Mark Texeira

Career Mark Texeira was born and raised in New York City. He attended Manhattan's High School of Art and Design, and was granted a Presidential Scholarship at the School of Visual Arts, where he attended for two years before dropping out to pursue a freelance commercial art career. During this period, Texeira took classes at the Art Students League. His oil paintings soon won mentions at the Salmagundi Club and the Society of Illustrators.

Comics titles Texeira has contributed to include Masters Of The Universe (1981), DC Power Lords, Jonah Hex and its spinoff Hex (1985–1986), Psi-Force (1986–1987), The Punisher War Journal (1990), Ghost Rider vol. 3 (1990–1992, 1997–1998), and vol. 5, Wolverine vol. 2 (1993), Sabretooth (1993), Spider-Man: Legacy of Evil (1996), Black Panther vol. 3 (1998), Moon Knight vol. 4 (1999), Vampirella, Cyclops (2001), Hercules vol. 4 (2005) and Wolverine vol. 3 (2005).

Technique and materials When painting, Texeira begins with a penciled layout on loose paper, and following approval of the layout, will acquire reference photos or hire models to pose for him, in order to "capture the feeling of the sketch as closely as possible." Texeira will then apply a few layers of gesso to a Masonite board, and then carefully lay the drawing out in tight pencil, noting subtleties of skin tone and sharpening the image throughout the process. He will then create the underpainting, in which he applies sepias, or a mix of browns, blacks and whites. Any final changes to the painting, such as aspects of a character's facial expression, are made during this stage. He then carefully and thinly applies acrylic paint to achieve the final colors, lightly so as to not lose the underpainting.