The summer of super-hero movies continues! Totally enjoyed Avengers, then Amazing Spider-Man, and now — the one I was most eagerly anticipating this summer — The Dark Knight Rises!

When I saw The Dark Knight back in 2008, I was just blown away. I did enjoy Batman Begins, but The Dark Knight movie became my favorite superhero movie — and one of my favorite movies in general — of all-time. I was absolutely floored with what Christopher Nolan did. That movie made me a Nolan fan — including Jonathan Nolan — enjoying the many layers, details, and subtleties that is buried into their films. I wasn’t certain how many of their prior projects I saw, so I sought them out with enthusiasm.

I had seen Memento years prior and did like it, but didn’t appreciate that as a “Nolan” project, and so I revisited it with renewed interest. I LOVED The Prestige (now, another all-time favorite movie) and could TOTALLY see how that was like a rough draft of The Dark Knight — the two competitors constantly out-thinking and out-maneuvering each other. Inception was the first movie that I went to see BECAUSE it was a Christopher Nolan venture. Loved the layers, complexities, and inventiveness of dreams within dreams. I wouldn’t have needed to see any trailer or read anything about it to have gone (even though I did). From now on, if the Nolan name is on a movie, I’ll check it out. That includes Jonathan Nolan. Putting Jonathan with JJ Abrams was easily enough of a reason for me to check out the TV show Person Of Interest. There’s a reason it was the number one new show on TV this past year! I highly recommend it. It’s almost like The Dark Knight TV show — vigilante in a suit, aided by fancy gadgets and a seemingly unlimited budget, comes out of nowhere to fight crime and help people in need throughout the city, then vanish before the police can catch him.

Anyhow, back to The Dark Knight Rises! Since it’s new and not everyone’s seen it yet, no spoilers. I will just say that I personally enjoyed it and was satisfied how this movie completes the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. I’m looking forward to seeing it again!

I wanted to do a drawing related to the movie and decided on sketching Bane. I also wanted to experiment with the drawing and decided to work on midtone paper. I was inspired by the recent sketches I’d seen done by comic artist extraordinaire Terry Dodson of Uncanny X-Men, Defenders, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, and more! If you are unfamiliar with Terry’s work, please click on the link and get acquainted — there’s a reason Terry has been put on the top tier books at Marvel and DC! Terry does his convention sketches on midtone paper and they come out looking gorgeous. Just a simple difference from working on white paper that can add such a big effect in the final product. After just seeing his latest batch from Comic-Con, I was moved to try it myself. I hadn’t worked on midtone paper in years.

I really treating the drawing as a sketch — as you could tell from the wildly disproportionate hands! Hahaha! Yes I see them. I just kinda kept moving along with the drawing. Really was just going with it. Remained very instinctual and tried not to plan anything out as I normally do. Had fun “pushing” and “pulling” light and dark using Prismacolor gray markers and a white col-erase pencil. Looking forward to playing with the midtone paper more in the near-future!