Black Canary - A Fucking JOURNEY

Here is the harrowing journey I went on to make this one goddamn drawing work for the past twenty-four hours.

As I said recently, I think, it was about time for me to draw another Black Canary; this new one was mostly inspired by Babs Tarr’s rendition of Dinah in SIRENS (written by Tini Howard), with a few aspects that are just very Me (her bodysuit being different/latex, etc).

I honestly had a lot of fun putting her together, but this is the type of drawing where most stages actually look fucking cool, and like they could be presented as a finished piece and still be loved? After I had finished the drawing and sent it to my sister, I even questioned whether I had chosen one that was doing TOO much - whether I should actually pull back on some details and layers.

The original finished drawing looked like this:

While the other major option had looked like this:

The difference was in color temperature and light. The heavier blue with the red light looked good, but maybe almost TOO rendered on her face. The second drawing looked really good, but it lost a little depth due to the loss of the side highlight. What to do!?

Literally as I was about to make this Patreon post, I had an idea; what if I cast a shadow across her face, removing the possibly over-done highlights, while giving it a little extra drama. It could be cool! And so I tried it, but much to my dismay, I ALSO tried it without the red light, and I could not tell which was better. People told me the red helped give the face shape, which the other lacked (even as I felt the brain filled in the gaps where there were any).

Whatever.

Anyway, I fucked around, talked to a friend, determined which would win out and then changed the background based on a suggestion she had. I really am happy with how it came out, even when I had so, so many worthwhile options in the mix.

Other renders of it, from inks to flats to shadows, looked like this; I am particularly fond of the final one here, which, even though it is missing all highlights, still reads as such a killer silhouette that I can barely believe I drew it hahahahaha.

And there we go! What a frustrating journey! But we DID get there in the end! I hope you all found this at least somewhat interesting - a peek into the kind of minutiae I have to deal with as an artist in my own brain hahahahaha. Let me know if any of these really stood out to you, and if you think I ultimately made the right choice 😅😅😅