Continuing a look at my own artworks and their origins, I’m going to dig into some of the more comic book inspired works.

Today we look at my heavily Jeff Matsuda influenced Wolverine:

Wolverine

I was a HUGE fan of this new “Ameri-manga” style when it first came out. Particularly on the Matsuda covers during his runs on X-Men. I drew this back sometime in the early to mid 90’s.  I forget exactly when.

Note the following cover linked from Matsuda’s site (sans permission, but I’ll beg forgiveness):

X-Factor

The influence is more than slightly obvious.  Granted, as you’ll see in later explanations, my particular style has always lent itself to large eyebrow, big teeth, scraggly hair (or just bald) styles.  So I wasn’t venturing too far out of my wheelhouse.  But the influence is absolutely unmistakable.  Really, it was a lot of practice to fine tune some of my line work to similar levels.

I’ve not done a lot of this style recently, but from time to time I’ll draw a face that is all cheek-bones, teeth and huge brows.  I’m really focusing on my human forms more right now and giving faces a bit of a break.  I’m sure I’ll return to incorporating some of these old lessons/techniques in future works.   However, if it all starts looking like “The Batman” I’m gonna have to worry about lawsuits (or secret implants in my mind linking it to Matsuda)!!