This illustration was done for the TRDL R3 Illustration Jam, the subject being Hope Summers, from the X-Men ‘Second Coming’ storyline.

I’m not totally up to date on the status of this character, as I’m about a month behind in the reading, but in general, she’s been the first new mutant birth after M-Day, and was sent into the future with Cable (Nathan Summers) to protect her from getting assassinated by any number of anti-mutant folks, parallels obviously occurring here with what happened to Nathan himself some twenty years ago or so. Anyway, the big tease has been: is she a reincarnated Jean Grey? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t want to be informed. However, I LOVE the costume design. Less so when they added the Akira-swiped tattered cloak and big gun, but as a bodysuit, it’s top-notch. It appeals to me on a personal level because of how similar it is to the design language of my TRDL Universe characters, where bodysuits with simple patterns and exposed faces are the norm. Anyway, here’s another TRDL Pin-Up, this time an advertisement for Summers Brand Redheads all-weather matches.

Please enjoy!

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You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

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Process Notes:

So these Cable covers were my inspiration. Great shots of the costume, though depending on the colorway in the art it veers from green to blue. I chose green. For science!

On to my stuff:

Often, when I’m going to do a pin-up, I’m not sure at the outset if it’s going to be nose art bomber girl stuff or a propaganda piece. In this case, I had the idea for the matchbook company right from the start, and drew the framework for the ad in the pencils…

Here’s pencils. In some ways I like this face better, but it changed as I went. I made some modification in inks, as here the hip-cock isn’t working visually for me as much as I wanted. I wanted the posture, but not a saucy pose…

Here we have inks as scanned (greyscale) and then again after processing for rendering. You can see that I was finding another case of my patented over-chinning problem, which required some correction in digital inking in Photoshop. You’ll also note I draw little arrows or dots as I eff up the inks to remind me to correct them digitally. Other than the costume and face issues, I also corrected some of the whips of hair, and enlarged her feet to be more proportional.

As usual, I start with face and hair first, and fully render them before proceeding. It grounds the figure for me.

With costumes, armor, etc I have a few approaches, depending on finish and complexity. In this case, the bodysuit is largely monochromatic with an accent color, so I chose to fully render the suit first, then add the gold afterword and match the shade/shadow lines manually.

Here’s the suit fully rendered in the green. I wanted to add some lushness so I gave it more value steps in the color than I usually do.

The gold has been added. I wanted a really deep, luscious gold color, rather than a sharp, bright gold. The gold used here influenced the background and many other tints and hues in the finished ad.

Here’s a blurry close-up of the ad material. The final piece remained close to this original sketch, though I used the stormcloud with lightning instead of a raindrop in the Triangle of Promises…

This ad was an example of the challenges in preparing an advertisement around a pin-up girl. The figure was long vertically, which hampers the usual, more modern means of laying out copy and reinforcing the brand and product name. The older ads from the 20s and 30s often had asymmetrical copy positioning, and the earlier stuff often just had the girl in some abstract pin-up situation, and a brand at the bottom, and that was it. I’m trying to be a little more creative…

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1. TRDL 2011 Series No. 40 – Iron Man Series: Force Redesign
2. TRDL Tribute: Vixen