Sunday, September 28, 2008

ADRIAN PAUL as the HIGHLANDER...DUNCAN MACLEOD!


Here's some art from my sketchbook I did back in the late 90's being a HUGE fan of the TV show version of Highlander. I thought Adrian Paul was perfect as Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. He fit the mold of what I think the look and feel of a movie/TV hero should be, much like my father would probably say Buster Crabbe or Clayton Moore. There was a presence to him that made him stand out amongst the other immortals on the show. You knew he was the good guy. I even liked Duncan MacLeod more than the character of Conner MacLeod (who was played in the movie series by Christopher Lambert). Lambert was good with what he did, but I'm a Paul fan.

At any rate, here's a peek at the process I can go through. Here is the pencil sketch from my sketchbook and then I blew it up to 11" x 17" on a copy machine and then lightboxed it onto a new sheet of art paper as I inked the final piece. I still like it as a whole and the pencil version has a lot of energy to it. You can click on the art to enlarge it! Enjoy!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Your sketches are awesome! The expression on his face is great :) Got any advise for illustrators just starting out??

SNeelyArt said...

Thanks Mary! The best advice I can give is to stay at it and keep drawing. It sounds typical but it's true. Even for a lot of my drawings, I may do several sketches or revisions before I get to the final one that I like. Even this Highlander one was a second attempt to get it right to where I liked it. I think the hardest thing is not over rendering the face and making it look older or over working any kind of shadows or tones. Some times there is a smiple line or facial quirk that a person has that if you add that in the right spot it makes the likeness more on point. Doing caricatures of people can also help because you train your eye to look at everything in the face and break it down to it's basic shapes and smallest nuances.