The New Daniel Bryan
Ink and watercolor on 22″ x 30″ watercolor paper
This painting was the result of one of those ideas hitting me and I had to get to it right away. The notion of Daniel Bryan standing as an angry guardian of the planet.
The execution evolved as I was putting it together, too. My first idea was to make the animals really cartoony, but that was too much. Then I was going to go more illustrative with the animals but with representational colors. Then I worried that wouldn’t differentiate the foreground from the background enough, be too busy of a composition. Last week I was looking through the collection of Andrea Sorrentino’s work on Green Arrow and that seemed like a solid solution to where I was stuck.
People think artists have to either know all of the solutions and techniques or that we somehow through, I don’t know, mystical divination draw these things from the ether. Not true. Art is a skill that is developed over the years and decades. You don’t want a mechanic that thinks they know everything and aren’t open to learning new techniques and ways to fix up your car, right? You want a technician that’s staying up on the trades and learning from other mechanics, seeing better ways to keep that engine running.
Art’s no different. Sure, I learned the basics when I was young but I’m nonstop studying how other artists solve problems. How do they make an eye move through a composition? How do they use color to create a desired effect? What techniques and mediums are used in a way to their best potential? I do my own stuff, but my hubris isn’t to the point that I don’t think other people could have solved the same problem before me.