MAKING THE MAN OF STEEL

David Talaski’s process of bringing a JC Leyendeckerinspired Superman to life

Finding inspiration for depicting Kal-el

“Before I drew anything I spent some time looking for inspiration. I like to spend some time on Google or in an art book to get my mind in the mood of what I want to draw. I then did a series of thumbnails exploring a couple ideas. I have a tendency to play around too much in the rendering stage if I don’t.”

Identifying the shapes

“When I begin the final piece, I start by figuring out the drawing. For this one I mostly defined the proportions and made sure I liked the pose. I try not to get caught up in detail at this point.

“I then put in the flat colours and start to broadly define lighting with the basic Soft and Round brushes in whatever software I’m using at the time. I think I started this one in Procreate, but then moved over to Photoshop.”

Painting the face

“Then comes my favourite part, the face. I probably repainted the face a dozen times. The expression I wanted was hard to get right but it’s the most important part.

After I was satisfied with the face I moved around the picture and built out the forms in more detail and resolved everything with a lot of reference.”

Using references taken from real life

“The flag was one of the last things that I did. I draped a blanket over a chair to help me figure out how the flag was going to work.

“The hardest part was trying to fit the 11 different stripes on the flag – including pastel pink and blue plus brown and black and white – in a way that they were all visible. I had to take some liberties here and there, but it was important to me to make sure they were all included.”