I’ve always had a fondness for this character, I think dating back to an absolute killer run Erik Larsen & David Michelinie did in the 90’s on Amazing Spider-man around the Sinister Six. When handled well, he’s a redeeming sort of anti-hero versus just a two dimensional bad guy like some of the other Spider-man villains.

I focused on just the potential for change in the character and how messy someone made of sand would actually be. You’re not walking away from this fight untouched.

By this point in the colouring process I’d started to settle into what was working, what wasn’t and how to carry on the process for the remainder of the work. I recognized that for some of these, overworking a background or even overly detailed shading didn’t make much sense, and the resultant pictures were more of a pop art feel.

For this one, I just went with some very basic shading, some ‘material’ aspects in the sandy parts of Sandman (specks etc.) and a basic colour background that I added some effects to in order to make it appear sandblasted.

Labels: Ditko, Ditkoctober, Pentel, Photoshop, Sandman, Spider-Man, Steve Ditko