The Dark Knight Returns

I’m working on the Batober drawing challenge to complete thirty-one drawings of Batman, one a day for October. I begin each drawing with a prompt from a list assembled by Chris Samnee, one of the best ink-and-brush comics artists working today:

I decided to make and share these for several reasons. Batman is far and away my favorite superhero, so it’s a lot of fun to revisit a character I used to draw frequently when I was younger.

It also offers a terrific opportunity to improve my ability to use Adobe Fresco and my other digital drawing tools…and to use them quickly. This challenge will help me design a drawing process that is efficient and friction-free, one I’ll need as I build more expansive stories.

More importantly, as I figure out how to build EXIT CITY, I know that my drawing style needs refinement. I tend to add too many details and create forms that are too rigid and closed. So I’m pushing myself to make each of these drawings more elegant, refining the elements needed to tell the story and removing unnecessary extras.

This is OUTNUMBERED, the first in the series, which I made into an homage to the classic samurai film Yojimbo (speaking of unnecessary extras…😏):

I’ll ultimately share more Batober drawings as a batch here. But if you prefer to follow my progress, you can see each day’s drawing on Instagram and TikTok.