The Art of Pete Woods

As I’m winding down the final issue of World of New Krypton and look forward to my next project (which should be announced in a matter of days) I’m thinking about how I need to progress as an illustrator.  I don’t mean to sound pretentious here- every artist constantly looks for new ways to push their work to the next level and beginning a new project is a natural place to try new things.

I get bored with things fairly easily. Rebecca says I have mild ADD. In order to break the monotony I try to shake things up stylistically.

Working on Deadpool I tried what I guess I would call a “super-deformed” style.  I tried cartooning with a “dirty” look–

I think Deadpool’s reaction about sums up how I feel that turned out.

I tried a more traditional cartoon style on Robin after that with very mixed results.

This cover is one of the high points of that era–

When I was put on Detective Comics (a massive leap of faith by then editor Bob Schreck) I knew it was time to change things completely.  I started using a lot more shadows and deep blacks.  I also started using photo reference much more.  To this day I am happy with the results.  Also, working with writer Andersen Gabrych was a joy.

Catwoman came next.  Rebecca had been encouraging me to the style I used when I drew for myself.  I didn’t grow up on superhero comics.  I grew up on Judge Dredd, Alien Worlds, Heavy Metal, and various European comics too numerous to mention.  Darwyn Cook and Cameron Stewart had made such a strong stylistic mark on Catwoman that the time seemed right for me to try what Rebecca had suggested and break with the previous look of the book.

This style seemed to resonate with readers.  The success of it was due in no small part to colorist Brad Anderson who instictively knew what I was doing and helped make it shine. I have been working in some variation of this style since then- almost 4 years now.

The time has come to change things again.  I’m not sure where things are going, but I hope you’ll check it out, enjoy it,  and give me your feedback!

See you in the funny books!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.