Superhero theme

For my nephew Jett's 5th birthday, my sister told him he could have his room decorated in any theme he wanted.

You know it warmed my heart when he said "superheroes!"

I was called in as an independent contractor and as a good uncle, to lend my limited artistic ability to this project. My sister wanted me to paint a few characters -- preferably those with a red and blue theme -- on Jett-Man's walls. Of course I was thrilled to accept the assignment.

I'm not done with the project yet -- the final, most important piece will be Spider-Man. I wanted to warm up a little before I got to Spidey, and I did that with these paintings of Captain America and Superman.

I'm relatively happy with the way they turned out. I've never painted a character on a wall before, so it was uncharted territory for me. The hardest part was the scale, and not being able to really see the "big picture." I drew the characters in pencil first, and then started painting. Up close, I couldn't see that I would have liked my characters to have been a little bit longer-legged. But that's OK, I can call that a foreshortening issue. I'm also not too happy about Cap's shield (I knew that would be a challenge) and I'm really mad that I chose to use that pink paint as a skin tone. That's something I'll try to go in and fix later.

I'm mostly happy with Supes, which surprises me. Such a hard character to draw. Why? Because he's got no mask! With no mask, it makes it really easy to make him look like your neighbor in a cape and tights... and creepy. But this guy looks like a kid-friendly Superman to me. And I'm really shocked that I nailed the Superman 'S' chest emblem. Sure, I can draw it, but I figured I'd screw it up painting it. Once I get the yellow in there, that 'S' is gonna look good.

But yeah, as you can see from the third photo, Jett just LOVES these paintings. Seriously, he was really pumped about them, I could tell. The photo doesn't convey that mood, but trust me, he was excited in person. He really wants Spider-Man up there pretty bad though, because Spidey is his favorite. To a 5-year-old, he probably just thinks Uncle Seth is tormenting him by not getting that one done first, but the truth is, I just really want to nail that one for his room, so I want to make sure I've worked the kinks out before I start painting the ol' Webhead.