Death / The Grim Reaper

12 Jun 2009

There has been a lack of updates to my sweet little site lately and I am completely to blame for that. I intended to write at least two posts per week but I’ve fallen way short of that mark. I do have a good reason for it though. I am working on a little project that could open a few doors in the comic book business for me so I haven’t had much time to focus on this site. I want to write a review of the movie “Up” eventually (short review: it was amazing) but for now I’m going back to my sketchbooks for content.

Much like the Flash, another character I tend to draw every once in a while is Death or The Grim Reaper. I find the concept of the personification/embodiment/manifestation of death to be completely fascinating and even more interesting is the myriad of ways in which this character has been represented. Below are three such representations as done by yours truly.

Two more pictures with comments after the break.

The first one was done in early 2007 and it’s definitely a more classic approach to the character with the robe and the scythe and the skeleton body. I’m happy with how the torn up clothes came out in that one.

The second one is from later in 2007 and is probably my favorite. Much similar to the first one but the scythe looks more interesting, the pose is stronger and the drawing just seems a bit more solid and three-dimensional. I also used the blue pencil (which I usually use for laying out stuff only) as an actual shading tool which is something I hadn’t done a lot up until that point. It’s a good time to mention that I change the color of my layout pencil with every sketchbook: 2007 was blue (though I used only graphite for half that book), 2008 was green (see below) and 2009 is red. It’s just something I do to not bore myself.

The last one was done in 2008 and is the most interesting one because I was very conscious about not repeating myself relative to what I had done previously. He has two scythes for starters, along with horns and a more animalistic face. He also seems to be more ethereal or ghost-like though I can’t remember if I did that conciously or not. Most interesting perhaps, is that I, for reasons unknown, chose to call him “The Grim Reaper” as opposed to “Death” as I had done in my previous two drawings.

I need to draw this guy again although, and going back to my comic book related project, I have been drawing a character lately that could, for all intents and purposes, be Death.