Phil Noto

I'm very fond of Phil Noto's art, and anybody who knows me well would be able to tell you why. He draws portraits of iconic comic book characters, and we all know that i love comics! He has a really fun, sketchy way of drawing that i quite like, and then the colours he use brings his work to life. His work shows me that drawing features on people is a lot simpler than i usually imagine. I like the way that some of his portraits don't adhere to the conventional square border (for example the Wonder Woman one).

I have two favourites out of this selection and the reason i like them is because they include some of my favourite comic book characters out of context. In the image on top he shows many of Marvel comics superheroes on holiday, having fun, and it's generally not the place you'd ever see them when they get drawn for fighting the bad guys! I also really like how he's put The Beast out of focus in this image, almost as if it's a holiday snap! The other one i love, and this is the first picture i'd seen by Noto, is of Psylocke (the girl with the purple hair), a popular x-men character. We'd usually see her as a fighting ninja with a telepathic sword (yeah i'm a geek) but Noto has placed her at a bar wearing a Joy Division t-shirt, bringing in real world influences to help us relate to her.