EDIT #2: Image updated... again - I've adjusted a few more things to really push the transparency of the reflection and really make the hand in the foreground pop. Thanks to both *Indigo-Ocean and *zimm for their very helpful thoughts on how to improve this piece. Okay, that's it now, I'm not touching it again!!! ...........................

EDIT: Image updated - I woke up this morning and I saw a few things in the image that needed a fixin'... so... I fixed 'em

Okay, I know this looks almost identical to the WIP progress version of this piece I posted before, but believe me it’s much different. There’s a lot more depth to both the textures and the characters, and I’ve got the pencil rendering calluses on my fingers to prove it! So, let’s just call this Mister Freeze v2.0

For those not familiar with the character, Victor Fries is a scientist desperately in love with his wife, Nora, who was diagnosed with an incurable degenerative disease. Rather than watch her slowly fade away, he chose to place her in frozen stasis to halt the progress of the disease until he could discover the cure. When the head of the company that Fries worked for tried to have Nora removed from stasis, Victor desperately struggled to stop him. During the physical exchange Victor fell through a table filled with toxic freezing chemicals that freakishly altered his body chemistry. Now unable to live outside of subzero temperatures, Victor is forced to don a special cooling suit to stay alive, and has turned to a life of crime in order to continue to fund the search to find a cure for his wife.

I wanted to try and do a portrait of the man that focused more on his motivations than his nifty freezy powers. So here Victor is reaching out to caress the cheek of his wife thru the glass chamber where she is frozen in stasis before he goes out and commits another crime. I also liked the idea of her looking down on his reflection as though somehow she knows that he's doing this all for her.

This is just a two-part pencil rendering tinted and compiled in Photoshop.

A desktop version for your computer can be found here [link]

"Mister Freeze", "Victor Fries", and "Nora Fries" characters © DC Comics
This image of "Victor Fries", and "Nora Fries"© Walter O’Neal 2006