It’s Saturday Starlin time! When all is said and done, Starlin covers will make up more of these recreations than those by any other artist.
Not a conscious decision. In the beginning of the marathon, I was just rifling through my collection and pulling out any book that I had a fondness for and that had a cover that looked like it might be fun to draw. That I picked up a bunch of Starlin books is an indication of just how much his seventies work meant to my teenage self and how large those books loom in my adult consciousness.
Starlin’s been a challenge, largely because I don’t draw at all like Starlin, his figures are really idiosyncratic, with extreme postures and musculature that I would never conceive of on my own. Michelangelo, Burne Hogarth, Steve Ditko, Aubrey Beardsley, Jack Kirby–they’re all in the mix of Starlin’s genius, making for some of the most eccentric yet dynamic inter-galactic super-hero space opera ever. I’d never thought of Starlin as an action guy so much, until I copied his drawings.
I didn’t change a lot on this drawing–Warlock is a little bit more upright in my version, and I modified the color a bit here and there, making the piece less about gray against green, and more about a green/purple/pink contrast. Those little changes probably seem like nothing to a casual observer, but I spent hours(?) agonizing over what color to use in the circle indica on the upper lefthand corner. In the end, green was the perfect choice for the cover’s background color, and although I spent a good deal of time playing around with alternatives, I never found anything that worked as well. (But you’ll notice I moved away from a yellow-green toward a bluer green.)
(originally published at pulpink.blogspot.com on Feb.19, 2011)
