Uncanny X-men by reiq on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

This piece here has taken 10 years to complete. that's right, I did the first rough idea sketch ten years ago! back then my skills were not even close to reach what I had envisioned, I've been a big fan of the X-men since back in to 1995 when I used to collect trading cards and when the animated series came out, as well as collecting comics and art for years and wanted to pay homage to those comics.
Every now and then I would go back to this piece and try to get it right, but for sure i couldn't handle the amount of characters and nail down the composition, I have never been a group shot kind of artist, took me years to get confortable to be able to do it. specially as it was not my priority but it will always hunt me, seeing the unfinished art in my studio looking back at me O_o
I guess it was the lack of reference use and the lack of practicing composition like this that made it harder, also the anatomy was a big challenge, I took the time to redraw the character again an again to find that perfect fit, even at the last minutes before finishing it i was working on this, good thing is that I have strong coloring skill so that was the easy part, I know for some might sound strange the struggle but I think every artist here and there have this piece they can't create at once and this one was mine, now the relieve after seeing this completed full color and everything has taking off a lot of weight off my back and I can move forward to new challenges, hopefully they wont take another 10 years LOL

Thank you for the amazing support !
This piece is dedicated to Carlos Pacheco and Joe Madureira my Hero artists when I found the X-Men

You can get some prints of this piece on my Etsy: