Deadpool Tilts His Head With a Hand at His Chin — Print & Oil Painting

Nothing here was painted. The image has been rendered, and the materials give it away. The mask carries a fine woven weave that catches light across the cheekbone, the glove is a moulded textured shell with hard knuckle plates and stitched seams, and the shoulder armour at the lower left is scuffed down to bare grey along its edges.

The head is tilted to his right and the right hand is raised with the fingers curled loosely under the chin. It is the standard gesture for thinking, performed by a face that has no features to think with: two white lenses in black patches, no mouth, no brow, nothing that can move. The tilt is doing the entire job of the expression.

A sword hilt stands up past each shoulder, the grips wound with cord and finished with pale pommels. They are cropped by the top edge and kept slightly soft, so they frame the head without competing with it.

The background is a warm grey field of dust and concrete with small dark flecks suspended in it, thrown well out of focus, and a soft light arriving from the upper left. The hue reading comes back crimson over red, with saturation and brightness both near the middle.

A pose about the inside of a head is well chosen here, because his is the one nobody can get into. The same regeneration that keeps him alive rebuilds his brain continuously, which leaves it in permanent flux, and telepaths who try to read him come back with noise: whatever is in there cannot be extracted, influenced or switched off by anybody, which is a considerable advantage attached to a condition he did not ask for. Part of our Marvel collection, next to the same suit standing idle on a dark green ground and two smoking pistols held up amid painted lettering.