Batman in Ink Wash Perched Beneath a Huge Moon — Print & Oil Painting

This is wash work: ink and diluted paint dropped onto damp paper and allowed to spread, then knocked back with a dry brush. Tide lines are visible inside the moon where one pool of pigment dried against the next, and the whole sheet carries a dusty olive tint sitting somewhere between khaki and old gold.

The moon is enormous, taking most of the upper half, edged with a thin bright rim that is the only clean line anywhere on the paper. Across it the artist has laid a horizontal crossbeam in solid black, and on that beam the figure crouches, elbows on knees, head down and turned slightly to his left.

The cape is the largest black shape on the sheet. It hangs straight down in long ragged tongues that nearly reach the rooftops, several times the length of the body, and it reads as weight rather than as fabric. Without it the eye would simply float off into the moon.

At the bottom the city is barely present: three or four chimneys, a shallow dome, one steep church spire, all flat silhouette, with small bats scattered in the gap between them and the light. From our DC Universe collection. The figure against a yellow moon treats the same pairing in hard comic line, and the rooftop under a full moon gives it a fully painted setting.