Amy Heidbreder

Cut Paper, Pen, Sharpie, Gouache on Bristol Board, Mounted on Black Letramax

Centaur-Man, Centaur-Man, does whatever a Centaur-Man does. Did I mention the horse flies? Let me preface this with, what I’m writing here is thrusting me WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY out of my comfort zone. This character is something so private to me. I won’t publicly disclose how developed his story is or how I’ve chronicled it—written, sketched, carved, interpretive dance. I don’t intend for any parts of this character’s story to see the light of day. Since high school, though, the Centaur has been an imaginative getaway. To this day, I still work on his world from time-to-time. I’m introducing him now, because in college he inspired one of my most favorite pieces of work.

I think the name of the class I created this piece in was “Drawing for Graphics”. Each design course at the University of Houston had us create anywhere between 3 and 5 projects each semester. This was the result of one of those assigned projects. We were tasked with creating an accordion book with 6 panels. Our color palate was limited. Generally, projects in this course were quite restrictive over all—the choice of color, how many words we could use, etc. It was because this was considered an intermediate course. At this point, we had only worked with color maybe one time and made compositions with 1, or up to 3 words. The professors didn’t want to throw at us too many variables, because we were still learning. For this particular project, we could only choose 3 colors. I can’t quite remember the entire premise of the project, but we had to design an object, and that object had to be present in every panel. It could be any size, but had to somewhere at least once in each panel. The object also had to be a combination of two things. Like I said, I can’t quite remember everything, but my object ended up being the Centaur’s mask overlaid with a western spur. It led to the creation of this comic book-esque composition that ended up being one of my favorite pieces. I’ve kept it carefully hidden and preserved. These pictures were taken a couple days ago, but this piece is now over 10 years old. The glue is starting to come undone in some places, but I’d say it’s held up pretty well.

This entire composition is hand drawn with technical pens and gouache on cut paper. It’s an abstract piece that graphically brings to life the essence of the character I created.

I am a horse obsessed crazy person. As a kid, I was even more obsessed. Then when I was in high school, the first Spider-Man movie came out, and I fell head over heels for Spider-Man’s character. I had never been into super heroes, so I don’t know why that movie spoke to me. I didn’t even want to go see it. I just tagged along with my family. I was so inspired, though, that when I got home I drew, and I drew, and I studied anatomy, and drew and drew, and read comics, and learned about this thing called like the Marvel Universe. What? Then before I knew it, I was naturally trying to put a superhero on a horse. I dubbed him the Centaur. I’ll divulge his powers, but that’s it. His horse flies. It’s like a forcefield the horse is able to emit, giving him the ability to ricochet off thin air. His human can do it too, but not quite like the horse. With four feet and much more power, the horse can actually use this ability to gain flight. So, the Centaur rides around on this flying horse. They also both have this ability to heal from pretty much anything. In the story, I have a cop give the Centaur his name. The Centaur doesn’t start as a hero. He starts as a criminal and while being pursued, his shadow looks like a Centaur, so that is what the police and media start calling him.

That’s all you get!

I used to be the one at the movie theater for a midnight showing of any new Marvel release. Those days are behind me. I haven’t seen many recent movies or picked up anything superhero related in a while. Even if I am working on my universe, it’s generally not the superhero part as of recent. This project was fun though. I love letting my imagination run wild sometimes.