Marvel artist Russell Dauterman's new book is a work of art

I think my style started developing when I was a little kid and first saw Batman Returns, X-Men: The Animated Series, and Gargoyles, and started reading X-Men comics. Those things formed how I draw and what I love to draw.
As I got older and worked to become a comic book artist, I took in more influences and it all melds together. And I think that process is ongoing. I’m putting together this book of a decade of my Marvel Comics artwork, and I was looking at my first published work where my style is a little different – wondering if I should go back to that! Style is an ever evolving thing.

Jean Grey, Scarlet Witch, and Storm are my all-time favourite characters – getting to draw them at all was huge for me! I was thrilled to design their current superhero outfits in the comics – that was a total dream-come-true and definitely a challenge.
I looked at all their past costumes, and took the bits that I thought were most iconic or interesting – the things that would make a reader instantly recognise them, like Wanda’s crown – and I tried to synthesise those things with new elements to make designs that were fresh and modern.

I’ve drawn completely digitally for my whole time at Marvel. I draw with a Wacom stylus on a tablet for rough drawing and on a Cintiq for polished drawing and colouring. I’m someone who likes to erase, so digital is perfect for me.  
In school, I would always be too nervous to splatter paint on my art, even though that was the look I wanted, afraid I’d ruin the piece! But digitally, I can experiment and do all sorts of effects that, if I don’t like them, I can just delete that bit and try again.

Working on such a tight turnaround has been challenging – I’m a pretty meticulous person and that’s not super conducive to drawing a comic quickly, which is usually required. I’ve been very thankful in recent years to work mostly as a cover artist on books like X-Men and Scarlet Witch, where I get to take more time on each piece.

I broke into comics by doing portfolio reviews at comic book conventions.  Most publishers do formal portfolio reviews at cons – that was invaluable for me to get feedback to help my work improve, and to meet editors (some of whom eventually hired me!).  
After my first positive Marvel review, I naively thought I’d be hired immediately. That didn’t happen, and I needed to improve a lot. But I kept in touch with the editor I had the review with, sending him new samples, and a few years later, he hired me for my first Marvel job – drawing a Cyclops series.
My advice would be to learn drawing fundamentals, to practice drawing people, facial expressions, anatomy, buildings, perspective, inanimate objects, etc. Drawing comics encompasses a lot of different disciplines – sequential art and storytelling, costume and set design, graphic design and composition.  
Having a grasp of the fundamentals should give you a foundation to explore all of those disciplines, without hitting roadblocks on basic drawing. And with all that practice, you can put together a portfolio of the work you want to do – which you can take to cons, if possible, and share online.