This was a commission done for a longtime client, basically an African-American, female interpretation of Thor. We played around with references and ideas for awhile: he was into a particular Valkrye costume, plus some colors from another character that pushed to black and yellow. What I tried to do was make her built, tall and powerful. The dreads have a bunch of little jewelry tchotchkes in them that plays against the stars nicely. We looked at a few accent colors for the cape, and one change he asked for was a new symbol for the belt, now shown as being the norse rune for ‘D’. I did a version with a staff for a weapon, but he preferred weapon-free, with an outstretched hand receiving lightning.

Please enjoy.

:::

You can find a larger version here.

You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Tribute Gallery.

:::

Process Notes:

Here’s the inks, ready for colors, including weapon. I tried a mace first, then the staff.

I played with skintones for quite awhile. In some schemes I was going very dark, which was powerful and awesome, but I thought, given the darks in the costume, it would be better to have a warmer, richer skin tone to work against.

After skin and hair, I moved onto the gold details and the leather, so I could then play against them with the grays, blues and blacks of the nominal black of the costume.

Black here is really a dark blue/gray, but you get the detail this way.

This was the cape study… the client ultimately chose red, which was my strong favorite as well…

I thought the staff was pretty cool, but I appreciate the raw power of an outstretched hand, so the revised version that made it to the final pic suits me fine. Powerful!

Follow this topic in the R3 Forum here!

Related posts:

1. TRDL Tribute – Red Robin
2. TRDL’s Wrongrobot’s Rudiments Pinup No. 3 – Batgirl
3. TRDL Tribute – Firestorm + Firehawk