The Club Of Antiheroes: Gambit

This is the submission post for The Club of Antiheroes Contest by @zeroooc. My medium of choice is digital.

The History

I have a confession to make . In the mid 90's when I was a wee lad I was a big comic book fan. Every month, me and and my mom would go to the magazine shop and I would pick up the latest issues of The Uncanny X-Men, Wolverine, The Avengers, Captain America etc (only Marvel stuff, sorry DC fans.). When I got home, I would try and redraw some of the art from those books on my own Sketch pad. My favorite Marvel pencil artist at the time was Adam Kubert.

The Antihero

When I heard about this contest, I definitely had to relive those old child hood memories of drawing superheroes. The theme is Antiheroes, and who doesn't love a good antihero? Though there are a lot of good ones, I am going with everyone's favorite Cajun, "Gambit" for the Jack of Clubs. The thief with a heart of gold, he is a mutant who become one of the core members of the X-men in the 90's.

image source

He also has one of the most coolest choice of weapons. A deck of cards. He can literally throw cards that explode on impact. Also for close combat situations, he has his trustee staff and his martial arts skills to make anyone think twice about taking him on.

The Process

I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted to go for that painterly texture feel. It took many hours of trial until I found something pretty close to the vision that I had. It was loads of fun blocking in colors and trying to get the lighting correct too.

Here are some selected frames from the process. As you can see his face went through a few changes from the initial sketch. I wasn't content with the original because he wasn't smug or cocky enough.
USEFULL TIP: When you do a digital painting, it's a good habit to flip the canvas once in a while because your eyes tend to get used to the mistakes. After working feeling a bit satisfied working on the painting for a few hours, I flipped it and it looked horrible. His proporions were off. This had to be tweaked a few times until I was satisfied with the final.

The Art

Here is the final result. The mutant Gambit in all his smug glory.

If you wanna give it a go for this contest, head over to this link. Also special thanks to @zeroooc for creating this and being very approachable on discord.

Thank You

@wanaf

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