It feels like forever since I submitted something, but I'm going to try and buck the trend by posting a fair amount of stuff here in the next few days or so.

So here we have The Batman discovering a playing card left to taunt him by The Joker. I've always loved the version of the Joker done in the Batman Animated Series, so my take on the character is pretty much just a more realistic rendition of that. This piece basically just started out as me wanting to do a portrait of the J-man and it somehow evolved into this card within a card theme. I liked the idea of Batman holding the Joker holding Batman. You know like those shots of a television inside of a television inside of a television that go on forever? Those things are awesome.

This piece was done 99.9% in acrylic paint with only the dimpled plastic texture of the playing card added in Photoshop. Yes, all of the guns and typed words were done by hand, and yes I know I'm a total psycho. Although a bit tedious, this one was really fun to do and I got to mix all kinds of things together in one piece. From the built-up toned washes of the background, to the graphic elements of the card, and the highly rendered leather glove... I got a chance to do it all. Oh and just in case anyone wants to know, the leather glove was done using a stippling technique with a bunch of little dots layered on top of each other starting from darker colors and gradually working up to the lighter colors. It actually went pretty fast and was much easier than trying to make smooth gradations.

A 1024x768 destop version for your computer can be found here [link]

Thanks for looking everyone!

11" x 16.5" - Liquitex acrylic paint on Strathmore illustration board
The Joker and Batman characters © DC Comics
This image of The Joker and Batman © Walter O’Neal 2006