A Month of Batman

On the run up to the New Year, I was thinking about some of the things that worked and didn’t work for me in the past. I’d spent over a year drawing WWII books, which was great fun, well paid, and I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity, but it did push me into obscurity a little and I need to make sure I’m visible both to the reading public and to editors.

So, I thought, I should try and think of big two books I could work on and do good work on. And then, from that, I should try and get some art of those characters in to my portfolio and online. And, to give me a bit of focus, I should take one big two property every month and just try and focus some fan art, some samples, and maybe even send to an editor or two.

January is Batman.

When I think Batman I think “nope, not for you Paul, that’s for artists that are better” and that’s pretty much my thought process when I think of literally any big two property. But that’s pretty defeatist. It’s also nonsense. Digging deeper in to it, I think there’s a slew of Batman adventures I could kill on – including, but not limited to, a Batman horror series (monsters? are you kidding? I’d be a perfect fit). Noir (heavy shadows? Yes please!) Comedy (come on, this is easy) and er… well, if I’m not a perfect fit on Batman, I dunno who is*

Anyway, that’s the thing. I’ll spend this month between paying work, and other projects trying to find things Batman related to draw – that may include mock covers, some sample art or just generally sketching.

This could all fizzle out by tomorrow, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, and this is it.

*Ok, the truth is given the right project I think I could do a specatuclar Batman, but equally, I could be bobbins – but you get nowhere thinking you’ll fail, right?