Art School: Marvel Girls

Today we have the process of Comf’s ‘Marvel Girls.’ This was done about a year or so back and was created because she wanted to do something with the women of Marvel as a companion to Adam’s ‘Women of DC.’ The secondary reason for this was because, well…boobs sell crazy-house at comic conventions. It’s a fact. We’ve sold far more prints because of Black Cat’s bosoms then we’d like to admit, but there you have it. It’s just the market we serve.

The process we see above shows the thumbnails to final ink. We do anywhere from one to 20 thumbnails on average and choose the best (Comfort really draws this process out, spending whole pages of her sketchbook on nothing but thumbnails!). We work the one we like into a full rough version that is about quarter to half size, depending on the level of detail that we need for the final. Drawing it smaller makes sure we can get our proportions and structure out down before we move the final drawing - it’s much easier on smaller scale than the 11”x17” final page. This helps keep the final drawing clean and free of searching lines and other shmutz. The rough gets scanned in, blown up, and transferred onto comic board via printer or light table. The final details and either really tight, clean pencils or ink gets added in this stage.

The color is added digitally, and Comf made sure to add extra emphasis to the warmth of skin for Black Cat’s bosoms - as well as the shines and reflections on the costumes where necessary. Comfie was pretty proud of this when she finished it a year or so ago, but her excitement about it has waned, although we still sell it at cons because of the popularity of pin-ups of women in comics.

--Featured Art Student--

In this section we are showcasing the artwork on one of our students we teach. This week is Krista Schuman – a young lady of 17 years, Krista has been a student of ours for the last few years. She shows an enormous amount of skill with drawing and digital color. Digital color is her strong suit and she is in the process of learning to color other artist’s work to see how she likes being a colorist. Krista is smart, funny, swears like a sailor (as most people of her age tend to do), and is more often then not, down on herself for not being as good as she thinks she should be. Hopefully someday she’ll be happy with her work, but that’s unlikely, seeing as she’s an artist. You can visit her DeviantArt page to take a gander at her awesome art and to understand why we’re so proud of her.