1 - Posted on 4/4/2025

Amazing!!!!! Love all the Stingrays in the back. 

1 - Posted on 4/4/2025

Wonderful design and color palette!

1 - Posted on 4/4/2025

Eye catching piece, now I wish I made it to that show!

1 - Posted on 4/4/2025

the plethora of rays in the background just make this piece so cool and unique. the main figure Stingray looks good too. sounds like a collaborative and friendly process with the artist for the commission as well. congrats on the result

1 - Posted on 4/4/2025

This art is really good art! Loving this one for sure man!!

2 - Posted on 4/4/2025

The blacklight so cool and appropriate.  If you have an aquarium with that lighting, the fishes would have that fluorescent look in the dark.

1 - Posted on 4/5/2025

love the design on this buddy, stingray is the word

1 - Posted on 4/6/2025

Of all the "Single character, full background" commissions I've ever seen, this one mightr possibly contain the best backgrounds EVER! That is awesome!

1 - Posted on 4/6/2025

I couldn't agree more. I told Ian when I met him that this one immediately jumps into the top 5 of my Stingray commissions.

1 - Posted on 4/6/2025

Don't know that artist but that is great work indeed

1 - Posted on 4/6/2025

Absolutely stunning! I love that you have so much documentation of the process. Love the background, love the black light Stingray himself...just love it 

1 - Posted on 4/6/2025

Beautiful

1 - Posted on 4/6/2025

The vertical ray background is stunning and works so well with the character in the foreground. Love the character pose here as well and the end result in color, is a cover quality take. Big congrats on this, it's an absolute beauty!

2 - Posted on 4/11/2025

I know it doesn't have the optical effect, but in a weird way it reminds of M.C Escher's "Sky and Water." Regardless, it is fascinating in its own right for its own reasons, and I dig the black light effect.

1 - Posted on 1/2/2026

Gorgeous piece, Newell (and fantastic write up)!  Stingray looks like a million bucks here (love the effect that "reversing" the colors on the underside of his wings achieves), but it's the rays in the background that really captivate me.  Just as their muted colors push Stingray to the front, Stingray's brash and bold colors allow us to isolate the rays to study them more closely, too, to really revel in the effort and detail Ian so obviously invested into them.  GREAT call on the biology textbook!  :) I love the density of the fever of rays, too, packing them heavily into the bottom of the page (so much texture!!) and then thinning them out as your eye travels up the page to add white space and really make the composition sizzle (and those tails also act as motion or velocity lines to propel the viewer's eye up the page, giving a sense of soaring motion to the piece and to Stingray himself).  And another shout-out to the colors on the piece: because Stingray's colors are so bold dominant, it plays a fun POV trick on us, too, as what initially appears to be a straight-on OHOTMU-like look at a stretching hero is actually a shot from below, underwater, as Stingray shoots past (and leaves the viewer in a fever)! :) Brilliant commission, Newell!  Love this one!

1 - Posted on 1/2/2026

(Plus the fact that Stingray's helmet "arrow" is pointing downwards when all the motion of everything else on the page is flowing upwards tickles me, too.  I know that's just the character design (meant to be a stylized barb on a ray's tail? I've always wondered about that...), but it's good for a chuckle (and allows Ian a chance to infuse a bit more white / negative space into the top third of the composition).)