And the symbolism behind was so strong and hit me so hard that even if my lineart was done and I would have to redraw a huge part of it, I HAD TO draw them instead and connect them to MCU Sam forever.
For the record, that was my lineart before I changed it lol :
I also fixed a few things (his face too), as you can see. And I made the back slightly more complicated because I thought the dark waves were waaaay to simplistic. Which is fine, simplicity is fine, I often do simplicity.
But I wanted this art to look better than that. Because it was also my love letter to MCU Sam, my way to support him and Tim. My way to say how important he is to me.
I gave him crows because of the obvious Death allegory I mentionned above, because it suits his "shadow" energy very well and because in comics they say Death follows him. I also liked it because MCU Sam is, atm, a Sam Wilson antagonist and while Sam Wilson is now Captain America and we have a new Falcon, he's still a bird. So crows were very conveniant to me.
Crows have white eyes to represent his blind eye, except the one on his shoulder. I also made it with open wings as a way to represent Sam spreading his own dark wings ("I make my own choices now"and all, it's just about Sam's freedom in the end).
I always represented Sam with dark wings anyway. Mostly because of Immortal Hulk in which Sam is represented as a God while Bruce is a demon. Because his writing is incredibly Lucifer-ious, because he's that fallen angel. And the fallen angel metaphor is even stronger through MCU Sam because it's about an innocent sunshine who damned himself because of his pursuit of knowledge. It's incredibly biblical.
And while Devil Hulk (a Hulk alter made after the Biblical Snake) isn't a thing in the MCU, I find it cool that the one who brought him that "apple" is Bruce. That's something I'll probably explore a lot in the future.
I kept the anthurium red, like the one he was cultivating, because of the very "blood" color and the way it's a very very good callback to his prison (the red light on him also).
That's also why I liked the idea of adding light blue rather than yellow or orange to make a "comics Sam callback". Because it's also a good callback to Mister Blue.
The green is here for obvious gamma reason. There's also green in comics Sam's compo, in fact, it appears yellowish because of the general ambiance and light but it's green.
I also make the background kinda like brambles, y'know. 'Cause that's kind of what they are.
You will also notice lil' circles with Sun or Moon in both. The reason is because in almost every of my comics Sam arts I hide The One Below All's eyes, as a way to illustrate how Sam is stuck in his cursed destiny and so it was my way to add that here too, I liked how with the Sun it kind of look like its howling big mouth and eyes.
It's also important to note that I draw according to lyrics. As I said in another post, I think in music, I need music to create and to properly fonctionate, to stimulate my brain. That's why when I'm having a panic attack or when I need to rest, I cut off everything so I can turn myself off, if that make sense. I can stop fonctioning. Otherwise I adapt myself to whatever music I ear and if there's no music I'm just start humming or play something in my head.
So the song that went with MCU Sam was this one :
And for comics Sam it was this one :
I think that's pretty much all I had to say about these arts haha
I've been hesitant to do this kind of post for a while because I just love when people guess about my intentions themself, or because explaining your intentions prevent people from having their own feelings and interpretation about something and it's less interesting to me. So I guess I'll wait a few days each time and then talk about, because if it's less interesting for me I guess it's interesting for a few of you, so it seems like a good compromise to me haha.
Enjoy~
