Batman Crouched Before a Splattered Bat-Signal — Print & Oil Painting

Yellow was thrown at this wall before anything else happened. It sits behind the figure as a large oval emblem with a bat cut out of its centre, and around that oval the same yellow has been flung in loose blots and long tails across the boards, running down in places and pooling in others. The wall shows through underneath as horizontal planks.

In front of it the figure is crouched low and heavy, head dropped until the cowl points at the floor, shoulders rounded forward, forearms across the knees and both gloved hands hanging loose at the bottom of the frame. The two white eye slits are the only part of him looking anywhere.

Figure and ground are treated as two separate operations. He is inked with hard comic contours and flat blue-grey shading, sharp at every edge; the emblem behind him is all splash and drip. Neither acknowledges the other, and that collision is the point of the picture.

Because the cape spreads outward at the base while the symbol arches overhead, the whole composition sits inside a rough diamond, widest at the shoulders and closing top and bottom. From our DC Universe collection. The gold signal above the skyline uses the same drip technique on a taller board, and the rain-lit signal puts the beam back in the sky.