Hello Steemers,

I hope you are well.

Last week @dlina-v-metrah requested I draw Batman and today I have finally finished the drawing.

I decided to mix it up a little this week, I usually find a reference image to reffer to the entire way though drawing. I didn't do that this time, I found 4 images of batman that I liked and then just got drawing.

I imagine there is all ready an image of batman identical to what I've drawn and that I could have found and used that for reference but that would take the fun out of this drawing.

One of my favorite comic book characters Batman!

Stage 1

The initial spacings and shaping of the character to be. I also included hints at drawing a background.

Stage 2

Continuing the blue layers of shaping the character. I got the Batman well refined and refined the hints at having a background.

Stage 3

Using what I learned from drawing luffy - I do way too many pencil layers - I did this one layer of HB pencil. I picked all the lines I like and started blocking out where the hard shadows would go.

Stage 4

I move straight onto pen from there and with a 0.1 fine line solidified the lines I would continue with. I would usually finalise this layer be taking to a long rubbing out session to leave as little of the earlier stages behind however I decided to not bother with this as I had already blocked out the shading and would have had to go back to do it all again.

Stage 5

On to the brush pen that I am a big fan of. This stage was a nightmare to start and probably the worsed part about drawing batman. Covering the drawing in black and making sure the shapes remain from earlier stages - it is very easy to loose so much detail when blocking in solid black everywhere.

Stage 6

The final Shading. Using a HB pencil I added tone to the clothing, I also grabbed a rubber to lighten up the shading in places which turned out quiet well.

Critical Analysis

As a drawing using references but not as a direct copy this posed a bit of a challenge. On steemit I have posted a bunch of my sketches and most of the time I am copying from a reference, line for line. However this time I used the references only a guide to what details make up The Batman and not a reference to copy.

Drawing out the overall stance, size and proportions of the character went really well in stages 1 & 2. The detailing and refinement of the drawing continued just fine.

The big problem arose when I came to inking the entire image. Batman is a character with almost all tone deep in the dark range with very little light toning. This was scary to start of with and continued to challenge me through-out. Dark vs Light contrast where tricky and soon realised that the line work I put in place earlier would soon be covered in black ink. In most cases I think I have done well where solid black meets solid black of over lapping clothing, but there are some clear place that the lighting is incorrect and the two parts merge - a great example is the foot on the right blending in with his cape around the back.

Not only that but i think this drawing is very rough in places and was a symptom of not having enough space once again. I drew this on a folded A3 piece of paper, giving myself the usual A4 amount of space. When It came to inking this was a real problem in the fine small areas and also made it tricky to keep the edges neat. I can see so many places that have sketchy edges and could be much better had the I had more space to move and put the detail in.

Over all I am happy with the outcome of this drawing, maybe I should aim to draw on A3 in future and I also need to find my other brush pen as I am using a real brush pen and hate the hairs. I much prefer the felt brush pen that I used for drawings earlier than luffy.

I hope you are happy with the quality of this batman drawing @dlina-v-metrah I feel I could have done better and maybe haven't spent enough time or care on this one.

With the earnings I have made through posting my drawings I think it is about time I treat myself to some new equipment. What do you guys think? I bet you'd agree.

Until next time,
Stay well.