And here's the United Underworld collection all together. Catwoman maybe looks a little weak but,…
The Riddler
The Riddler! Back to plague us with his criminal conundrums!
Next up in the United Underworld collection is The Riddler, played by Frank Gorshin. Probably the only one of the Adam West Batman villains to actually be unpredictably scary. A personal favourite.
I have to confess, my second attempt of the day was of The Joker. I thought I’d do him mainly monotone in red, pink and black but with a bit of green in the hair to break the pattern. Maybe I was putting down too much green, including some in his shot (and trying too hard to replicate the colours in my source photo) but I abandoned it before completion. I just didn’t like the green/red combination.
And it was at this point that I decided to change my strategy. I decided that all four portraits in the collection would be mainly built from black and greys, but with each portrait to include one extra colour. And then each portrait will look like a black and white photo that someone’s attacked with a single highlighter pen. It’s a good look.
There only needs to be a certain amount of the extra colour. Too much and the black and white look will no longer dominate. So in this one, there’s green on the hat, the tie and the glove. The jacketing my source photo is green and I’m really proud of myself for leaving the jacket in grey tones. Can you see how adding green to the jacket would ruin this one?
I also can’t help noticing that my two extra colours so far have been green and purple, the colours that signified villainy in 1960s Marvel comics (yeah, I know Batman is DC not Marvel). I need to have a think overnight about whether to continue to use green and purple for the remaining two team members or to diversify with, say, red and brown.
While this one (and the likeness in particular) feels like a step down from The Penguin, it’s still pretty good, especially the hand. And the collection is looking really good so far: four 7/10 paintings would make for a 9/10 collection. That’s how statistics work.
Anyway, The Riddler won’t be going up for sale as a standalone, instead being included in the United Underworld collection.
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