Excalibur Nightcrawler...

Nightcrawler is one of my top 3 X-Men characters. I've loved the character's attitude, his development over the years and the over all feel he brings to each team he's been on. A huge part of his character growth was his time as the leader of Excalibur. I wasn't reading that book as it came out in the 80's and 90's but I've since gone back and absolutely love that run with Alan Davis. This costume was a pretty drastic departure from his "classic" look and especially with the buzz cut, man Nightcrawler just looked more serious. 
He had always been a "swashbuckler" type of character, and even referenced it quite a few times how much he enjoyed that type of character and fighting style. Adding a sword to his character was a blast to see, so I definitely had to add that to this sketch. 
Often when I do sketches I use it as an opportunity to try new techniques in inking. New textures, effects, or rendering methods. Here I happened across a new way to indicate black smoke from an Art Adams sketch I had seen and loved that look for Nightcrawler's Bamf effect. It's a bit time consuming, but a fun effect as black and white art. 
Nightcrawler - 739



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I have a new set of art books titled- " Robert ATKINS Art: Declassified"  They are 60 pages each, full of the black and white sketches that you've seen on my blog these last few years.
I have 3 volumes. Vol. 1 is strictly GI JOE artwork, Vol 2 is MARVEL Comics Characters (X-Men, Avengers, SPIDERMAN, Etc...) and Vol. 3 is DC Comics characters (SUPERMAN, BATMAN, JLA, etc..) These are for sale, you can simply email me directly and payment is taken through paypal. They are $10 each and $5 flat rate shipping for 1 or all 3. I have these available at the conventions I set up at, but if you can't make the show, you can purchase them through my blog as well. You can email me if you need more details.